I have read a lot about hate towards how the Tau play. Some are legitimate issues and others are just the standard cries from those who don't like something and want everyone else to hate what they do.
The issue at hand seems to boil down to this: The Tau were designed to be out of balance. Bad at Melee and good at shooting. So with that design, GW did the only thing you can with a one dimensional design in a competitive environment = make them GREAT at all things shooty. As we all know what this created..............no, not a none competitive army design......no, not an over powered shooty army..............yes, an army that caused frustration and a lack of fun for both sides.
I reject that the Tau are OP, I do however feel that those who say it sucks to play against the Tau are correct. Their ability to ignore rules and take away the fun parts of your army is what they do. This isn't the Tau players fault. GW did this when they designed a one dimensional army.
So............what does GW do?
Do they go simple and add melee abilities to the Tau?
Do they nerf them into oblivion?
Do they add new abilities and rules that balance it out - is that even possible?
Do they realize that in a game world filled with melee and shooting balanced armies you can't maintain balance with an unbalanced army.....seems simple right
They add fancy auxiliaries that are supposed to do things that help Tau without giving them a major oneup in that area rather then adding more and more suits.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: They add fancy auxiliaries that are supposed to do things that help Tau without giving them a major oneup in that area rather then adding more and more suits.
I'd like to see expanded Kroot, Vespid, and Human allies.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: They add fancy auxiliaries that are supposed to do things that help Tau without giving them a major oneup in that area rather then adding more and more suits.
I'd like to see expanded Kroot, Vespid, and Human allies.
Honestly? I kind of want to see some of the other background races they have as well. They have a psyker race that's really pissed off at humanity for trying to kill them off ages ago. Some Demiurg stuff.. Along with expanded Gue'vsa, Vespid, and Kroot.
I disagree with the OP. Tau are balanced versus a table cluttered with line of sight blocking terrain. If you are unable to close with Tau without being shot to death, you do not have enough of the right terrain on the table. That's on you, not army balance.
That said, and based on what we are seeing so far with the 8e leaks, the changes look promising for a more balanced Tau. Melee while melee will favor the charger, its implied that any further rounds are simultaneous while Tau might still retain an Overwatch advantage. And range is getting standardized to a bit more quantity over quality, which will harsh on the Monat player and pump up the Breachers.
I'm looking forwad to whatever will become of the Tau in 8th and I agree that since their inception in 2001 they have been pushed more and more into the super-shooty one trick pony corner, which is something that I'd very much like to see remedied in the new ruleset.
I see a lot of potential in new auxiliary troops that provide new tactical options and, hopefully, faction-specific command abilities that go beyond making our shooting better.
Echoing the need for LOS terrain. if a tau player sets up the board and is waiting for a game and there are no large opaque buildings... nope not interested. If there is plenty of terrain then sure great sounds fun. That said marker lights I think are the biggest problem with tau, it lets them ignore far to many rules or guarantee hits (practically) and ignore cover which should be a HUGE part of the game was just plain bad design. I would prefer that their next book introduce a few bulky alien allies or expand croot and vespids to balance the army. I love the theory of tau, a fast hit and run army but hate that in practice that becomes a boring gunline.
I'm here wainting for 8th edition to make my Kroot, Vespid and Breacher army viable.
My Taus like to play close and dirty
Spoiler:
PD: Nobody seems to care about Khorne armies being pure meele, so is totally possible to have a pure shooting faction like Tau to be funny and engaging and balanced. But it requires balance.
The problem with Tau is that they would be less broken if Allies didn't exist: Like you said the entire point of the Tau is that they absolutely suck in two out of the three aspects of the game (No Psychic Power, basically allergic to melee) to compensate for being horribly powerful in the third (shooting). This is a problem when they get paired up with an army who is their compliment; as in solves their problem and then some. Remove that and it removes some of the issues.
Another issue is that Tau bends the rules of not only their army, but that of other armies to conform to them. They can all shoot during the melee phase with overwatch basically as if it was another shooting phase. Failing that, a lot of their units are jetpack units that don't want to charge, effectively turning their melee phase into another movement phase. If they could do nothing during the melee phase and not steal the enemy's melee phase into their own shooting phase, they might be less frustrating to play against.
Given that they and the Necrons (the other shooting army) all have these problems, I get the feeling that GW, at the time, had no idea how to balance shooting given that the game system was originally heavily bias towards melee (not surprising, given that it was based off of Fantasy's ruleset).
Verviedi wrote:Why? Why not balance them properly, instead of losing customers and making an army that sells well worthless out of pure spite?
I'll confess:
My posting wasn't serious. I just saw the use of the word "oblivion" and decided to make an Elder Scrolls reference.
In all seriousness, though, I have high hopes that in 8th edition we are going to see a more "interactive," "fun" and "balanced" Tau, simply because of the fact that GW claims that they are doing heavy play testing, and they are listening to community feed back.
So I don't really know how I'd balance the Tau, but I do have confidence that GW will figure something out.
Given that they and the Necrons (the other shooting army) all have these problems, I get the feeling that GW, at the time, had no idea how to balance shooting given that the game system was originally heavily bias towards melee (not surprising, given that it was based off of Fantasy's ruleset).
The first problem is exactly what you mentioned, in that the tau ignore so much.
The second problem is that farsight enclaves should have never existed. There should never be an army full of those kinds of units. They are specialist units, and should be used in conjunction with a standard force. What they are not, are a force of their own. Farsight enclaves are a huge problem as the only tau players I have ever seen only use suits. IMO it just isn't really 40k either. If you want all suits fighting against each other there are other universes out there.
I want to see tau use a mixture of fire warriors, skimmers, suits, and auxiliaries.
I am fine with Tau being amazing at shooting and terrible at melee.
I am not fine with Tau being able to ignore key parts of the game like line of sight, the movement phase, etc.
I'm also not fine with losing to Tau simply because of the models that they put on the table.
However, I also would not be fine with winning against Tau simply because it's a Tau army.
I want both of us to play the game, and when I beat you, I want it to be because I'm a better player than you. Not because of the models that are on the table.
G00fySmiley wrote: Echoing the need for LOS terrain. if a tau player sets up the board and is waiting for a game and there are no large opaque buildings... nope not interested. If there is plenty of terrain then sure great sounds fun. That said marker lights I think are the biggest problem with tau, it lets them ignore far to many rules or guarantee hits (practically) and ignore cover which should be a HUGE part of the game was just plain bad design. I would prefer that their next book introduce a few bulky alien allies or expand croot and vespids to balance the army. I love the theory of tau, a fast hit and run army but hate that in practice that becomes a boring gunline.
Surrender without rolling a dice, bet that works a treat in tournaments.
Here's hoping cover becomes a To-Hit modifier rather than a save. Auto include 4+ to hit Markerlights quickly become very situational 'Weapons'.
I hate tau, I really do. But they aren't going anywhere so I'll at least try to provide a constructive criticism.
The main reason I find Tau poorly designed is that they rely completely on the shooting phase for their damage output. This is especially troublesome in a game designed (supposedly) to balance both shooting and assault. If you play in any kind of competitive environment, you know that in order to win you basically need to shoot the enemy off the table before they can touch you. This creates a very binary game between the player and opponent, but realistically what other choice do Tau players have?
The few melee options actually available to the Tau don't really fit in with the Tau aesthetic either. I'm pretty certain most Tau players play them because they are streamlined, futuristic looking (for 40K) and have tonnes of cool anime style gundam suits. This is actually the other reason I dislike Tau as well. Their futuristic look doesn't fit into a Fantasy setting IMO (no 40K is not sci-fi. It's fantasy in space). But things like kroot look horribly out of place with the rest of the line.
I personally would like to see this issue solved in two different ways.
1) add some kind Melee style Crisis Suits. They probably have the technology to enhance their fighting abilities.
2) add some more Xenos Auxiliaries that excel in melee, and make them look cool. Not like Kroot.
jeffersonian000 wrote: I disagree with the OP. Tau are balanced versus a table cluttered with line of sight blocking terrain. If you are unable to close with Tau without being shot to death, you do not have enough of the right terrain on the table. That's on you, not army balance.
That said, and based on what we are seeing so far with the 8e leaks, the changes look promising for a more balanced Tau. Melee while melee will favor the charger, its implied that any further rounds are simultaneous while Tau might still retain an Overwatch advantage. And range is getting standardized to a bit more quantity over quality, which will harsh on the Monat player and pump up the Breachers.
As always, we shall see.
SJ
I see what you are saying and I agree in the point you are making about using terrain to balance it out. I meant more about the fact that Tau are unbalanced more than most, (not all). Orks are not good at shooting, but their mass fire can do some work, (so they are closer to balanced). I can't see many scenarios where the Tau can do some work in melee. As you said, 8th looks like it may be better.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Galas wrote: I'm here wainting for 8th edition to make my Kroot, Vespid and Breacher army viable.
My Taus like to play close and dirty
Spoiler:
PD: Nobody seems to care about Khorne armies being pure meele, so is totally possible to have a pure shooting faction like Tau to be funny and engaging and balanced. But it requires balance.
Good point about Korne - they are definitely the Ying to the Tau Yang.
I personally would like to see this issue solved in two different ways.
1) add some kind Melee style Crisis Suits. They probably have the technology to enhance their fighting abilities.
2) add some more Xenos Auxiliaries that excel in melee, and make them look cool. Not like Kroot.
Back when Tau were released, it was specifically the contrast between the high tech fire caste units and the Kroot that sold me on the faction. No melee Crisis, tyvm.
Why? Why not balance them properly, instead of losing customers and making an army that sells well worthless out of pure spite?
I am all in favor of this.
Just remember that to balance them properly, they need massive nerfs in shooting and a minor buff to cc.
Or just point cost everything appropriately. A fire warrior is halfway between a guardsman and marine in armor and cost, yet their rifle is much, much stronger than either. If they were costed appropriately, their gun would be an 18" bolter or a 30" lasgun. Str 5 and 30" at 4pts less than a marine is a joke.
I am looking forward to 8e dropping an anvil on their heads.
Back when Tau were released, it was specifically the contrast between the high tech fire caste units and the Kroot that sold me on the faction. No melee Crisis, tyvm.
Yea, but Kroot are still there. I didn't say that they should be removed. I just want more things added. So you can still enjoy your Kroot, and others can enjoy additional units that may appeal to them as well.
Brutus_Apex wrote: I hate tau, I really do. But they aren't going anywhere so I'll at least try to provide a constructive criticism.
The main reason I find Tau poorly designed is that they rely completely on the shooting phase for their damage output. This is especially troublesome in a game designed (supposedly) to balance both shooting and assault. If you play in any kind of competitive environment, you know that in order to win you basically need to shoot the enemy off the table before they can touch you. This creates a very binary game between the player and opponent, but realistically what other choice do Tau players have?
I have to disagree with you. I don't see a problem with an army that completely relies on the shooting phase for their damage output. I think that pure, or close to pure, gun lines should be a viable option, and it shouldn't just be an option for Tau. It also should be an option for armies like Imperial Guard and Imperial Fists (space marines).
The fact that Tau are shooty isn't the problem. The problem is that they can ignore line of sight, ignore cover and have units that are practically unkillable.
If you want to do a gunline, then that should be a viable option. But hiding should be a viable counter-measure.
The Tau army shouldn't be a point and click army. If you want to shoot my models, then you should actually have to move yours.
I'm in favor of removing barrage and ignore LoS from the game entirely.
Do they go simple and add melee abilities to the Tau?
Do they nerf them into oblivion?
Do they add new abilities and rules that balance it out - is that even possible?
Do they realize that in a game world filled with melee and shooting balanced armies you can't maintain balance with an unbalanced army.....seems simple right
We shall see in 8th. Your post came a bit late to fix Tau. In 1-2 months we'll know how they stand in the new edition.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: They add fancy auxiliaries that are supposed to do things that help Tau without giving them a major oneup in that area rather then adding more and more suits.
I'd like to see expanded Kroot, Vespid, and Human allies.
Honestly? I kind of want to see some of the other background races they have as well. They have a psyker race that's really pissed off at humanity for trying to kill them off ages ago. Some Demiurg stuff.. Along with expanded Gue'vsa, Vespid, and Kroot.
I agree! Auxiliaries are very cool but totally underrepresented. But I disagree about using Nicassor. The Imperium would send many more forces against Tau if they knew these guys are helping the blueberries. It's better letting them being kept in secret.
Verviedi wrote:
Why? Why not balance them properly, instead of losing customers and making an army that sells well worthless out of pure spite?
Don't take any posts from him seriously.
Galas wrote:
Spoiler:
PD: Nobody seems to care about Khorne armies being pure meele, so is totally possible to have a pure shooting faction like Tau to be funny and engaging and balanced. But it requires balance.
Because melee is COOL. Melee is MANLY. Melee is POWER. Melee is EDGY. Melee is GRIMDARK!
Spoiler:
But melee is not civilised!
Bobthehero wrote:Did you just forget about the Guard?
Dakka Wolf wrote:
Here's hoping cover becomes a To-Hit modifier rather than a save. Auto include 4+ to hit Markerlights quickly become very situational 'Weapons'.
It's already confirmed that cover will be an armour mod. It won't effect To Hit at all.
Brutus_Apex wrote:I personally would like to see this issue solved in two different ways.
1) add some kind Melee style Crisis Suits. They probably have the technology to enhance their fighting abilities.
2) add some more Xenos Auxiliaries that excel in melee, and make them look cool. Not like Kroot.
I like your suggestions, but 1) will meet lore lovers that will hate that Tau now can do melee (remember when the Taunar was released? "omg, Tau use aircraft to shoot down titans! Unfluffy thing!1!1!1eleven")
I too find Kroot design meh, and vespid even uglier. Now, Tarellian Dog-Soldiers would be lovely!
Back when Tau were released, it was specifically the contrast between the high tech fire caste units and the Kroot that sold me on the faction. No melee Crisis, tyvm.
Yea, but Kroot are still there. I didn't say that they should be removed. I just want more things added. So you can still enjoy your Kroot, and others can enjoy additional units that may appeal to them as well.
Well, we do have Farsight for those people
Jokes aside, I don't think more units is the way to go. I'd rather have a core of units which are balanced in a way that makes them all attractive choices for different reasons. Melee suits migh very well become a thing in the new edition, but I'd rather see all the subpar choices fixed first before adding new stuff.
Dakka Wolf wrote:Surrender without rolling a dice, bet that works a treat in tournaments.
Here's hoping cover becomes a To-Hit modifier rather than a save. Auto include 4+ to hit Markerlights quickly become very situational 'Weapons'.
In AoS, cover just adds +1 to all saves. So a 3+ armor save becomes a 2+ save.
Losing the cover save wasn't the issue, not being able to take any response against Markerlights was the biggest problem. In earlier 40k editions To-Hit rolls were modified by cover, in the current 7th edition some armies have passive BS modifiers, some have Psychic ones. That's what I'm hoping for - using markerlights to ignore core rules is a powerful ability - especially when there is no response to them, cover making it difficult to hit with markerlights in the first place would be a blessing. Personally I think during 7th edition units should have been able to take an Initiative or Leadership or some kind of test against Markerlights to see if they're smart enough to notice them and try to duck away from them.
Tau have always been gak at melee and have always predominantly been ranged based, but the army wasn't overpowered pre 6th edition (well, Fish of Fury, but that has more to do with a rules exploit then the specific army design).
Tau only really became problematic with the advent of the Riptide- and the Riptide is really representative of how the philosophy behind the army was corrupted. The Riptide has too much going on at once, and that eventually became endemic throughout the army.
- Almost every gun on the Riptide has an over 48'' threat range, so why does it need to also be one of the fastest units in the game?
- It's one of the fastest units in the game and also outranges about 75% of all weapons in the game, so why does it also need to be incredibly durable?
- It has incredible volume of fire, so why does it also have to have high strength AND low AP?
etc.
The Tau went from "being really good at shooting" to "being really good at absolutely killing everything on the board while also being super mobile and tough". No one army should be able to hop across the board, AND ignore terrain, AND ignore cover, AND ignore armor values, AND murder hordes, AND murder vehicles, AND outrange everybody else, AND be tough as nails once someone manages to actually get within range to attack you. It's silly.
The Tau were fine when they were a predominantly immobile army, with mid-range volume of fire being their bread and butter and the majority of their anti-armor being restricted to the 12-24'' bracket in Crisis Suits.
Edit- Tau aren't the only ones with this problem btw- Eldar are broken for the same reason. Their original design philosophy was balanced around hitting hard and fast with mid-range firepower and assaults, but crumpling from a stiff breeze. This philosophy kept them in check, and then one day "DUDE WRAITHKNIGHTS LAWL", yet another hyper-durable super-fast unit that also hits like a truck and can do so from across the board. "DUDE JETBIKES LAWL", yet another unit that is extremely fast, hits extremely hard but is also tough due to having a 3+/4++.
BlaxicanX wrote: Tau have always been gak at melee and have always predominantly been ranged based, but the army wasn't overpowered pre 6th edition (well, Fish of Fury, but that has more to do with a rules exploit then the specific army design).
Tau only really became problematic with the advent of the Riptide- and the Riptide is really representative of how the philosophy behind the army was corrupted. The Riptide has too much going on at once, and that eventually became endemic throughout the army.
- Almost every gun on the Riptide has an over 48'' threat range, so why does it need to also be one of the fastest units in the game?
- It's one of the fastest units in the game and also outranges about 75% of all weapons in the game, so why does it also need to be incredibly durable?
- It has incredible volume of fire, so why does it also have to have high strength AND low AP?
etc.
The Tau went from "being really good at shooting" to "being really good at absolutely killing everything on the board while also being super mobile and tough". No one army should be able to hop across the board, AND ignore terrain, AND ignore cover, AND ignore armor values, AND murder hordes, AND murder vehicles, AND outrange everybody else, AND be tough as nails once someone manages to actually get within range to attack you. It's silly.
The Tau were fine when they were a predominantly immobile army, with mid-range volume of fire being their bread and butter and the majority of their anti-armor being restricted to the 12-24'' bracket in Crisis Suits.
Edit- Tau aren't the only ones with this problem btw- Eldar are broken for the same reason. Their original design philosophy was balanced around hitting hard and fast with mid-range firepower and assaults, but crumpling from a stiff breeze. This philosophy kept them in check, and then one day "DUDE WRAITHKNIGHTS LAWL", yet another hyper-durable super-fast unit that also hits like a truck and can do so from across the board. "DUDE JETBIKES LAWL", yet another unit that is extremely fast, hits extremely hard but is also tough due to having a 3+/4++.
I agree, the whole monster-mash type lists of stormsurges and riptides just got out of hand. I get that giant robots are cool, but GW went a bit overboard. And who can blame them when so many people just ate it up without question. Even having a detachment tax isn't enough when its only 140 points for an ethereal and 2 5-man firewarrior squads. They really need to fix the compulsory units for the new edition, but as much as the 14 detachments in 8th sounds like a good thing, it also probably leaves an opportunity for cheesy lists to still exist.
I would LOVE to fight a tau army with breachers in devilfishes, maybe some piranhas and a squad of hammerheads. But I haven't met a single tau player who would sacrifice his precious robots for something different. Is that also GW's fault?
BlaxicanX wrote: Tau have always been gak at melee and have always predominantly been ranged based, but the army wasn't overpowered pre 6th edition (well, Fish of Fury, but that has more to do with a rules exploit then the specific army design).
Tau only really became problematic with the advent of the Riptide- and the Riptide is really representative of how the philosophy behind the army was corrupted. The Riptide has too much going on at once, and that eventually became endemic throughout the army.
- Almost every gun on the Riptide has an over 48'' threat range, so why does it need to also be one of the fastest units in the game?
- It's one of the fastest units in the game and also outranges about 75% of all weapons in the game, so why does it also need to be incredibly durable?
- It has incredible volume of fire, so why does it also have to have high strength AND low AP?
etc.
The Tau went from "being really good at shooting" to "being really good at absolutely killing everything on the board while also being super mobile and tough". No one army should be able to hop across the board, AND ignore terrain, AND ignore cover, AND ignore armor values, AND murder hordes, AND murder vehicles, AND outrange everybody else, AND be tough as nails once someone manages to actually get within range to attack you. It's silly.
The Tau were fine when they were a predominantly immobile army, with mid-range volume of fire being their bread and butter and the majority of their anti-armor being restricted to the 12-24'' bracket in Crisis Suits.
Edit- Tau aren't the only ones with this problem btw- Eldar are broken for the same reason. Their original design philosophy was balanced around hitting hard and fast with mid-range firepower and assaults, but crumpling from a stiff breeze. This philosophy kept them in check, and then one day "DUDE WRAITHKNIGHTS LAWL", yet another hyper-durable super-fast unit that also hits like a truck and can do so from across the board. "DUDE JETBIKES LAWL", yet another unit that is extremely fast, hits extremely hard but is also tough due to having a 3+/4++.
I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.
Gamgee wrote: I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.
Gamgee wrote: I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.
Not only are you strawmanning massively hard but absolutely nothing you've said can even be considered much of an argument. As expected.
Gamgee wrote: I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.
I'd feel bad for my FLGS owner, self-destructing Tau players sounds messy.
The bias against Tau is because even though they're the bottom of the top tier armies there are armies that don't have a snowflake's chance against them no matter how they build or roll - assuming they get to roll anything. Astra Militarum, Blood Angels, Deathwatch and Orks come to mind.
Dakka Wolf wrote:Surrender without rolling a dice, bet that works a treat in tournaments.
Here's hoping cover becomes a To-Hit modifier rather than a save. Auto include 4+ to hit Markerlights quickly become very situational 'Weapons'.
In AoS, cover just adds +1 to all saves. So a 3+ armor save becomes a 2+ save.
Losing the cover save wasn't the issue, not being able to take any response against Markerlights was the biggest problem. In earlier 40k editions To-Hit rolls were modified by cover, in the current 7th edition some armies have passive BS modifiers, some have Psychic ones. That's what I'm hoping for - using markerlights to ignore core rules is a powerful ability - especially when there is no response to them, cover making it difficult to hit with markerlights in the first place would be a blessing. Personally I think during 7th edition units should have been able to take an Initiative or Leadership or some kind of test against Markerlights to see if they're smart enough to notice them and try to duck away from them.
How are marker lights inherently any more problematic than IG orders?
If anything, you don't have to forgo shooting with relatively expensive units to use them.
In fact, how are marker lights any more problematic than psykers using their psychic powers to buff other units?
Personally, I don't have a problem with marker lights per se. I do have a problem with marker lights + riptides or marker lights + storm surges.
But then the problem isn't the marker lights, is it?
Definitely not. I have said on this very forum I would be fine with Riptide and Stormsurge nerfs. If the stuff that is even more powerful than those actually dominating the ITC meta are toned down as well and brought into balance. This would be Eldar but more importantly super friends space marines and deathstars. Tau have only gotten into the top 15 at a major ITC tournament in just over two years now. It was this year. Fun fact DE made 9th place two spots behind the Tau proud of that dude.
Currently space marine death stars and death stars in general are the most broken lists. Way stronger than anything the Tau can do. Chaos deamons are insane too.
Will the poster boys be balanced as fairly as the Tau?
Gamgee wrote: Definitely not. I have said on this very forum I would be fine with Riptide and Stormsurge nerfs. If the stuff that is even more powerful than those actually dominating the ITC meta are toned down as well and brought into balance. This would be Eldar but more importantly super friends space marines and deathstars. Tau have only gotten into the top 15 at a major ITC tournament in just over two years now. It was this year. Fun fact DE made 9th place two spots behind the Tau proud of that dude.
Currently space marine death stars and death stars in general are the most broken lists. Way stronger than anything the Tau can do.
Will the poster boys be balanced as fairly as the Tau?
It's my understanding that, in 8th edition, the designers are specifically trying to kill death stars.
Then I suppose that I'm one of the few Tau players that really don't like mecas that much. Yeah, Crisis suits are cool, and I love my stealth suits. But my Tau-love goes to my Tanks and vehicles like the Piranha.
Oh, my lovely Piranhas @.@ that models is so beautiful.
That is great and from what I've seen they are taking strides to do so. However these super powered space marine and eldar lists are more symptomatic of a larger problem. Favouritism. What will they do to combat internal corruption and favouritism? The old boys club so to speak?
If this was just GW they would be a little more impartial, but they are taking opinions from a wide array of big tournament organizers as well as the frontline crew as well as other major tournamnets. Some of these folks are less impartial.
As I said I hope everything is perfectly balanced and we can all get along fine and have equal chances of winning and where a players skill wins through the day. However even AoS isn't perfectly balanced and while it's a better than average game in terms of balance the fact is some factions will be left behind mathematically. Power creep will set in as usual.
Tau are easily the faction with the most bias against them at all levels of the hobby. I really hope all the playtesters and GW are aware of this.
Given that they and the Necrons (the other shooting army) all have these problems, I get the feeling that GW, at the time, had no idea how to balance shooting given that the game system was originally heavily bias towards melee (not surprising, given that it was based off of Fantasy's ruleset).
Spoiler:
Did you just forget about the Guard?
Yeah I legit did.
Guard actually has all the fun parts of a Shooty army. Maybe they took all of the fun stuff and the other two had to make due with whatever gimmick the designers could think up without treading on the Guard's toes.
Then again the Guard were either Really Good (See 5th edition) or Really bad (see every other edition), so my point still stands in that GW doesn't know how to balance shooty.
Dakka Wolf wrote:Surrender without rolling a dice, bet that works a treat in tournaments.
Here's hoping cover becomes a To-Hit modifier rather than a save. Auto include 4+ to hit Markerlights quickly become very situational 'Weapons'.
In AoS, cover just adds +1 to all saves. So a 3+ armor save becomes a 2+ save.
Losing the cover save wasn't the issue, not being able to take any response against Markerlights was the biggest problem. In earlier 40k editions To-Hit rolls were modified by cover, in the current 7th edition some armies have passive BS modifiers, some have Psychic ones. That's what I'm hoping for - using markerlights to ignore core rules is a powerful ability - especially when there is no response to them, cover making it difficult to hit with markerlights in the first place would be a blessing. Personally I think during 7th edition units should have been able to take an Initiative or Leadership or some kind of test against Markerlights to see if they're smart enough to notice them and try to duck away from them.
How are marker lights inherently any more problematic than IG orders?
If anything, you don't have to forgo shooting with relatively expensive units to use them.
In fact, how are marker lights any more problematic than psykers using their psychic powers to buff other units?
Personally, I don't have a problem with marker lights per se. I do have a problem with marker lights + riptides or marker lights + storm surges.
But then the problem isn't the marker lights, is it?
Because Astra Militarum units that benefit from Orders are expensive, slow moving and easily destroyed - oh and they go alright without Orders.
Psykers are constantly a source of complaint, do you just forget when Deathstars are complained about? On top of that you have that wonderful moment when Psychic powers are thwarted, either by Deny the Witch or the arrival of Sisters of Silence or the Culexus Assassin - what negates shooting?
Gamgee wrote:Tau are easily the faction with the most bias against them at all levels of the hobby. I really hope all the playtesters and GW are aware of this.
Agreed.
While at some level I would absolutely love to see Tau players whining and complaining about how underpowered their riptides and stormsurges are, and how they can't win a single game no matter how bad their opponent is at the game...
Thank you for understanding Tradtitio. Sometimes it is tempting to try and make the Tau so powerful I get an extra feasting of tears. Still that wouldn't be good for the hobby.
But not the oblivion of any of the nice daedric princes.
Not the shivering isles. Not sanguine's realms. Not the colored rooms.
Not even to Apocrypha.
Nerf them into Coldharbor.
Sounds like someone's salty about losing to Tau. Tactical marines with flamers and missile launchers didn't work, huh?
To answer the OP's question, I'm not sure the Tau really need tweaking. They are what they are. I play Tau, and I have played my other armies against Tau plenty of times, and it was never too badly unfun for either player. Just take it as a challenge and see what you can do to beat them. If you repeatedly have trouble with them, try analyzing your list and strategy, and perhaps factor a possible Tau matchup into your list building. Keep in mind what they can do with those Markerlights, and don't just rely on hugging cover for protection, as that cover might do you no good. OP, as for your ideas, I'll answer them specifically as best I can:
Do they go simple and add melee abilites to the Tau?
I think this would take away from their flavor as an army. They are a shooting-focused army that is meant to die if they get stuck in melee, and this is part of what makes them unique, as most other armies can do melee okay. Kroot are the only melee-competent Tau unit (and Aun'shi, but who takes him?), and even they aren't taken for their combat prowess.
Do they nerf them into oblivion?
No, just no. Nerfing an army into oblivion is not a solution. Perhaps small tweaks here and there, such as toning down the Riptide Wing formation and perhaps Riptides in general, could work, but an army-wide nerf? That would set a bad precedent and could lead to other armies that aren't really OP at all getting hit with the nerf bat when someone complains about them. Even Eldar don't deserve an army-wide nerf, and they've got some pretty crazy stuff in their codex.
Do they add new abilities and rules that balance it out - is that even possible?
I'm not sure it is possible. 8th edition changes may alter the way the Tau play, but I would expect them to remain fundamentally the same. I'm not sure adding new stuff would help with the "unfun" issue, as it might just create new Tau strategies that are even more "unfun" to face.
Do they realize that in a game world filled with melee and shooting balanced armies you can't maintain balance with an unbalanced army.....seems simple right
I'm not sure this is true. There are armies that are mostly melee-focused (Orks, Khorne Daemonkin, to a lesser extend Space Wolves), and there are armies that are mainly strong in the Psychic phase (Tzeentch Daemons). Having some armies be one-dimensional is not inherently bad. In fact, it leads to some very interesting challenges for players on both sides in games. I'm not convinced that they can't be balanced; indeed, it is an issue with the 7th edition rules that makes it where shooting armies like Tau are so much stronger than melee armies like Orks. The rules favor shooting currently, which I hope will change with the switch to 8th edition.
ZergSmasher wrote:Sounds like someone's salty about losing to Tau. Tactical marines with flamers and missile launchers didn't work, huh?
If 8th drops and tactical marines with flamers and missile launchers start wrecking everything, you have no idea just how much delight I will take in it.
ZergSmasher wrote:Sounds like someone's salty about losing to Tau. Tactical marines with flamers and missile launchers didn't work, huh?
If 8th drops and tactical marines with flamers and missile launchers start wrecking everything, you have no idea just how much delight I will take in it.
Y'know, I wouldn't be too upset about that myself, really.
ZergSmasher wrote:Sounds like someone's salty about losing to Tau. Tactical marines with flamers and missile launchers didn't work, huh?
If 8th drops and tactical marines with flamers and missile launchers start wrecking everything, you have no idea just how much delight I will take in it.
Y'know, I wouldn't be too upset about that myself, really.
I'm really excited about what we know so far. I think we'll end up with a missile launcher with S8 and 1d6 damage for krak and S4 and 1d3 hits for frag.
Missile launchers are going to be very much a viable option, I think.
And flamers already look pretty good with the 1d6 hits output.
Traditio wrote: How are marker lights inherently any more problematic than IG orders?
the only units in the entire Imperial Guard codex that can use orders are guardsmen- there are no AP2 pie-plates with 48” range that get to also ignore cover due to orders. That, is why orders are fine, and marker lights are not.
BlaxicanX wrote: Tau have always been gak at melee and have always predominantly been ranged based, but the army wasn't overpowered pre 6th edition (well, Fish of Fury, but that has more to do with a rules exploit then the specific army design).
Tau only really became problematic with the advent of the Riptide- and the Riptide is really representative of how the philosophy behind the army was corrupted. The Riptide has too much going on at once, and that eventually became endemic throughout the army.
- Almost every gun on the Riptide has an over 48'' threat range, so why does it need to also be one of the fastest units in the game?
- It's one of the fastest units in the game and also outranges about 75% of all weapons in the game, so why does it also need to be incredibly durable?
- It has incredible volume of fire, so why does it also have to have high strength AND low AP?
etc.
The Tau went from "being really good at shooting" to "being really good at absolutely killing everything on the board while also being super mobile and tough". No one army should be able to hop across the board, AND ignore terrain, AND ignore cover, AND ignore armor values, AND murder hordes, AND murder vehicles, AND outrange everybody else, AND be tough as nails once someone manages to actually get within range to attack you. It's silly.
The Tau were fine when they were a predominantly immobile army, with mid-range volume of fire being their bread and butter and the majority of their anti-armor being restricted to the 12-24'' bracket in Crisis Suits.
Edit- Tau aren't the only ones with this problem btw- Eldar are broken for the same reason. Their original design philosophy was balanced around hitting hard and fast with mid-range firepower and assaults, but crumpling from a stiff breeze. This philosophy kept them in check, and then one day "DUDE WRAITHKNIGHTS LAWL", yet another hyper-durable super-fast unit that also hits like a truck and can do so from across the board. "DUDE JETBIKES LAWL", yet another unit that is extremely fast, hits extremely hard but is also tough due to having a 3+/4++.
I agree, the whole monster-mash type lists of stormsurges and riptides just got out of hand. I get that giant robots are cool, but GW went a bit overboard. And who can blame them when so many people just ate it up without question. Even having a detachment tax isn't enough when its only 140 points for an ethereal and 2 5-man firewarrior squads. They really need to fix the compulsory units for the new edition, but as much as the 14 detachments in 8th sounds like a good thing, it also probably leaves an opportunity for cheesy lists to still exist.
I would LOVE to fight a tau army with breachers in devilfishes, maybe some piranhas and a squad of hammerheads. But I haven't met a single tau player who would sacrifice his precious robots for something different. Is that also GW's fault?
Come to Phoenix. I'll gladly set up my 'mech Tau across from you. I don't even own a Stormsurge, only have one Riptide, and I routinely run two full Breacher squads in D-Fish, backed by squads of Crisis, Broadsides and Hammerheads. No Piranha's tho, as I cannot stand the model. Sorry.
Tau got out of hand in 6th with the Riptide, then again in 7th with the Ghostkeel and Stormsurge. However, shooting, JSJ, no psykers, no melee (outside of kroot, and lets face it, they're no better than FW in CC) have -always- been their thing. But, when the main rules essentially penalized CC, then it became Tau's game. I think the Riptide is an absolutely awesome model, but I only play it after an opponent has said they're willing to deal with it. Same with my Ghostkeels, tho people don't seem to mind them as much (probably because they don't throw S8 AP2 pie plates around the board with relative impunity). The formation rules turned this up to 11. Many things were given to Tau that they didn't need, and were obviously only introduced to sell models. The Riptide-wing is blatant money grab formation. There is no reason to ever field more than one Riptide in a game (letting them be taken in squads of three is a massive mistake as well), much less giving them boosts that all but guarantee they have a 3++ every turn.
I want Tau to be re-balanced too. Riptides should be base 300pts, the IA should be at least a 25pt upgrade. Ghostkeels should be about 50-75pts more expensive, and, imo, the Stormsurge should just go away. BUT - I want other people to realize that not every Tau player is a WAAC tourney cheese monger, and actually like the army for the aesthetic it gives, whether they think it fits in 40k or not, and don't just bring the hammer down on the army and destroy it. It's unfortunate that GW made bad rules and the power gamers capitalized on it, but don't hate an army that other people enjoy, because Riptide-Wing touched you in a bad place. Personally, I hate orks. HATE. THEM. Everything about them - I think they look stupid, I think their fluff is , and I can't believe that people actually like them. But, I would never advocate a nerf-bat to them (GW has accomplished worse than I could ever think of for them, anyway) simply because they were a powerhouse army for an edition. Remember that while you may have been beaten bloody by power gamers exploiting bad rules for an army, there are people that love the army for what it is, and don't stomp the local meta into the dirt.
Tau only really became problematic with the advent of the Riptide- and the Riptide is really representative of how the philosophy behind the army was corrupted. The Riptide has too much going on at once, and that eventually became endemic throughout the army.
- Almost every gun on the Riptide has an over 48'' threat range, so why does it need to also be one of the fastest units in the game?
- It's one of the fastest units in the game and also outranges about 75% of all weapons in the game, so why does it also need to be incredibly durable?
- It has incredible volume of fire, so why does it also have to have high strength AND low AP?
I am looking at my codex and of all of the guns on a riptide, only the IA has a range of greater than 48".
The Burst Cannon is 36" the SMS is 24" as is the Plasma Rifle, and the Fusion Blaster is 18". Are you thinking of the Stormsurge's weapons? I will agree it is fast especially when you nova charge the jet pack. But you can still role four ones or something silly like that, which has happened to me a couple of times.
This is exactly how I feel about Tau as an army. They are miserably one-dimensional. They are pigeon-holed into one single phase, shooting. Were their shooting nerfed at all the army would be utter trash. To be successful they have to excel at shooting to the point of ignoring the basic rules of 40k and simply removing entire phases (no assault phase if nothing survives overwatch) from your opponent's turn to have a chance. With no other options they have to be able to win based on shooting alone or else simple be unplayable.
It pisses me off because there's no reason for that level of imbalance. I've played IG since 4th and I think they are a perfect example of making a shooting focused army that has answers to assault. No one would ever claim that IG are winning games in the assault phase, however they do not simply crumple and die if the enemy reaches them unlike Tau. Between power sword/fist blobs, bullgryns/ogryns, and conscripts with commisars, IG have enough melee punch to hold off an enemy long enough to bring their shooting to bear.
Tau have nothing. If the enemy manages to assault them in force, the game is over for the Tau. If the enemy fails to assault them in force, the game is over (for the opponent). Nothing of consequence has survived overwatch. Tau used to have a slightly melee-oriented unit in Kroot. Kroot could act as a weak screening unit but the most recent updates took even that away from them.
I think GW missed a good opportunity for a truly unique and creative army by focusing solely on giant robot suits and basically dropping the whole 'alien empire composed of many different species' angle.
I have said it before! Tau need Tau in suits with a size similar to the Stealth suits but with a riot-like shield and a plasma/electric club. Woudln't that be cool? A pure defensive meele unit.
I have wanted melee suits for Fasight Enclaves for ages. Make the fusion blade the first mass manufactured and field deployed Tau melee weapon. Also let him have melee troops on the field.
For regular Tau introduce a new Auxilliary race that is better in melee so the faction isn't so one dimensional. Even as a Tau player I want options even if the shooting should still be really good.
I played Tau in 5th edition with the 4th edition codex against the latest Blood Angels, Grey Knights and Necrons. I consider having a fairly even win loss record at the time as a major achievement. So I understand the frustration of playing against the unbalanced/over powered.
I don't think the Tau have anything specific that makes them unfun to play against. The bigger issue is the rules the Tau have encourage the competitive player to castle up as many big guns as they can and blow everything in sight away. Specifically Supporting Fire is the big offender here. The Army wide special rule works best if you have your army crammed together as tight a possible in the corner.
If the Army wide rule had been Darkstrider's Fighting Retreat ability, we'd have seen a very different Tau. A Tau who press forward in multiple locations to contest objectives (and thereby risk being assaulted) because they have a chance to escape. A Tau who fight over the entire board instead of casting in the corner.
I think that would have been much more fun for both sides of the table.
MechaEmperor7000 wrote: The problem with Tau is that they would be less broken if Allies didn't exist: Like you said the entire point of the Tau is that they absolutely suck in two out of the three aspects of the game (No Psychic Power, basically allergic to melee) to compensate for being horribly powerful in the third (shooting). This is a problem when they get paired up with an army who is their compliment; as in solves their problem and then some. Remove that and it removes some of the issues.
Another issue is that Tau bends the rules of not only their army, but that of other armies to conform to them. They can all shoot during the melee phase with overwatch basically as if it was another shooting phase. Failing that, a lot of their units are jetpack units that don't want to charge, effectively turning their melee phase into another movement phase. If they could do nothing during the melee phase and not steal the enemy's melee phase into their own shooting phase, they might be less frustrating to play against.
Given that they and the Necrons (the other shooting army) all have these problems, I get the feeling that GW, at the time, had no idea how to balance shooting given that the game system was originally heavily bias towards melee (not surprising, given that it was based off of Fantasy's ruleset).
Wait Necrons are a shooting army, when did that happen? On a more serious note as of right now we are one of the few armies in 7th that can field shooting and melee in an optimal list. I've probably won as many games in CC (lychstar and harvest doing work) as I have at ranged. I'd say we are probably the closest 7th ed comes to balanced in terms of CC vs Shooting, which is one of the things I really dig about Necrons.
The other shooting army is Eldar, they have good melee units (they have good everything really) but their CC is so overshadowed by things like warp spiders and scatt bikes that you rarely see them.
[quote=]The Tau went from "being really good at shooting" to "being really good at absolutely killing everything on the board while also being super mobile and tough". No one army should be able to hop across the board, AND ignore terrain, AND ignore cover, AND ignore armor values, AND murder hordes, AND murder vehicles, AND outrange everybody else, AND be tough as nails once someone manages to actually get within range to attack you. It's silly.
The Tau were fine when they were a predominantly immobile army, with mid-range volume of fire being their bread and butter and the majority of their anti-armor being restricted to the 12-24'' bracket in Crisis Suits.
Edit- Tau aren't the only ones with this problem btw- Eldar are broken for the same reason. Their original design philosophy was balanced around hitting hard and fast with mid-range firepower and assaults, but crumpling from a stiff breeze. This philosophy kept them in check, and then one day "DUDE WRAITHKNIGHTS LAWL", yet another hyper-durable super-fast unit that also hits like a truck and can do so from across the board. "DUDE JETBIKES LAWL", yet another unit that is extremely fast, hits extremely hard but is also tough due to having a 3+/4++.
I agree, the whole monster-mash type lists of stormsurges and riptides just got out of hand. I get that giant robots are cool, but GW went a bit overboard. And who can blame them when so many people just ate it up without question. Even having a detachment tax isn't enough when its only 140 points for an ethereal and 2 5-man firewarrior squads. They really need to fix the compulsory units for the new edition, but as much as the 14 detachments in 8th sounds like a good thing, it also probably leaves an opportunity for cheesy lists to still exist.
I would LOVE to fight a tau army with breachers in devilfishes, maybe some piranhas and a squad of hammerheads. But I haven't met a single tau player who would sacrifice his precious robots for something different. Is that also GW's fault?
I wish i still played Tau. When the Riptide dropped i put them away and never looked at them again. I played a mounted armored tau. It wasnt unusual for me to never place a infantry model on the table. Full of piraina devil fish and hammerheads/sky rays. I never had an opponent play me and say damn that game sucked. Even the most die hard neckbeardy tourney everyweekend loved playing the list because it was what the tau did. Fast hit and run attacks.
G00fySmiley wrote: Echoing the need for LOS terrain. if a tau player sets up the board and is waiting for a game and there are no large opaque buildings... nope not interested. If there is plenty of terrain then sure great sounds fun. That said marker lights I think are the biggest problem with tau, it lets them ignore far to many rules or guarantee hits (practically) and ignore cover which should be a HUGE part of the game was just plain bad design. I would prefer that their next book introduce a few bulky alien allies or expand croot and vespids to balance the army. I love the theory of tau, a fast hit and run army but hate that in practice that becomes a boring gunline.
Surrender without rolling a dice, bet that works a treat in tournaments.
Here's hoping cover becomes a To-Hit modifier rather than a save. Auto include 4+ to hit Markerlights quickly become very situational 'Weapons'.
tournaments I attend tend to have preset terrain and lots of LOS blocking so not an issue, if I showed up to a tournament and their terrain sucked I would play it out if I had already payed money, otherwise I would just elect to spend my day doing something else rather than participate
Gamgee wrote: I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.
Go play against your own army sometime. With BA. Then get back to me.
No nerfs is fine; then pay more for your invincible MCs. Because they are functionally immortal in 7th ed. Sounds like that's going to change in 8th, but we don't know for sure. As it is, Tau have some of the most undercosted units in the game. That's why you get the hate.
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jeffersonian000 wrote: I disagree with the OP. Tau are balanced versus a table cluttered with line of sight blocking terrain. If you are unable to close with Tau without being shot to death, you do not have enough of the right terrain on the table. That's on you, not army balance.
That said, and based on what we are seeing so far with the 8e leaks, the changes look promising for a more balanced Tau. Melee while melee will favor the charger, its implied that any further rounds are simultaneous while Tau might still retain an Overwatch advantage. And range is getting standardized to a bit more quantity over quality, which will harsh on the Monat player and pump up the Breachers.
As always, we shall see.
SJ
On the one hand, I see where this comes from. However, it's a SERIOUS red flag that we have to have a SPECIFIC table set up to make an army fair. That's basically giving the Tau opponent a free advantage to even the odds. That's as much as admitting the Tau as currently constructed are not fair in general. Free advantages is why gladius is so popular except your opponent can't stop you from getting it. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense for EVERY table to have LOS blocking terrain. This means that Tau must be made fair for tables without such features as well.
For my money, the main problem with Tau is the same problem all armies have - there are no requirements to field Troops that have any bite to them. Players (not just Tau) can get away with spending minimal amounts of points on Troops and put the rest of their points into the OP stuff. That's exactly the opposite of the intent of the game. The game gets a lot more interesting and balanced if players actually have to invest a fair chunk of their points in Troops, and use them for more than sitting on home field objectives.
The other thing I really don't like about Tau is that it's too easy for them to get Ignores Cover. A couple of markerlight hits completely negates some units' primary means of protection. That in particular needs to be heavily nerfed, or done away with altogether. The downside of most Ignores Cover weapons is that they're short ranged. Nobody should be able to get it on any unit they choose and apply it from across the table.
On the one hand, I see where this comes from. However, it's a SERIOUS red flag that we have to have a SPECIFIC table set up to make an army fair. That's basically giving the Tau opponent a free advantage to even the odds. That's as much as admitting the Tau as currently constructed are not fair in general. Free advantages is why gladius is so popular except your opponent can't stop you from getting it. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense for EVERY table to have LOS blocking terrain. This means that Tau must be made fair for tables without such features as well.
I think you're missing the point. The point is, every table should have LOS blocking terrain, because there's going to be disparities between armies relative shooting abilities regardless of what matchup you have. It's just more pronounced with Tau because they're practically all shooting/no melee. Even between armies with identical shooting power, someone has to go first, and one should be able to hide units from the other player's shooting on that first turn, and be able to try to move units up the table while masking them from dangerous shooting units. Hence, all tables should have a healthy dose of LOS-blocking terrain.
There's no rules for LOS blocking terrain placement. That's MY point. It costs no points and has no formalized method for being deployed. It should NOT be THE balancing feature for Tau unless this feature is codified in the rules. Which it is not.
As it is, Eldar and Tau want basically zero terrain and I have to talk them down from that most of the time. I'm not getting huge chunks of LOS blocking without rules to back me up.
Gamgee wrote: I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.
Go play against your own army sometime. With BA. Then get back to me.
No nerfs is fine; then pay more for your invincible MCs. Because they are functionally immortal in 7th ed. Sounds like that's going to change in 8th, but we don't know for sure. As it is, Tau have some of the most undercosted units in the game. That's why you get the hate.
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jeffersonian000 wrote: I disagree with the OP. Tau are balanced versus a table cluttered with line of sight blocking terrain. If you are unable to close with Tau without being shot to death, you do not have enough of the right terrain on the table. That's on you, not army balance.
That said, and based on what we are seeing so far with the 8e leaks, the changes look promising for a more balanced Tau. Melee while melee will favor the charger, its implied that any further rounds are simultaneous while Tau might still retain an Overwatch advantage. And range is getting standardized to a bit more quantity over quality, which will harsh on the Monat player and pump up the Breachers.
As always, we shall see.
SJ
On the one hand, I see where this comes from. However, it's a SERIOUS red flag that we have to have a SPECIFIC table set up to make an army fair. That's basically giving the Tau opponent a free advantage to even the odds. That's as much as admitting the Tau as currently constructed are not fair in general. Free advantages is why gladius is so popular except your opponent can't stop you from getting it. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense for EVERY table to have LOS blocking terrain. This means that Tau must be made fair for tables without such features as well.
LOS blocking terrain should always be on every board. be it ruins, bluffs, canyons, trees or full buildings etc. The game is designed with terrain involved including los blocking, playing without it is leaving an aspect of the game out. think of it as trying to play monopoly but deciding against using houses or hotels. the game still functions but not as well and those low value properties are now mostly worthless. one could argue that a battle can take place in an open field, but 40k is not a real battle it is a game built around a set of parameters, choose to delete those parameters with your opponent sure but don't say that a key mechanic of 40k should not always be present
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Martel732 wrote: There's no rules for LOS blocking terrain placement. That's MY point. It costs no points and has no formalized method for being deployed. It should NOT be THE balancing feature for Tau unless this feature is codified in the rules. Which it is not.
As it is, Eldar and Tau want basically zero terrain and I have to talk them down from that most of the time. I'm not getting huge chunks of LOS blocking without rules to back me up.
so don't play the game with them. I would love there to be some sort of formalization to terrain and my club mostly has our own way (divide table into 6ths one big los blocker per section sprinkle in d3 other pieces)
Playing in a table without terrain just makes every shooting army OP. Is just the most boring type of gameplay out there.
Thats why in our tables we always play with a lot of LOS and in general, terrain. Thats why my list favour breacher teams and close-range shooting Tau list.
"The game is designed with terrain involved including los blocking"
I don't think we know that, given GW's lack of transparency. We don't know how much thought, if ANY, was put into 7th ed.
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Galas wrote: Playing in a table without terrain just makes every shooting army OP. Is just the most boring type of gameplay out there.
Thats why in our tables we always play with a lot of LOS and in general, terrain. Thats why my list favour breacher teams and close-range shooting Tau list.
We have lots of terrain, just very little blocks LOS. That's the compromise situation. Doesn't help marines much, really.
"so don't play the game with them"
Demanding a certain amount of specific terrain or refusing to play doesn't seem like a very viable position. Especially when GW doesn't back me up on my request for said LOS blocking terrain.
Glad to see some old guard Tau players here telling how it should be.
See, before the 6th Edition Codex, Tau did not really shoot that much. Or, to be more precise, they could take a build which put out ungodly number of shots but that wasn't often the best way. Also many of their core weapons didn't have a great range - Missile Pod 36", SMS 24", Burst Cannon 18" and so on. Instead, they had wargear and special rules which allowed them to utilize their firepower very well. Tau Tanks and Suits could Split fire, move & shoot, jump back to safety etc. It could be very flexible.
But when 6th Edition book rolled out, they were dramatically changed. Much of the cool wargear disappeared and were replaced by improved Markerlights. Also they got new guns which had longer range than before. Finally, Riptide, hardly needs more commentary. When I first played 6th Edition Tau, I was both shocked and bored senseless. Gone was the finesse, now I was just throwing buckets of dice at my enemy. It felt like playing Dakka Orks, not a cool flexible hi-tech army. So my Tau went to dumpster (figuratively).
Another issue is that Tau bends the rules of not only their army, but that of other armies to conform to them. They can all shoot during the melee phase with overwatch basically as if it was another shooting phase. Failing that, a lot of their units are jetpack units that don't want to charge, effectively turning their melee phase into another movement phase. If they could do nothing during the melee phase and not steal the enemy's melee phase into their own shooting phase, they might be less frustrating to play against.
This summed up exactly what was has been wrong with Tau for the past couple of editions and all on the first page.
Not only do they excel in one of their own phases but they essentially turn your phase where they should suck (assault) into a free shooting phase... where they excel... again. Add on top of that their jump shoot jump ability and the main tactic for dealing with them, being cc, becomes even harder to employ as you spend longer than you would against the other gun-line army trying to chase them down which exposes you to ever more firepower. Not that I'm saying that the other gun-line army in guard are what Tau should be. I'm interested though to see where 8th leaves Tau, Eldar and Marines.
See, here's the problem: When you face a Tau player who actually uses the length and breadth of his codex, the game is incredibly fun. I have a friend whose Tau list is a primarily short range, mobile setup, which he generally calls a "close to close combat" tau army. It's not a softball by any means - it can jump in and blow a huge chunk of an opponent's army away in a single devastating shooting phase, but it also has counterplay and you can come to grips with it in melee.
He's got Breachers in Devilfish, an Optimized Stealth formation with Ghostkeels, and the formation that deep strikes a whole bunch of crisis suits and a broadside down into the board, along with the buncha drone formation for markerlights and carbines, and the formation of the small AV10 skimmers with even more close range weaponry.
It's an absolute blast to face, highly tactical, and can face all but the cheesiest competitive opponents.
Martel732 wrote: "The game is designed with terrain involved including los blocking"
I don't think we know that, given GW's lack of transparency. We don't know how much thought, if ANY, was put into 7th ed.
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Galas wrote: Playing in a table without terrain just makes every shooting army OP. Is just the most boring type of gameplay out there.
Thats why in our tables we always play with a lot of LOS and in general, terrain. Thats why my list favour breacher teams and close-range shooting Tau list.
We have lots of terrain, just very little blocks LOS. That's the compromise situation. Doesn't help marines much, really.
"so don't play the game with them"
Demanding a certain amount of specific terrain or refusing to play doesn't seem like a very viable position. Especially when GW doesn't back me up on my request for said LOS blocking terrain.
pull out a white dwarf and look at the tables they use, go to youtube and watch tournament footage or Miniwargaming matches. should provide all the proof you need as to people making the game fair requiring terrain to be large and blocking LOS. if I can use my fire prisms at max range (60") then either I have found one of the only holes to hit your unit in or the table is to sparse.
I disagree, there should be places where you can hit with your max range. If people see a table set up by a Tau player with little to no terrain and are wary, I think its fair that shooty armies players are wary of players playing melee armies and covering up a table in terrain.
As a person who played and played against tau often, I think they're fine, balenced and easily countered with good play, quality list building and smart deployment and movement. Simply put, tau demand you be good at playing the board and dancing around ranges and knowing what to kill first if your going to beat them. The bigger problem is people not changing play style to account for how tau work, or worse not changing their lists when your foot slogging marines/orks get rekt, or you use the worst 4 codexes as a bench mark.
Bobthehero wrote: I disagree, there should be places where you can hit with your max range. If people see a table set up by a Tau player with little to no terrain and are wary, I think its fair that shooty armies players are wary of players playing melee armies and covering up a table in terrain.
sure, but it should be line of fire. if my fire prism can hit anywhere on the board without ever losing LOS that is a problem. if there are ruins that block it and I can move into a fire line to hit a specific unit but that requires me to both get there and think about where I could get the next turn to open lines of sight then that is a much more dynamic and fun game
Jaxler wrote: As a person who played and played against tau often, I think they're fine, balenced and easily countered with good play, quality list building and smart deployment and movement. Simply put, tau demand you be good at playing the board and dancing around ranges and knowing what to kill first if your going to beat them. The bigger problem is people not changing play style to account for how tau work, or worse not changing their lists when your foot slogging marines/orks get rekt, or you use the worst 4 codexes as a bench mark.
They still have some of the most undercosted units in the game. Even if some tables let you "counter" them with free terrain that just turns them off. That makes the terrain setup way more important than my actual list.
Jaxler wrote: As a person who played and played against tau often, I think they're fine, balenced and easily countered with good play, quality list building and smart deployment and movement. Simply put, tau demand you be good at playing the board and dancing around ranges and knowing what to kill first if your going to beat them. The bigger problem is people not changing play style to account for how tau work, or worse not changing their lists when your foot slogging marines/orks get rekt, or you use the worst 4 codexes as a bench mark.
They still have some of the most undercosted units in the game. Even if some tables let you "counter" them with free terrain that just turns them off. That makes the terrain setup way more important than my actual list.
Crisis suits are a 50 point model that is 2 marines in toughness, and gets 1 shot by a melta
Lascannons or melta will delete broadsides like they're butter
Skyrays are nice, but they are support units that act as a one trick pony
Riptides are broken, but that's about it.
If people just knew to drop melta near broadsides and crisis suits, and shot at markerlight support you'd counter most tau armies.
Having lasguns or melta, or a way to get close fast, and corner the tau are all you need to make a good fight. I can do it with grey Knights, you should be able to do it to, with better armies. You can hard counter a lot of tau with just a single skyhammer ported into any army. If you want to beat tau you either need to negate shooting, out shoot them, have a means of pinning them down early in the game, play the field better than them, or have enough long range shooting to snipe key support units in the army whilst projecting yourself better over the board. Kill my pathfinders turn one with the cheapest shooting you have, lascannon the broadsides. ignore hammerheads, ignore skyrays, delete fire warriors because they shoot okay and die like guardsmen, and save riptides for Str D alone or anything that can 1 shot. Set up assaults in such a way that you can have at least 2-3 units attacking at once, knowing damned well the first unit may be oblated down to 1/2 size or less. If you've a Death Star or something that can't die, put it in the tau's face and fast. If you've units closing distance quickly and forcing tau to deal with close range threats your going to beat them and fast.
Also, heavy flamers will hurt any tau list if used correctly abd are able to get where they need to be.
Also psychic shriek is a tau'a worst nightmare. Same with almost all mind bullets. The real counter to tau is psychic powers, not assault. Once you realize this you learn the secret sauce to crushing any tau army.
My experience with Tau salt - playing both as them and against them - is this: Ignores Cover and Interceptor everywhere drives everyone nuts. Monster Mash drives everyone nuts. Tightly gaggled gunlines that let every unit overwatch on every charge drive people nuts. Tau winning melee drives people nuts (even when it's pure luck, but the Riptide and Stormsurge attract a lot of rage here).
The Riptide does too much, and the Ion Accelerator is a double-heretical abomination of the highest order. It's not actually as bad as some people assume - it doesn't get 12 shots with AP2 that ignore LOS - but what it really does do is more than bad enough. You can sit back, 72" away due to the stupendous range. You don't need to use the risky nova-charge, because its relatively safe Overcharge mode is almost as good. When you do use the nova-charge, you can use the legendarily frustrating 3++ option every time, no need to use anything else, ever. You can get FNP and Interceptor without having to give up anything that an IA-equipped Riptide cares about. (Too far for overwatch, too few shots for Skyfire, precision shots don't matter, Riptides can't take VRTs). Oh, and if someone decides to drop close, you get to drop an S8 AP2 pie-plate on them before they can act, maybe ignoring cover too if the right drone formation is around. Too much at once.
The Stormsurge wouldn't be all that bad, but Interceptor and Stomp are evil, and chewing through 8 wounds without multi-wound weapons is hard. Combined with the Riptide, it's more double-heretical abomination.
Fix these, fix Ignores Cover, and fix Overwatch, and Tau become a lot less rage-inducing.
8e is already confirmed to have multi-damage weapons, Mortal Wounds and the ability to retreat from melee. It's a fair surmise that Overwatch will either go away or become a Command Points thing, which will do a lot to rectify that, and Supporting Fire may disappear along with it. It's mostly there now, so that there's some risk in charging Tau, since even if you don't kill them, you tie up a unit that can never meaningfully participate in the battle unless they escape somehow. With everyone able to escape at the cost of their ability to attack next turn.
My hopes are fairly high that 8e will succeed in making Tau less maddening to play against without nerfing them into the ground.
Martel732 wrote: There's no rules for LOS blocking terrain placement. That's MY point. It costs no points and has no formalized method for being deployed. It should NOT be THE balancing feature for Tau unless this feature is codified in the rules. Which it is not.
As it is, Eldar and Tau want basically zero terrain and I have to talk them down from that most of the time. I'm not getting huge chunks of LOS blocking without rules to back me up.
I think I've found your problem - you play against holes. As a Tau player, I load up the board. I want several pieces of LoS blocking terrain, I want plenty of cover for both myself & my opponent to use, I want difficult/dangerous terrain everywhere. I don't have any fun if I'm just deleting units of my opponent. Throwing dice & watching their army evaporate isn't any more fun for me than it is for them. I want a reason to pull my models out of the foam as much as they do. I want to have a good, engaging battle, where winning comes down to maneuvering, target priority and tactics. Not because I erased 3-4 squads a turn.
Maybe I'm lucky in that the store I play in has a full room of various different terrain to choose from, from the ruined imperial buildings, to 12" tall rock formations that span an entire quadrant of a 6x4 table, I dunno. Granted Martel, I -know- your BA suck. I do. They're as bad off as my GKT army that I love (and still play, btw). But I play regularly against a gun-line DA player (no formations, no grav, no cents, etc.) and our battles are bloody, hard, and down to the wire. It's anyone's game up until the last turn or two. Same against a friend of mine who plays Ad Mech.
You simply play against a bad class of people, I think.
Martel732 wrote: There's no rules for LOS blocking terrain placement. That's MY point. It costs no points and has no formalized method for being deployed. It should NOT be THE balancing feature for Tau unless this feature is codified in the rules. Which it is not.
As it is, Eldar and Tau want basically zero terrain and I have to talk them down from that most of the time. I'm not getting huge chunks of LOS blocking without rules to back me up.
Sounds like you need to learn better negotiating. If they want none, you need to start wanting a city fight table of LOS blockers, then you meet in the middle. Or if you are playing the classic 25% terrain, alternate each player picking a piece of terrain until that 25% is full, then set it up the same way.
Great job Martel732 taking me totally out of context and not seeing the debate that me and Traditio had. If your cherry picking Tau players responses like that no wonder you probably think we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.
You guys don't seem to realize that if you can roll for invisibility and put it on assault units, you'll beat tau almost always, because you've negated their shooting almost completely with a huge threat.
I believe AOS has terrain rules, each 2x2 segment is supposed to have d3 pieces of terrain.
As for Tau. They were 1 trick ponies and the only way they could function was to do that trick well. They are not invincible. Any Tau player worth his/her salt hated the complaints and boring play that came with the safe strategy of castling up in the back. You didn't always win but it was more fun to be as mobile as possible.
Would these changes make you haters redirect that rage to the real problem, Eldar and Whitescar Gladiuses?
Markerlight changes -
2 ML to increase BS by 1
1 ML for seeker
1 ML for Destroyer
2 ML to decrease cover by 1
Make kroot and Vespid worthwhile melee fighters. Other than that you're talking about adding dedicated melee units to the army that are decent enough that people want to take them. Like a CC suit or Melee Drones. Is this acceptable?
If supporting fire becomes a command trait that you have to expend points for would you cry less?
Also 8th ed. will no longer have formations so riptide wing is dead and gone. Hooray!
Lastly - I'm sure Tau's weapons will be reworked to follow a defined progression. Where some weapons play off each other, like say, Plasma and Ion. Plasma should do more wounds while Ion does more shots.
- Hope they do something like this so that Tau players actually have a reason to consider all the weapons in the arsenal.
Naaris wrote: I believe AOS has terrain rules, each 2x2 segment is supposed to have d3 pieces of terrain.
As for Tau. They were 1 trick ponies and the only way they could function was to do that trick well. They are not invincible. Any Tau player worth his/her salt hated the complaints and boring play that came with the safe strategy of castling up in the back. You didn't always win but it was more fun to be as mobile as possible.
Would these changes make you haters redirect that rage to the real problem, Eldar and Whitescar Gladiuses?
Markerlight changes -
2 ML to increase BS by 1
1 ML for seeker
1 ML for Destroyer
2 ML to decrease cover by 1
Make kroot and Vespid worthwhile melee fighters. Other than that you're talking about adding dedicated melee units to the army that are decent enough that people want to take them. Like a CC suit or Melee Drones. Is this acceptable?
If supporting fire becomes a command trait that you have to expend points for would you cry less?
Also 8th ed. will no longer have formations so riptide wing is dead and gone. Hooray!
Lastly - I'm sure Tau's weapons will be reworked to follow a defined progression. Where some weapons play off each other, like say, Plasma and Ion. Plasma should do more wounds while Ion does more shots.
- Hope they do something like this so that Tau players actually have a reason to consider all the weapons in the arsenal.
How about we give cover saves to markerlights instead of making them half as useful across the board when 99% of the units that give them die to a stiff breeze? Also making supporting fire a 3inch bubblewould do enough. It'd force you to be in multicharge levels of closeness to pull off effectively.
I havent played my Tau in some time, but I have played against them plenty.
Being a heavily shooting army isnt the core of their issue. IG are almost exclusively shootinf oriented as well and havent been seen as particularly competitive for half a decade.
The original Tau concept was a heavily mechanized semi-elite force with tanks backed up by 3-4 dozen infantry and a handful of mobile elite battlesuits acting as the specialist firepower.
This worked through 3E and 4E spectacularly. It stumbled in 5E because the army was heavily built around the terrain and skimmer rules of the older editions and never got a 5E update. In 6E and 7E however Tau took a different turn.
Two big changes happened. First, they got a whole lot of enhanced firepower and gimmicky rules that greatly enhanced the quality of their firepower. Second, they basically became a Nidzilla army, built around shooty MC's masquerading as robots, moving away from the mechanized vehicle format from earlier editions and reaping the bonuses MC's provided. Coupled with formations and the like, and they became somewhat absurd.
With 8E, a lot of this is going out the window, so who knows what itll end up looking like.
G00fySmiley wrote: Echoing the need for LOS terrain. if a tau player sets up the board and is waiting for a game and there are no large opaque buildings... nope not interested. If there is plenty of terrain then sure great sounds fun.
Surrender without rolling a dice, bet that works a treat in tournaments.
I keep looking for where G00fySmiley mentioned tournaments. Not seeing it. In fact I see something to indicate he was not talking about tournaments. "if a tau player sets up the board and is waiting for a game."
That said, there is a branch of tournament goers who go to the largest and most competitive events to play on the lower table numbers on the second day of the event. And many of them will concede to an army they have no interest in playing and go take a lunch break. They'll usually not be rude about it and give some excuse, but if you see a guy go "oh, I just got an important text. I'm sorry, I have to concede. Let me sign the game report sheet. Bye!" but then they're happily playing the next round and then laughing their asses off with gaming buddies on the bottom tables, you probably found one of the guys who regularly do this. You won't see this in single day tournaments because there's no point of true separation between the top and bottom tables until at least a few rounds. Any of the big tournaments like Adepticon? These people are definitely there. For both 40k and AoS.
So yeah, if the goal is a positive gaming experience, then it does work a treat as no gaming is better than bad gaming and there are like minded individuals waiting for them at the bottom tables of bigger events.
The real solution though is terrain. Something definitely shifted when GW started selling terrain kits and even making rules so you could put them in your army list. And it wasn't a change for the better.
G00fySmiley wrote: Echoing the need for LOS terrain. if a tau player sets up the board and is waiting for a game and there are no large opaque buildings... nope not interested. If there is plenty of terrain then sure great sounds fun.
Surrender without rolling a dice, bet that works a treat in tournaments.
I keep looking for where G00fySmiley mentioned tournaments. Not seeing it. In fact I see something to indicate he was not talking about tournaments. "if a tau player sets up the board and is waiting for a game."
That said, there is a branch of tournament goers who go to the largest and most competitive events to play on the lower table numbers on the second day of the event. And many of them will concede to an army they have no interest in playing and go take a lunch break. They'll usually not be rude about it and give some excuse, but if you see a guy go "oh, I just got an important text. I'm sorry, I have to concede. Let me sign the game report sheet. Bye!" but then they're happily playing the next round and then laughing their asses off with gaming buddies on the bottom tables, you probably found one of the guys who regularly do this. You won't see this in single day tournaments because there's no point of true separation between the top and bottom tables until at least a few rounds. Any of the big tournaments like Adepticon? These people are definitely there. For both 40k and AoS.
So yeah, if the goal is a positive gaming experience, then it does work a treat as no gaming is better than bad gaming and there are like minded individuals waiting for them at the bottom tables of bigger events.
The real solution though is terrain. Something definitely shifted when GW started selling terrain kits and even making rules so you could put them in your army list. And it wasn't a change for the better.
Tournaments are just a better place to find people who don't care how they win, sadly enough I've met people both in and out of tournaments who not only wouldn't recognise you still playing at the event but would brag about their 'crushing victory' got to listen to one of those as I set up to play him last weekend "Took one look at my army, knew he couldn't win and scampered like a sook. Could I be any more awesome?" way I heard it he packed up after an argument about a piece of ruins counting as LoS blocking terrain.
With 8E, a lot of this is going out the window, so who knows what itll end up looking like.
Reset of all the codices has given me modicum of hope that some sense and character are reinserted to Tau. That said, I am pretty sure that rewrite will be done along the lines of "hugely successful" Vetock codex. These threads demonstrate that much of the current playerbase only know present caricature of Tau and do not know or remember how the Tau used to be.
When 7th edition Tau came out someone in Warseer commented the discussion: "Why would a Tau player complain about anime robots added to his army? That's like a Tyranid player complaining about new Codex having new chitinous monsters!" It was not irony.
I do like robots, but I miss all the other stuff too. Lore wise the Tau are great, except for their actual army lore which seems to be moving in the direction of a Tau only battlesuit army. I miss auxiliaries and vehicles. I want a normal sized battlesuit release. Not every suit needs to be gigantic. I also want giant suits. Also better flyers.
Basically a cool Tau army with battlesuits as a core, but not the main focus of everything. However I suspect we'll just see more suits.
Da-Rock wrote: I have read a lot about hate towards how the Tau play. Some are legitimate issues and others are just the standard cries from those who don't like something and want everyone else to hate what they do.
The issue at hand seems to boil down to this: The Tau were designed to be out of balance. Bad at Melee and good at shooting. So with that design, GW did the only thing you can with a one dimensional design in a competitive environment = make them GREAT at all things shooty. As we all know what this created..............no, not a none competitive army design......no, not an over powered shooty army..............yes, an army that caused frustration and a lack of fun for both sides.
I reject that the Tau are OP, I do however feel that those who say it sucks to play against the Tau are correct. Their ability to ignore rules and take away the fun parts of your army is what they do. This isn't the Tau players fault. GW did this when they designed a one dimensional army.
So............what does GW do?
Do they go simple and add melee abilities to the Tau?
Do they nerf them into oblivion?
Do they add new abilities and rules that balance it out - is that even possible?
Do they realize that in a game world filled with melee and shooting balanced armies you can't maintain balance with an unbalanced army.....seems simple right
Why is Tau being one dimensional a problem but Khorne being one dimensional not a problem? Because Khorne sucks?
Gamgee wrote: I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.
I never had an issue with Tau in 7th (as most people in the tournament scene that also used strong armies didn't) They were strong but not unstoppable and at least games were interactive.
Chaos demons were just as one dimensional as tau in the other direction but playing against chaos daemons was like whacking yourself in the nuts with a hammer while tom kirby makes fun of you for playing with dolls and then steals your wallet.
What is Tau composition right now?
I got into Tau when 6th came out and then they got a reboot and riptides, broadsides and pathfinders were all the rage.
I haven't really ever played 40k in a few years but I really like the crisis suits and stealth suits but don't actually own a Riptide or any broadsides so not sure how they play or any of the new stuff i.e ghostkeel or breachers not familiar with those units.
I got into Tau because I liked the xv8 suits and the cool look and I also liked shooting focused vs close combat but I can see why it can be annoying if you don't use much terrain...fine balance for terrain I usually play Fantasy/kings of war and when I did play 6th got other people to randomly make the table terrain up so that helps keep everything fair no matter the army.
I'm super excited for 8th to see the rules and how my Tau plays so I can get back into it!
As someone who plays a suit only army I hope we keep a way to keep that army style. I have no desire to paint firewarriors or pathfinders as I do not care very much for the models. In my experience once I lose my drone net, the army becomes easier to deal with even with 2 riptides as BS is the same a IG. Take out our markerligt support and we become a lot more manageable.
The Tau player who won ironically used a list similar to mine and was very antimeta. He had skyrays, darkstirder, and lots of crisis suits and came in 7th. I think the 7th edition faq's helped a lot of lists that wouldn't have made it that far get that far since it toned down a few things here and there.
Prior to that the netlist in a can most Tau used was Riptide Wing and two stormsurges. Some people would swap Riptides with Y'vaharh. I don't ever recall this list making it into the top 15 at any major ITC game.
As much as people complain about Ta'unar being "op" it's banned at all events other than the real no holds barred kind. It was winning those too though and almost every army had a Ta'unar allied in.
Here is William's list from the lvo 2017. He only took a single stormsurge which was pretty innovative. I think he regretted taking Darkstrider since he didn't get too much use out of him, but he blames himself kinda sort for not using him right as well. The most meta thing in his list was RIptide Wing.
jeffersonian000 wrote:I disagree with the OP. Tau are balanced versus a table cluttered with line of sight blocking terrain. If you are unable to close with Tau without being shot to death, you do not have enough of the right terrain on the table. That's on you, not army balance.
Says... says who? There is guidelines in the rules for terrain, as well as a standard for tournaments and ITC. None of them involve blocking out the sun with a jungle of terrain. There is a fair and balanced amount, and it works this way for the sake of every match up playing well. When you have to change all set rules from both rulebook and tournament standard just to have a specific terrain set-up that changes the game for every other army that has to play on that table as well, a set-up you can almost guarantee you won't be given anywhere else but some specifically overzealous FLGS, just to avoid being Overpowered, you may as well call it what it is - Tau is an overtuned army.
I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.
This myth about melee being some achilles heel that balances out the ridiculous firepower, is a joke as well. Sure, most their damage output is in shooting, but a Riptide still beats a TMC in combat and a squad of Pathfinders tarpits just fine, and just to make it there I have to charge through overwatch. They don't autolose if you make it to combat by any means, it just helps take some of their overpowered damage off the table at best.
I don't find the Tau one-dimensional. Without Stormsurge and only one Riptide they are fun to play against. So basically it comes down to Stormsurge and Riptide being undercosted/ breaking the only weakness of Tau. Tau are usually an army of glasscannons, those two giant suits break that theme though.
With firewarriors, breachers, crisis suits, broadsides, tanks, and especially Kroot that army is quite versatile, probably much more than mono-god daemon armies, Necrons or Space Wolves.
If they balance the overlooked Tau units with the giant suits I'm sure Tau will become a nice army, especially since the stormsurge is the by far ugliest model in their whole range and then hopefully not an autoinclude anymore.
Not sure if it would help balance but as a weaabo gundam-lover i could change a lot of shooty power to melee power, loos a little of durability and make the Tau a mech army, not great at shoot, not great at melee but a middle point.
For me, the first reason to choose Tau are the mechs but the first reason to not choose them is melee.
And they are op at shoot so i could like to see them on a middle ground (the LAZERZ SWORD from the Farsight are a cool idea)
Dragobeth wrote: Not sure if it would help balance but as a weaabo gundam-lover i could change a lot of shooty power to melee power, loos a little of durability and make the Tau a mech army, not great at shoot, not great at melee but a middle point.
For me, the first reason to choose Tau are the mechs but the first reason to not choose them is melee.
And they are op at shoot so i could like to see them on a middle ground (the LAZERZ SWORD from the Farsight are a cool idea)
So make them space marines and foreswore the army'a identity since 3rd ed?
Dragobeth wrote: Not sure if it would help balance but as a weaabo gundam-lover i could change a lot of shooty power to melee power, loos a little of durability and make the Tau a mech army, not great at shoot, not great at melee but a middle point.
For me, the first reason to choose Tau are the mechs but the first reason to not choose them is melee.
And they are op at shoot so i could like to see them on a middle ground (the LAZERZ SWORD from the Farsight are a cool idea)
So make them space marines and foreswore the army'a identity since 3rd ed?
That's is the big problem of my idea, that's why It's just a silly opinion. I should stop wanting super robot things on 40k really (just cant avoid it, sorry)
Reallisticaly I could reduce their shoot power and buff a little their allies like kroot to make them cool to play with (something like a combined army maybe?) that or make them full mech but not that durable.
guardpiper wrote: As someone who plays a suit only army I hope we keep a way to keep that army style. I have no desire to paint firewarriors or pathfinders as I do not care very much for the models. In my experience once I lose my drone net, the army becomes easier to deal with even with 2 riptides as BS is the same a IG. Take out our markerligt support and we become a lot more manageable.
I don't know, but I think that suit only lists should be a little harder to work with as they are missing elements in a more balanced force. To me, one of the things I think Tau should be good at is combined arms synergy. I would try to design the Tau to work best using the widest range of units that on their own/by themselves aren't great, but sum some is greater than the parts. I mean that an all suit army could work, but I would like to see it not be quite as optimized as an army that also included fire warriors, kroot/vespids or even tanks.
I think all army lists should have a good combined arms element to them. It is one of the reasons I like force organization in miniatures wargames. But the Tau in particular, I think should make use of it more than other factions. Because when I think of Tau strengths, first I think ranged combat. Then I think unit synergy. I want that to be reversed in the future. Honestly, as a Chaos Space Marine player (which I think unit synergy should be a weakness of theirs) I want to be more envious (and concerned) with the Tau's ability to make use of different units that support each other far better than anything the CSM can put together. I want that to be the challenge in a game far more than their superior ranged combat.
I also think changing the Tau's primary strength from ranged combat to unit synergy would also make games more fun for both players. It takes a lot more work to get your units to work well together than a gun line, and it is far more interesting to try to find the weak link among units than it is to simply face a gun line.
Gaurdpiper, I am not saying that I don't want suit only lists to be horrible. I think they should still have a place on the table. I just think that every faction to make use a pretty wide selection of their available units (as opposed to spamming a couple of good ones) to maximize their effect. I also think the Tau should probably me the best at this. I would like to see 8th edition, be a place where players don't complain about boring, gun line games against Tau, but trying to figure out where the chinks in their unit synergy armor instead.
Gamgee wrote: I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.
I actually thought the level of discourse in this thread was pretty respectable. Lots of good points here, and BlaxicanX in particular basically nailed what's wrong with Tau perfectly. Even Traditio, who has Traditio-nally had rather strong opinions about this subject, has been pretty laid back in this thread and is mainly just hoping GW fixes their mistakes with 8th, which I think is safe to say where we're all kinda standing right now.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think what a lot of people didn't realize is that for the average Tau player the game hasn't exactly been that fun for us, either. I'm one of those guys that liked "old Tau" better, and while I liked my suits as much as anyone, I thought it refreshing that GW used to shy away from the obvious anime tropes and kept the suit/mecha, sci-fi element of the army pretty reasonable. I died a little inside as soon as the riptide was introduced, and the stormsurge is just butt ugly and stupid. I wanted an army that relied more on infantry, grav tanks and the odd aircraft (like the barracuda, not the plastic abortion that is the sun shark) with suits as a support element, as intended, but the suits not only got bigger, they got to the point where you could literally take a handful of giant models as your army and comfortably replace everything else. I'm not necessarily knocking people who are into that, people like giant robots and that's basically the whole reason Knight armies exist, but despite the much-maligned "anime" influence of Tau that's not really what they were about.
I also don't think the answer is just shoe-horning in the token psykers and melee units, either. It's always so tempting to just give them ninjas and suits with energy swords, apparently, which is hilarious because it's just doubling down on that whole "anime" thing that people claim to hate so much, but personally that's one thing I always liked about the Tau, and they have very good lore explanations as to why they don't have that stuff. I don't want to see Tau lose what makes them unique and sets them apart from other factions in the game, and watch them basically turn into another army but with more "anime"-looking models, but then again GW already kinda ruined it for me with the introduction of all the new giant suits (and even an honest to god "Tau titan", something I hoped would never be made), so I don't know if I care anymore.
I think it's very possible to "fix" Tau without changing what they are. As others have said the fact that they're shooting-focused is not really what breaks them, nor does an army having a focus make it inherently broken, as it's been pointed out with the comparison to melee or psychic-focused armies being fine to play. Just need to figure out how to make it work...maybe "new" GW can do that. I sure as feth hope so anyway, I'd like to try actually playing the game again.
Martel732 wrote: There's no rules for LOS blocking terrain placement. That's MY point. It costs no points and has no formalized method for being deployed. It should NOT be THE balancing feature for Tau unless this feature is codified in the rules. Which it is not.
As it is, Eldar and Tau want basically zero terrain and I have to talk them down from that most of the time. I'm not getting huge chunks of LOS blocking without rules to back me up.
I think I've found your problem - you play against holes.
You're not even wrong, he really does. His Tau/Eldar playing friends are hyper-competitive dicks who bring tournament-level lists always, force him to play on barren tables and argue against adding terrain, specifically because it isn't spelled out in the rules how a "proper" table should be set up or whether or not LOS-blocking terrain should even be used at all.
We all know what the main problem is, it's his group. But he insists he can't do anything about it. So his only recourse is praying that GW nerfs Tau and Eldar shooting into the dirt so he can play on a barren table with his Blood Angels and still beat them, which would mean that they'd be literally unplayable for anyone else playing the game on an average table, but that doesn't matter.
SHUPPET wrote: I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.
I can't speak for everyone, but for us "old Tau" players it's probably because we listened to people bitch for years about our army being "overpowered" even though it was mediocre at best, simply because stuff like JSJ or "Fish of Fury" were annoying to play against, or because they're sour over our basic gun being S5 when the almighty bolter is only S4, etc. I remember that in particular being a pretty big deal for a lot of people, who felt that it was wrong for another army to have better equipment than Space Marines no matter what the justification for it was...people didn't like the railgun, either, since it was strictly superior to the lascannon.
People basically cried wolf for multiple editions, so when the wolf finally showed up in 6th (with an ion accelerator and a jet pack strapped to its back), naturally we were more inclined to ignore them or dismiss it as mere whining and nothing more, since for years before that's basically all it was. Admittedly I didn't see what was so busted about the riptide when it came out, it didn't look that bad on paper really, but honestly I didn't give a gak because I hated the model and told myself I wasn't going to use it anyway. I was more upset about all the cool wargear and other stuff I lost with the new book, and how I was seemingly being pigeon-holed into playing my Tau a certain way (which others have pointed out already), which I wasn't really fond of.
I realize now what happened and just how bad the "new" Tau are, but it's still hard for me to agree with people because, as I said before, I'm coming from years of whining and complaints about how terrible and game-breaking things are that really weren't, and I'm also fully aware that people have more of a real hate for Tau that they don't feel for any other army. There's an obvious bias there which is hard to argue against. When it comes to Tau people always take it too far; they don't just want Tau fixed, a lot of them just want them gone, period. Either that, or to be nerfed into the ground so hard that no one plays them anymore and they can at least pretend that they're finally gone, because in their mind their very existence at all is an offense. It's the kind of irrational hate and disgust that I've never seen any other army receive before or since, and it has nothing to do with rules because that sentiment was there long before they became broken in 6th/7th.
I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.
This myth about melee being some achilles heel that balances out the ridiculous firepower, is a joke as well. Sure, most their damage output is in shooting, but a Riptide still beats a TMC in combat and a squad of Pathfinders tarpits just fine, and just to make it there I have to charge through overwatch. They don't autolose if you make it to combat by any means, it just helps take some of their overpowered damage off the table at best.
There are multiple posts in this thread alone of Tau players acknowledging the issues of our codex. We acknowledge the fact that our Riptides are OP/Undercosted. Our formations are crazy. The Stormsurge is ridiculous. We want more units in our book to be viable (Tho I will admit that I still wouldn't use Kroot/Vespids, I got into the Tau in '01 because of their suits and vehicles. I've never liked any of their auxiliaries, so expect my armies to remain XV8/XV88 and Breachers/Strike teams in DF). Read the thread before posting.
A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.
Give me Demiurg Auxiliares so cool as the ones in the Battlefleet Gothic videogame trailer and I will give you all my Riptides and Stormsurges! (1 and 0, basically )
I have more than 150 Firewarriors and I have to admit that using them all in a game, like a footsloging horde to a enemy that expect a list of only 3-4 giant robots and so he doesn't bring to the table any anti horde weaponry is hilarous
Sidstyler wrote:I can't speak for everyone, but I think what a lot of people didn't realize is that for the average Tau player the game hasn't exactly been that fun for us, either.
I think that's true for a lot of people in 7th.
Which, note carefully, is a reason why we should be excited that 8th edition is being "sigmarized," at least to some degree.
Say what you want, but people who play Age of Sigmar actually seem to enjoy playing the game.
I'm unaware of AoS players complaining about AoS in the same way that 40k players complain about 40k.
In fact, if you talk to people who play AoS, by and large, they seem to be pretty happy with the state of the game, and when it comes to the complaints that they do have, they are optimistic that the problems are going to be resolved in a timely manner.
That's actually my biggest hope for 8th edition, namely, that the average pick-up game will be...you know...fun. Preferably without needing to have an extended conversation in advance about what precisely each side is going to be using.
A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.
The problem with these examples is that you're trying to deflect the issues with Tau CC defense by pointing to other armies that have strong inherent CC capabilities. Yeah, GKT's will do great against TMC's in CC. They're dedicated CC specialists with strength augmenting wargear and powers coupled with force weapons. That's their dedicated role. A Riptide is a mobile medium-long range heavy shooting platform. That's where the problem lies.
Part of the problem with "tactics" in 40k is that, at least with 7E, the game really isn't all that deep tactically speaking, it just isn't, and the levels of firepower and/or resiliency some armies bring make "Tactics" (big T) beyond simple target priority largely irrelevant. It's not really a Tau specific issue, but is just highlighted particularly well in their case. Same thing goes for armies of unkillable stuff (2++ deathstars, Necron Decurions, etc), they require very little thought or tactical acumen to win with because they can just ignore so much of what an opponent does no matter how well fought.
Hopefully we see some big changes here with 8E in a few weeks.
And here I am mildly surprised at everyone saying how tau have no assault capability.
Have we all forgotten the number of times that shield drone has headbutted poor little Draigo into the ground? Where would this game be without the drunken ham-fists of RNGesus? I can practically read the kill counter scratched onto the rim.
All joking aside, I was much more comfortable playing against Tau before 6th: it feels like every game atm (7ed) is an Apoc game and they're the ones with the first shooting phase...
...Apoc veterans may know what I mean.
I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.
This myth about melee being some achilles heel that balances out the ridiculous firepower, is a joke as well. Sure, most their damage output is in shooting, but a Riptide still beats a TMC in combat and a squad of Pathfinders tarpits just fine, and just to make it there I have to charge through overwatch. They don't autolose if you make it to combat by any means, it just helps take some of their overpowered damage off the table at best.
There are multiple posts in this thread alone of Tau players acknowledging the issues of our codex. We acknowledge the fact that our Riptides are OP/Undercosted. Our formations are crazy. The Stormsurge is ridiculous. We want more units in our book to be viable (Tho I will admit that I still wouldn't use Kroot/Vespids, I got into the Tau in '01 because of their suits and vehicles. I've never liked any of their auxiliaries, so expect my armies to remain XV8/XV88 and Breachers/Strike teams in DF). Read the thread before posting.
A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.
Depends on your definition of tarpitting.
To my thinking there is offensive and defensive tarpitting.
Offensive tarpitting is where you charge the enemy to tie them down.
Defensive tarpitting is simply blocking the way with a sacrificial unit. In order to get by your blocking unit your opponent will have to destroy it in the Psychic, Shooting or Combat phases. If I want to charge your Stormsurge before it gets more shooting than just another round of Overwatch three drones blocking access to the Stormsurge will tarpit most units willing to tangle with a Stormsurge just fine, Split Fire and offensive Psychic spells tend to be in short supply when your unit has the snuff to get to and throw down with a GMC, so all your costly drones have to do is sit there blocking the way, I charge, you Overwatch, Drones die or break and die and my turn ends. Stormsurge laughs and shoots again.
Counter-Attack doesn't help the Space Wolves get to Close Combat, it doesn't even activate unless YOU CHARGE the Wolves, same for Counter-charge - you charge and anybody calling your army one-dimensional will have to retract their statement.
Vaktathi wrote: ....A Riptide is a mobile medium-long range heavy shooting platform. That's where the problem lies.
Part of the problem with "tactics" in 40k is that, at least with 7E, the game really isn't all that deep tactically speaking, it just isn't, and the levels of firepower and/or resiliency some armies bring make "Tactics" (big T) beyond simple target priority largely irrelevant. It's not really a Tau specific issue, but is just highlighted particularly well in their case. Same thing goes for armies of unkillable stuff (2++ deathstars, Necron Decurions, etc), they require very little thought or tactical acumen to win with because they can just ignore so much of what an opponent does no matter how well fought.
Hopefully we see some big changes here with 8E in a few weeks.
A Riptide is also a MC, which brings inherent durability and CC ability compared to 'normal' models. Ignoring armor in CC and high base S & T is a large bonus in CC, even if the dedicated role of the unit is ranged support. I will concede, as I have before, that the Riptide is far too good for it's points. 300pts base, IA 35-40 pts, and all other options bumped up by 10-15pts. A fully kitted Riptide should be hitting the table costing somewhere near the 400pt mark.
As for your remaining point, I suppose that may be true. I guess I'm lucky in the fact that, in comparison to what I see here on Dakka, I play ultra-casually. The folks I play with don't do tourney's, don't chase the meta, and for the most part, we don't use formations all that often. My friend who plays Necrons has never fielded the Decurion, I've never seen one in action. Hell, I only own one Riptide (that only see's play when we have 2k+ games), and I don't even own a Stormsurge. So it seems that my gaming experience is quite different, and "Tactics" (to use your capital T description) actually play a larger part in our armies.
Tables aren't barren. They have a ton of cover. Just not extensive LoS blocking. But GW decided that astartes don't get much benefit from that, and Tau can take that away anyway.
Martel732 wrote: Tables aren't barren. They have a ton of cover. Just not extensive LoS blocking. But GW decided that astartes don't get much benefit from that, and Tau can take that away anyway.
Astartes gain as much advantage as everyone else by the use of cover. And it sounds like you need to set your table up w/ more LoS blocking terrain. Markerlights can't strip your cover if they can't see you to shoot you in the first place.
I have two comments to made pursuant to the most recent line of discussion.
1. The first point holds regardless of what edition of 40k we are playing, whether we be playing 4th edition or 8th edition:
I learned that a good way of setting up terrain is to divide the table into 9 squares, and put a substantial piece of terrain in each. 5-6 of these should block line of sight.
2. That said, I think that the changes coming in 8th edition are going to make cover a lot more useful.
In AoS, cover simply adds a +1 modifier to all saves. It's not an either/or thing. Furthermore, AP is going to act as a modifier, and I suspect that it is going to max out at Rend -4.
Well, I don't really know what to tell you then, Martel. I mean, it's obvious where you play has a ridiculously power gamer-esque meta, and none of the folks you play want to even remotely give you a fighting chance. But you're starting to sound like a petulant child, when anytime someone gives you a suggestion, or tries to help (in whatever way forum discussions can be said to 'help') you just dismiss it out of hand.
I play against a gun-line DA player on the regular, and our games are down to the wire and we have a fairly even W:L ratio between us, so I don't know what to tell you anymore. Perhaps 8th edition will be more kind to you.
Martel732 wrote: Tables aren't barren. They have a ton of cover. Just not extensive LoS blocking. But GW decided that astartes don't get much benefit from that, and Tau can take that away anyway.
You know it's funny - I can negotiate with most of my opponents.
If they want terrain that is impassable to stop my TWC I let them have it, as long as it also blocks line of sight.
SHUPPET wrote: I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.
I can't speak for everyone, but for us "old Tau" players it's probably because we listened to people bitch for years about our army being "overpowered" even though it was mediocre at best, simply because stuff like JSJ or "Fish of Fury" were annoying to play against, or because they're sour over our basic gun being S5 when the almighty bolter is only S4, etc. I remember that in particular being a pretty big deal for a lot of people, who felt that it was wrong for another army to have better equipment than Space Marines no matter what the justification for it was...people didn't like the railgun, either, since it was strictly superior to the lascannon.
People basically cried wolf for multiple editions, so when the wolf finally showed up in 6th (with an ion accelerator and a jet pack strapped to its back), naturally we were more inclined to ignore them or dismiss it as mere whining and nothing more, since for years before that's basically all it was. Admittedly I didn't see what was so busted about the riptide when it came out, it didn't look that bad on paper really, but honestly I didn't give a gak because I hated the model and told myself I wasn't going to use it anyway. I was more upset about all the cool wargear and other stuff I lost with the new book, and how I was seemingly being pigeon-holed into playing my Tau a certain way (which others have pointed out already), which I wasn't really fond of.
I realize now what happened and just how bad the "new" Tau are, but it's still hard for me to agree with people because, as I said before, I'm coming from years of whining and complaints about how terrible and game-breaking things are that really weren't, and I'm also fully aware that people have more of a real hate for Tau that they don't feel for any other army. There's an obvious bias there which is hard to argue against. When it comes to Tau people always take it too far; they don't just want Tau fixed, a lot of them just want them gone, period. Either that, or to be nerfed into the ground so hard that no one plays them anymore and they can at least pretend that they're finally gone, because in their mind their very existence at all is an offense. It's the kind of irrational hate and disgust that I've never seen any other army receive before or since, and it has nothing to do with rules because that sentiment was there long before they became broken in 6th/7th.
I recall the general opinion of Tau was "underpowered and cant compete", all the way until they were made to be the best dex at the time in their 6th release. So I'm not sure when you are talking to, the only way your post makes sense is if you are referring to 6th like the release of Tau wasn't maybe the most OP dex of the edition. If there was outlandish people complaining about an underpowered dex, congrats, happens to everyone. Happens even to my Nids right now. The statement still stands, how come everyone else is still capable of being objective but Tau players live in a rejected reality?
I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.
This myth about melee being some achilles heel that balances out the ridiculous firepower, is a joke as well. Sure, most their damage output is in shooting, but a Riptide still beats a TMC in combat and a squad of Pathfinders tarpits just fine, and just to make it there I have to charge through overwatch. They don't autolose if you make it to combat by any means, it just helps take some of their overpowered damage off the table at best.
There are multiple posts in this thread alone of Tau players acknowledging the issues of our codex. We acknowledge the fact that our Riptides are OP/Undercosted. Our formations are crazy. The Stormsurge is ridiculous. We want more units in our book to be viable (Tho I will admit that I still wouldn't use Kroot/Vespids, I got into the Tau in '01 because of their suits and vehicles. I've never liked any of their auxiliaries, so expect my armies to remain XV8/XV88 and Breachers/Strike teams in DF). Read the thread before posting.
A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.
Depends on your definition of tarpitting. To my thinking there is offensive and defensive tarpitting. Offensive tarpitting is where you charge the enemy to tie them down. Defensive tarpitting is simply blocking the way with a sacrificial unit. In order to get by your blocking unit your opponent will have to destroy it in the Psychic, Shooting or Combat phases. If I want to charge your Stormsurge before it gets more shooting than just another round of Overwatch three drones blocking access to the Stormsurge will tarpit most units willing to tangle with a Stormsurge just fine, Split Fire and offensive Psychic spells tend to be in short supply when your unit has the snuff to get to and throw down with a GMC, so all your costly drones have to do is sit there blocking the way, I charge, you Overwatch, Drones die or break and die and my turn ends. Stormsurge laughs and shoots again.
Counter-Attack doesn't help the Space Wolves get to Close Combat, it doesn't even activate unless YOU CHARGE the Wolves, same for Counter-charge - you charge and anybody calling your army one-dimensional will have to retract their statement.
A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.
The problem with these examples is that you're trying to deflect the issues with Tau CC defense by pointing to other armies that have strong inherent CC capabilities. Yeah, GKT's will do great against TMC's in CC. They're dedicated CC specialists with strength augmenting wargear and powers coupled with force weapons. That's their dedicated role. A Riptide is a mobile medium-long range heavy shooting platform. That's where the problem lies.
Part of the problem with "tactics" in 40k is that, at least with 7E, the game really isn't all that deep tactically speaking, it just isn't, and the levels of firepower and/or resiliency some armies bring make "Tactics" (big T) beyond simple target priority largely irrelevant. It's not really a Tau specific issue, but is just highlighted particularly well in their case. Same thing goes for armies of unkillable stuff (2++ deathstars, Necron Decurions, etc), they require very little thought or tactical acumen to win with because they can just ignore so much of what an opponent does no matter how well fought.
Hopefully we see some big changes here with 8E in a few weeks.
Thank you, people who get it, and don't go out of their way to find the exception and act like thats the rule.
I expect that 8th will fix the problems with Stormsurge and Riptides being pretty good at CC for their ultra durability and the basic rules of Monstruous Creatures.
A Stormsurge is a quasi inmovile platform of heavy fire, it should work like one. I can see a Riptide having more chances in CC, but not to much really. He is a giant robot so he can stil smash some things, but I hope their CC habilities and their durability is very tonned down if they are gonna keep the movility and the absurd firepower.
Wait, Riptides are good at combat? My experience is that they're really terrible for the price. A Necron Wraith is about equivalent. Their moderate firepower on a very mobile, durable platform is what makes them powerful. By extension, what makes Tau so hated, in my opinion, is that you can easily field an army that is both effective and crazy durable by just tossing a bunch of Riptides together with maybe a Stormsurge and go to town. Stormsurges are definitely decent at combat by virtue of stomping things, but they still cost 400+ points. I wouldn't exactly call that broken. In other words, I understand the Tau hate since they're pretty easy to netlist and succeed with, but at least hate them for things worth hating then for. 3 S6 attacks from a 200pt model would not be one of those things.
I thought riptide hate was unwarranted back in 6th, to be honest. They were powerful units, clearly, but you couldn't outright wreck face with 3 of them. Units of Riptides was not a wise inclusion in the 7th book. Pushing that a step further, the Riptide Wing was an exceptionally awful design choice by GW, which I believe they've made fun of themselves for on multiple occasions since announcing 8th. It made Tau pretty brainless to play except at the highest levels of competitiveness, which is really the only place a Riptide Wing belongs. There's nothing fun for a casual gamer about trying to bring down that volume of T6 2+/3++ wounds.
On the flip side, the power of some of the bigger suits makes it a little hard to field a usable army without gimping yourself. Even the oft-forgotten R'varna can lay down serious destruction, so if you happen to like the riptide models, you might just have to risk your opponents' ire to run the army you want. For instance, I really like the look of Y'Vahras and HBC Riptides. I'm fortunate enough to play with a very competitive group of guys who don't have issues with me bringing the pain every game, but if you're up against wych cult armies with any regularity, that'd get boring for everyone real fast.
Well, they are good to be a Shooting platform in a totally shooting army that suck at CC. They aren't "good" in the big scale of 40k as a whole. But they are better that they should be.
And, to add information to my post, I'm a Tau player, so I'm not hating them
Galas wrote: Martel732 is a martir of a power-gaming crow playing with the army he loves, an army that totally sucks and has sucked for years.
You know the "hollows" in Dark Souls, people that has give away all of his hope and just wander like mumies without a purpose?
This is Martel after years of being totally destroyed by Tau and Eldar:
Spoiler:
Is too late for him
is it wrong to hope that blood angels are OP as hell in 8th just to see how martell reacts?
I've already been through that in 3rd. I was just embarrassing mostly. Although by the end of 3rd, Eldar were better.
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MilkmanAl wrote: Wait, Riptides are good at combat? My experience is that they're really terrible for the price. A Necron Wraith is about equivalent. Their moderate firepower on a very mobile, durable platform is what makes them powerful. By extension, what makes Tau so hated, in my opinion, is that you can easily field an army that is both effective and crazy durable by just tossing a bunch of Riptides together with maybe a Stormsurge and go to town. Stormsurges are definitely decent at combat by virtue of stomping things, but they still cost 400+ points. I wouldn't exactly call that broken. In other words, I understand the Tau hate since they're pretty easy to netlist and succeed with, but at least hate them for things worth hating then for. 3 S6 attacks from a 200pt model would not be one of those things.
I thought riptide hate was unwarranted back in 6th, to be honest. They were powerful units, clearly, but you couldn't outright wreck face with 3 of them. Units of Riptides was not a wise inclusion in the 7th book. Pushing that a step further, the Riptide Wing was an exceptionally awful design choice by GW, which I believe they've made fun of themselves for on multiple occasions since announcing 8th. It made Tau pretty brainless to play except at the highest levels of competitiveness, which is really the only place a Riptide Wing belongs. There's nothing fun for a casual gamer about trying to bring down that volume of T6 2+/3++ wounds.
On the flip side, the power of some of the bigger suits makes it a little hard to field a usable army without gimping yourself. Even the oft-forgotten R'varna can lay down serious destruction, so if you happen to like the riptide models, you might just have to risk your opponents' ire to run the army you want. For instance, I really like the look of Y'Vahras and HBC Riptides. I'm fortunate enough to play with a very competitive group of guys who don't have issues with me bringing the pain every game, but if you're up against wych cult armies with any regularity, that'd get boring for everyone real fast.
Riptides burn down two units and then tarpit a third for the rest of the game. What other 220 ish pt model can take out three units a game almost guaranteed? They are one of the best tarpits in the game because immortality. MCs get too many free rules in 7th and many people acknowledge this. It looks like this is all going away in 8th, so we'll see.
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Galas wrote: I expect that 8th will fix the problems with Stormsurge and Riptides being pretty good at CC for their ultra durability and the basic rules of Monstruous Creatures.
A Stormsurge is a quasi inmovile platform of heavy fire, it should work like one. I can see a Riptide having more chances in CC, but not to much really. He is a giant robot so he can stil smash some things, but I hope their CC habilities and their durability is very tonned down if they are gonna keep the movility and the absurd firepower.
MCs should not have AP2 by default. They should have to have a weapon like a walker to get it. That would help a lot.
I think the question of Tau being a little 1 dimensional is a little deeper than people realize.
Everyone knows that Tau are the king of Shooting, and garbage at melee.
What people forget is that the Tau are also garbage at Psykers too. Too many people forget and underestimate the power of Psykers, but Psykers are a major part of the game.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Necrons are the only other non-Psyker major race. Except Necrons also have fair decent melee and shooting.
MilkmanAl wrote: Wait, Riptides are good at combat? My experience is that they're really terrible for the price. A Necron Wraith is about equivalent. Their moderate firepower on a very mobile, durable platform is what makes them powerful. By extension, what makes Tau so hated, in my opinion, is that you can easily field an army that is both effective and crazy durable by just tossing a bunch of Riptides together with maybe a Stormsurge and go to town. Stormsurges are definitely decent at combat by virtue of stomping things, but they still cost 400+ points. I wouldn't exactly call that broken. In other words, I understand the Tau hate since they're pretty easy to netlist and succeed with, but at least hate them for things worth hating then for. 3 S6 attacks from a 200pt model would not be one of those things.
I thought riptide hate was unwarranted back in 6th, to be honest. They were powerful units, clearly, but you couldn't outright wreck face with 3 of them. Units of Riptides was not a wise inclusion in the 7th book. Pushing that a step further, the Riptide Wing was an exceptionally awful design choice by GW, which I believe they've made fun of themselves for on multiple occasions since announcing 8th. It made Tau pretty brainless to play except at the highest levels of competitiveness, which is really the only place a Riptide Wing belongs. There's nothing fun for a casual gamer about trying to bring down that volume of T6 2+/3++ wounds.
On the flip side, the power of some of the bigger suits makes it a little hard to field a usable army without gimping yourself. Even the oft-forgotten R'varna can lay down serious destruction, so if you happen to like the riptide models, you might just have to risk your opponents' ire to run the army you want. For instance, I really like the look of Y'Vahras and HBC Riptides. I'm fortunate enough to play with a very competitive group of guys who don't have issues with me bringing the pain every game, but if you're up against wych cult armies with any regularity, that'd get boring for everyone real fast.
Wraiths are dedicated melee units, their shooting costs extra, has a 12" range and kills a grand total of one model per shot and one shot each per turn.
Riptides are dedicated...shooting? That can't be right - they're fast moving with Move Through Cover, heavy armour and invulnerable saves, clearly for crossing the board to get into melee, then they have Fear, Hammer of Wrath, high Strength and Toughness plus natural ap2 attacks to bust up units in melee. So, dedicated melee units then...they're highly mobile for staying out of range of melee units and have three standard 36" range Heavy weapons with Relentless and high RoF to make sure they're always dropping maximum shots into the enemy while they stay out of both movement and charge range combined.
Talamare wrote: I think the question of Tau being a little 1 dimensional is a little deeper than people realize.
Everyone knows that Tau are the king of Shooting, and garbage at melee.
What people forget is that the Tau are also garbage at Psykers too. Too many people forget and underestimate the power of Psykers, but Psykers are a major part of the game.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Necrons are the only other non-Psyker major race. Except Necrons also have fair decent melee and shooting.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: They add fancy auxiliaries that are supposed to do things that help Tau without giving them a major oneup in that area rather then adding more and more suits.
We used to have melee units in the Kroot. Then GW took away a point of their strength and gave them the option of turning their rifles into sniper rifles.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: They add fancy auxiliaries that are supposed to do things that help Tau without giving them a major oneup in that area rather then adding more and more suits.
We used to have melee units in the Kroot. Then GW took away a point of their strength and gave them the option of turning their rifles into sniper rifles.
To be fair they were a bit rubbish at combat then too. Sure they got an extra attack and strength over now. But T3 sv -/6+ made sure there weren't enough of them left to make the most of it.
Plus Rapid-fire on the rifles made them have to choose between shooting and assault
Talamare wrote: I think the question of Tau being a little 1 dimensional is a little deeper than people realize.
Everyone knows that Tau are the king of Shooting, and garbage at melee.
What people forget is that the Tau are also garbage at Psykers too. Too many people forget and underestimate the power of Psykers, but Psykers are a major part of the game.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Necrons are the only other non-Psyker major race. Except Necrons also have fair decent melee and shooting.
That's still 1 dimensional
If they were great at psyking they'd be 2 dimensional
And even without any melee or shooting they are still one of the strongest armies in the game, which needs to be toned down. They provide a style of gameplay other armies don't, if you want to play something a little more all-rounded in strengths play one of the plenty other armies that support this playstyle rather than trying to get Tau changed into something that they aren't.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: They add fancy auxiliaries that are supposed to do things that help Tau without giving them a major oneup in that area rather then adding more and more suits.
We used to have melee units in the Kroot. Then GW took away a point of their strength and gave them the option of turning their rifles into sniper rifles.
To be fair they were a bit rubbish at combat then too. Sure they got an extra attack and strength over now. But T3 sv -/6+ made sure there weren't enough of them left to make the most of it.
Plus Rapid-fire on the rifles made them have to choose between shooting and assault
Whilst true that they were never amazing, they at least represented the fluff and offered some semblance of a tool which you could use in melee combat (and remember their old Cannibalism rule where they might refuse to sweeping advance a beaten opponent because they were too busy eating the dead? ). But then they instead got turned into just another shooting unit.
And then there was GW removing multi-trackers and target locks from our vehicle armoury, two upgrades which were basically required for many of our vehicles to function as they were designed. Basically, despite GW managing to overpower the Tau, they had no actual idea of how the army and certainly many of its units were meant to work.
I mean, look no further than the fact that GW turned two separate Burst Cannons on the Hammerhead into 1 twin-linked Burst Cannon and then made the Twin-linked SMS a free upgrade for that Burst Cannon. There is absolutely no reason to ever keep the Burst Cannon as the SMS is flat out better in every possible way.
I can't remember who said it but someone in the forum has a quote in their sig along the lines of "Congratulations Tau players, you got more than you asked for whilst simultaneously getting nothing you asked for." That pretty much sums up how I felt about the Tau 6th and 7th ed codices.
Surprised people think Necrons are "just" a shootie army. Necrons have Marine Statlines, Marine Costs and Marine Shooting - in short totally average - what Necrons have unique to them is durability, gauss and almost army wide relentless.
While amazingly irritating Necrons are also amazingly average.
On the subject of Necrons I wonder what's going to happen with Gauss now that anything can wound anything +3 rend value when firing on vehicles?
Dakka Wolf wrote: Surprised people think Necrons are "just" a shootie army. Necrons have Marine Statlines, Marine Costs and Marine Shooting - in short totally average - what Necrons have unique to them is durability, gauss and almost army wide relentless.
While amazingly irritating Necrons are also amazingly average.
On the subject of Necrons I wonder what's going to happen with Gauss now that anything can wound anything +3 rend value when firing on vehicles?
Take a look at what gauss does in Shadow Wars: Armageddon.
Okay, so I finally got through the thread, let me try to add a few new points and not repeat the previous 4 pages.
I got into 40k at the start of 5th and Tau was my first army. We had that codex for 7 years and 2 editions before getting an update. It wasn't crazy, but it sure didn't hold up to what came out in last year of 5th edition. So a natural bump in power was expected. We are still working off of that bump, and formations were there to sell more models.
While reading I was thinking of the Tau player base I know and when they got involved with Tau. An all suit army has only really been viable for 4 years. So if you know a player that started Tau after 6th, the unit selection tends to lead towards the common heartaches ie: Riptide wings, Stormsurges, all suits, etc.. Lets remember this observation applies to the majority, not all. So keep your pants on kroot army guy.
Now when thinking of what is Tau, I draw the similarity to the Covenant from Halo. Tau released October 2001, Halo November 2001, so lets not get into they did it first blah blah. Bungie did not make a game in 20 days. period.
The Covenant/Tau are a collection of races driven towards a common religious belief/goal. So far we have 3 races represented in models(that 1 air caste dude does not count), but 4 types of tau, kroot, and vespid. Where are the rest? Surely these guys didn't just get 2 races to sign on board and stop. Lets look at the Covenant troops grunts, elites, jackals, hunters, brutes, little bug guys. That's 6 right there and we haven't gotten into the specifics and lore. Each race uses their natural abilities and weaknesses to form a cohesive fighting force with superior technology. Kroot and Vespid should be fleshed out a bit to where they could be run as a viable army or a new race should be introduced. A Harlequin army is 3 boxes with 5 builds and a few blisters
For the future, I look forward to 8th because all factions are being reworked at the same time, hopefully for balance, and not to just push gamers to buy the latest and greatest to be competitive. If I had to place a bet, look for kroot and vespid to get a bump in 8th! Wubba lubba dub dub!
The Covenant/Tau are a collection of races driven towards a common religious belief/goal. So far we have 3 races represented in models(that 1 air caste dude does not count), but 4 types of tau, kroot, and vespid. Where are the rest? Surely these guys didn't just get 2 races to sign on board and stop. Lets look at the Covenant troops grunts, elites, jackals, hunters, brutes, little bug guys. That's 6 right there and we haven't gotten into the specifics and lore. Each race uses their natural abilities and weaknesses to form a cohesive fighting force with superior technology. Kroot and Vespid should be fleshed out a bit to where they could be run as a viable army or a new race should be introduced. A Harlequin army is 3 boxes with 5 builds and a few blisters
For the future, I look forward to 8th because all factions are being reworked at the same time, hopefully for balance, and not to just push gamers to buy the latest and greatest to be competitive. If I had to place a bet, look for kroot and vespid to get a bump in 8th! Wubba lubba dub dub!
Basically... "It's been 10 years! Where are the other Xenos!"
Need more Tarellian, Ambul, Hrenian, Chuffian, Donorian, K'nibs, Morralian, Ranghon, Nagi ... and hell official Gue'vesa
An interesting thread this. Before I get all game-philosophical I should get the individual unit issues out of the way. 6th edition messed up the internal balance of the Tau codex by making some things worse (largely vehicles) and adding in the Riptide - and specifically its ability to be joined by ICs along with the whole TauDar thing. Then when 7th fixed the Riptide mini-deathstar along came the Riptide Wing which was even worse. In the grand scheme of things none of this was objectively worse than Super-Friends, Screamer-star or Scat-bikes but I agree that if you are running one of the armies that does not have ridiculous stuff it is inherently an issue when you play against one that does - and takes full advantage of it.
The topic of the thread was more about one-dimensional armies and Tau are a single minded shoot-and-scoot projection of modern warfare tactics into the 41st millennium. I think it is a good thing that each army should have a distinctive play style and Tau certainly do, it is from that perspective good game design. Tau are not the only faction to be so single-minded, Khorne are the uncontested masters of obsessive single-minded focus. The thing is that with Khorne they totally want to smash face but that means their opponent does get to move and shoot first to try to avoid disaster. The difference with a single-minded shooting army such as Tau or AM is that shooting comes first in the game, an opponent does not usually get to counter it with assault until the mid-game and in a losing match-up they possibly never get there. This is when the game feels bad. AM would be in the same position as Tau but for the fact that their codex is simply not quite strong enough - the Forge World Renegades variant is stronger and creates some of the same negative play experiences as the strongest Tau lists. If AM generally were stronger we would be having this discussion about both codexes.
The other one-dimensional thing going on with competitive Tau is Monster Mash. This is mostly an issue with the competitive mindset when applied to a codex with internal balance problems. If the playtesting for 8th evens out the balance a bit we should see less giant Gundam and more other things like mechanized infantry and auxiliaries. Pretty much every codex has this issue at present, competitive SM lists are loaded with Grav rather than Missile Launchers, as are Eldar lists loaded down wit Scat Bikes for troops for fundamentally the same reasons: poor internal balance. It is inevitable that some things will be stronger for any given meta - there is an issue where some units in a codex are better than others for any conceivable meta.
The built in weakness of Tau is their need for synergy, their greatest strength is how good their synergies are. BS3 is really not very good on a shooting army and markerlights come in two forms - expensive or squishy. Most of the one-sided games I have played with my Tau have been because my opponent did not target the markerlights - or had a one-dimensional list with that could target or suppress them. My main observation from the last 3-4 years of gaming is that some players idea of a TAC list simply does not include suitable tools for dealing with Tau - because a lot of average players have a poor understanding of how to counter them or maybe just do not play against Tau often enough to care. There is a real sense of defeatism from those players - they assume that Tau shooting is mega-awesome and that there is nothing they can do about it except weather the storm. The players who play well against Tau are mostly those who have played Tau themselves. A couple of the current formations limit the impact of this weakness and for that reason I do think those are poor game design - it is the weaknesses that define an army as much as its strengths.
I'd like to see more kroots and vehicles, playing against 6-7 overpowered big robots is extremely boring. I hope riptides, stormsurges and ghostkeels get nerfed and the typical tau list becomes something with more variety, like a couple of piranhas, 1-2 blobs of kroots and 3-4 transports full of firewarriors, other than the big shooty guys.
I don't want big suits nerfed so much we never see them. I just want them to only have one or two be taken. As crazy as it sounds I got into the Tau army because I seen the Riptide and I was only familiar with the DoW1 roster. However I also liked the faction for everything else, but big robots were number one. Now I feel we're good on big robots for now. I want to see some stuff int he Crisis Suit to Ghostkeel size and no larger until next release. Or if they do a big suit balance it out with some other stuff. Give us a new aux or vehicles or a cool Tau equivalent to the Corvus Blackstar. Cool new drone soldiers or drone tanks or something!
It just got too much suit focused even though I like them. I also liked the Breachers a lot from the release as well.
Edit
Yeah Ghostkeels are good, but they are just not points efficient. You won't see them in tournaments. I would rather take Broadsides due to their cheapness. Or neither and grab sum Barracuda's or Riptides (fr a competitive list). Heck I would rather take Skyray gunships. I love Skyrays. Most undervalued unit in the codex that is really powerful. Considering the top Tau player at the LVO this year took four (I usually only take two or three to tone my lists down) says a lot. If only Hammerheads could be as strong.
happy_inquisitor wrote: The topic of the thread was more about one-dimensional armies and Tau are a single minded shoot-and-scoot projection of modern warfare tactics into the 41st millennium. I think it is a good thing that each army should have a distinctive play style and Tau certainly do, it is from that perspective good game design. Tau are not the only faction to be so single-minded, Khorne are the uncontested masters of obsessive single-minded focus. The thing is that with Khorne they totally want to smash face but that means their opponent does get to move and shoot first to try to avoid disaster. The difference with a single-minded shooting army such as Tau or AM is that shooting comes first in the game, an opponent does not usually get to counter it with assault until the mid-game and in a losing match-up they possibly never get there. This is when the game feels bad. AM would be in the same position as Tau but for the fact that their codex is simply not quite strong enough - the Forge World Renegades variant is stronger and creates some of the same negative play experiences as the strongest Tau lists. If AM generally were stronger we would be having this discussion about both codexes.
I always felt IG was stronger than Tau, but had a significantly higher barrier of entry. A $500 2000pt Tau list can include most of the stupid broken cheese, IG barely is even able to field 2000 for that little investment.
Blackie wrote: I'd like to see more kroots and vehicles, playing against 6-7 overpowered big robots is extremely boring. I hope riptides, stormsurges and ghostkeels get nerfed and the typical tau list becomes something with more variety, like a couple of piranhas, 1-2 blobs of kroots and 3-4 transports full of firewarriors, other than the big shooty guys.
Ghostkeels are pretty bad actually. Crisis Suits in general outperform it... Hell I bet even Fire Warriors outperform it.
Khorne are the uncontested masters of obsessive single-minded focus. The thing is that with Khorne they totally want to smash face but that means their opponent does get to move and shoot first to try to avoid disaster
And even then Khorne still wants shooty along with the Melee. There's a reason why there are Havoc Squads full of autocannons nicknamed "The Teeth of Khorne" who bleed enemies in the name of Khorne by using Dakka based weaponry like Heavy Bolters and the like.
I always felt IG was stronger than Tau, but had a significantly higher barrier of entry. A $500 2000pt Tau list can include most of the stupid broken cheese, IG barely is even able to field 2000 for that little investment.
IG with Forge World i would agree, although I think they just get better with larger games so 2500 point games favour them more than the current tournament standards of 1500-1850 points. Of course taking the FW stuff makes it really expensive in real money and begs the question of why you are not using the Renegades list which is objectively much better for pretty much the same models.
We still need to see a lot more about 8th but so far my impression is that the changes to shooting / cover / weapon profiles look to be tweaking shooting power down a little bit. Meanwhile the fixed to hit in melee will increase the lethality of close combat slightly and units with pistols (generally CC units or at least shooting/CC all-rounders) will have a little extra kick to them. I get the impression that taking away the tar-pit effect of combat (an utterly feel-bad game for shooting armies when it happens) has freed up the game designers to just tweak things a little in favour of combat - as we see more information we will learn if that is really the case. If it is then much of the issue with single-minded shooting armies will go away.
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ZebioLizard2 wrote: And even then Khorne still wants shooty along with the Melee. There's a reason why there are Havoc Squads full of autocannons nicknamed "The Teeth of Khorne" who bleed enemies in the name of Khorne by using Dakka based weaponry like Heavy Bolters and the like.
Khorne armies I have faced have lacked even that - which has led to really skewed games in which they struggled because they could not touch my markerlights until it was too late. Autocannons really put the hurt on marker drone squadrons - hydraulic fluid for the blood god
SHUPPET wrote: I recall the general opinion of Tau was "underpowered and cant compete", all the way until they were made to be the best dex at the time in their 6th release. So I'm not sure when you are talking to, the only way your post makes sense is if you are referring to 6th like the release of Tau wasn't maybe the most OP dex of the edition. If there was outlandish people complaining about an underpowered dex, congrats, happens to everyone. Happens even to my Nids right now. The statement still stands, how come everyone else is still capable of being objective but Tau players live in a rejected reality?
Not trying to be harsh to you either, as you clearly aren't one of the people downplaying. It is a generalization of the Tau community, and of course there will be plenty of exceptions to that just like every other generalization, and people who actually understand how their dex plays at the highest level. In my personal experience I've noticed players of certain armys often seem to share traits, Ork players are often boisterous and vocal, Dark Eldar players are commonly calculating and focused, Chaos players are the quintessential contrarians who won't hesitate to state how they see something from a completely different view to the commonly accepted truths, and Tau players shared trait seems to be an absurd downplay of their dex. Sad, but reinforced in absolutely every example of Tau discussion I've ever seen, even if it doesn't apply to every Tau player (some of you are true bros and I one of my Tau buddies is my favorite opponent).
I'm talking pre-6th, if that wasn't clear. I started playing 40k at the tail end of 4th, when "Fish of Fury" was a thing, and it felt to me that the general opinion on forums seemed to be "Tau are so OP!", with most of the complaints centering around pulse weapons with range superiority and JSJ tactics. I also think the hate probably had more to do with their background or aesthetic than the rules themselves back then, and people probably picked on the rules just because they needed every reason they could find to justify it. Because you know how the internet is, it isn't enough to just say "This isn't my thing", we have to prove that it's not only the Worst Thing Ever, but is somehow objectively bad for everyone. It's entirely possible a lot of it might have just been me, though, making things seem worse than they actually were.
You're right, though, just about every army you can imagine has been called "overpowered" at some point in time, even ones widely accepted as being weak or struggling, sometimes just because the other player was sour that they lost and looking for an excuse. The internet is also generally full of hate and negativity anyway and most of my interaction with other 40k players has been through the online forum or YouTube comment, so maybe most people were reasonable about it and I just saw the vocal, hateful internet minority which I assumed to be the majority opinion. It did seem to kinda lighten up as 5th edition progressed though, because 5th edition was very kind to Marines but not many other armies and it just got worse and worse as it went on, and I think people were realizing at the end that Tau and Eldar kinda needed a boost. 6th edition went way overboard though and they've been bullgak powerhouse armies ever since, that's inarguable as far as I'm concerned.
I also really want to see more Tau auxiliaries. It sucks that Kroot and Vespid are really all we have (and Vespid might as well not exist considering how often they're used), since that was supposed to be a big part of Tau background and there are so many minor xenos species in the game they could introduce through the Tau, which you could probably even introduce as mercenary options for other armies while you're at it, or make them playable in Shadow War. Since I imagine we're never going to get that plastic barracuda now I wouldn't mind if the next Tau update focused on maybe updating the devilfish chassis and then introducing new auxiliary forces. Getting Farsight in plastic would be cool too, and maybe a new kit for the XV-22 that Shadowsun uses so we can finally build the Tau commander from Dawn of War.
Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player. Also not shooting at enemies charging you is dumb. As dumb as the charger not attacking first was and is in 7th.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player. Also not shooting at enemies charging you is dumb. As dumb as the charger not attacking first was and is in 7th.
True.
But the ability to fire at every unit charging at them as long as you keep killing them/they keep falling on their face is just dumb.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player. Also not shooting at enemies charging you is dumb. As dumb as the charger not attacking first was and is in 7th.
To be fair, it's not a case of "not shooting at enemies charging you". That could be represented by your shooting phases. And you wouldn't just be stood there, no more so than a unit just leaving Deep Strike or exiting a vehicle, or entering from Reserve and not getting to charge. It's the squad forming up to take the charge, drawing combat weapons, putting aside their guns, throwing defensive grenades - they're not just sat there.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player.
That's OK. The rest of the 40k players can remember it for you. We can even remind you of it, if you like.
Edited to add: Imagine 3 units of pathfinders stationed behind units of fire warriors but in front of the suits. 6 units of ork charge in a furious Waaagh! Those 3 units of pathfinders gets to fire at ALL of the 6 charges, hitting the orks with 18 (18!!) units full of markerlight shots before any of the fire warriors and the suits get to fire. All of the fire warriors and suits get to fire on the first charge, then if any of the charges (by miracle) actually make it to combat, 1 fewer unit of warriors get to fire again on the remaining orks. The suits and bots to get fire 6 times each, all with full bs because the marker lights lit up the orks like Chrismas trees.
So really, in this case, we've multiplied the Tau shooting phase by a factor of six.
Gamgee wrote: I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.
Really guys? You got that from my post?
I state one "dimensional" in conjunction with "unbalance". I then broke down what I meant by "Unbalanced". None of it equaled "sucks" or "is good". Talk about reading something and missing the mark.........(ie, someone talks about the Raiders black and silver uniforms and you post, "Yeah, people like black and silver because Nazi's wore black and had silver SS pins!")
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player.
That's OK. The rest of the 40k players can remember it for you. We can even remind you of it, if you like.
Edited to add: Imagine 3 units of pathfinders stationed behind units of fire warriors but in front of the suits. 6 units of ork charge in a furious Waaagh! Those 3 units of pathfinders gets to fire at ALL of the 6 charges, hitting the orks with 18 (18!!) units full of markerlight shots before any of the fire warriors and the suits get to fire. All of the fire warriors and suits get to fire on the first charge, then if any of the charges (by miracle) actually make it to combat, 1 fewer unit of warriors get to fire again on the remaining orks. The suits and bots to get fire 6 times each, all with full bs because the marker lights lit up the orks like Chrismas trees.
So really, in this case, we've multiplied the Tau shooting phase by a factor of six.
Does anyone else see this as broken?
Combining outdated 7th edition rules with a small and incomplete preview of 8th edition rules as if the 7th edition stats and codex will be copy-pasted into 8th?
Yeah, I think "broken" is an appropriate adjective.
Gamgee wrote: I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.
Really guys? You got that from my post?
I state one "dimensional" in conjunction with "unbalance". I then broke down what I meant by "Unbalanced". None of it equaled "sucks" or "is good". Talk about reading something and missing the mark.........(ie, someone talks about the Raiders black and silver uniforms and you post, "Yeah, people like black and silver because Nazi's wore black and had silver SS pins!")
If you look at his posts he's been that way the entire thread when it comes to Tau.
I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
He started in with a strong bias.
But yeah maybe you'll get through to the other players in this thread.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player. Also not shooting at enemies charging you is dumb. As dumb as the charger not attacking first was and is in 7th.
True.
But the ability to fire at every unit charging at them as long as you keep killing them/they keep falling on their face is just dumb.
Gamgee wrote: I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.
Really guys? You got that from my post?
I state one "dimensional" in conjunction with "unbalance". I then broke down what I meant by "Unbalanced". None of it equaled "sucks" or "is good". Talk about reading something and missing the mark.........(ie, someone talks about the Raiders black and silver uniforms and you post, "Yeah, people like black and silver because Nazi's wore black and had silver SS pins!")
If you look at his posts he's been that way the entire thread when it comes to Tau.
I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
He started in with a strong bias.
But yeah maybe you'll get through to the other players in this thread.
Khorne is exactly as unbalanced and one dimensional as Tau just, yunno, melee, but the conversation was focused on Tau and how to fix Tau when there are plenty of terribly designed one dimensional armies in 40k (GK, Tzeentch, Khorne, Tau, Tyranids, even SoB no matter how much I love them) But Tau seems to get an unfair amount of critisism because they're good and they're not chaos(which is basically a magical anti-hate forcefield when THOSE armies are good).
You may not of said you were complaining about Tau because they're good, but the implication is pretty clear when you single them out in a sea of terrible boring armies.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player.
That's OK. The rest of the 40k players can remember it for you. We can even remind you of it, if you like.
Edited to add: Imagine 3 units of pathfinders stationed behind units of fire warriors but in front of the suits. 6 units of ork charge in a furious Waaagh! Those 3 units of pathfinders gets to fire at ALL of the 6 charges, hitting the orks with 18 (18!!) units full of markerlight shots before any of the fire warriors and the suits get to fire. All of the fire warriors and suits get to fire on the first charge, then if any of the charges (by miracle) actually make it to combat, 1 fewer unit of warriors get to fire again on the remaining orks. The suits and bots to get fire 6 times each, all with full bs because the marker lights lit up the orks like Chrismas trees.
So really, in this case, we've multiplied the Tau shooting phase by a factor of six.
Does anyone else see this as broken?
Why are only 6 orks charging half the Tau army? Your cherry picking so bad or one of the worse player ever. My only opponent's I've ever fought were swarm armies. Swarm ig, nids, and orks. It was never ever just one squad charging me. I would take Kroot most games over firewarriors. Or only a single small squad of fire warriors to help.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player.
That's OK. The rest of the 40k players can remember it for you. We can even remind you of it, if you like.
Edited to add: Imagine 3 units of pathfinders stationed behind units of fire warriors but in front of the suits. 6 units of ork charge in a furious Waaagh! Those 3 units of pathfinders gets to fire at ALL of the 6 charges, hitting the orks with 18 (18!!) units full of markerlight shots before any of the fire warriors and the suits get to fire. All of the fire warriors and suits get to fire on the first charge, then if any of the charges (by miracle) actually make it to combat, 1 fewer unit of warriors get to fire again on the remaining orks. The suits and bots to get fire 6 times each, all with full bs because the marker lights lit up the orks like Chrismas trees.
So really, in this case, we've multiplied the Tau shooting phase by a factor of six.
Does anyone else see this as broken?
Why are only 6 orks charging half the Tau army? Your cherry picking so bad or one of the worse player ever. My only opponent's I've ever fought were swarm armies. Swarm ig, nids, and orks. It was never ever just one squad charging me. I would take Kroot most games over firewarriors. Or only a single small squad of fire warriors to help.
Err, six UNITS of Orks? Not six induvidual Orks, as you make out?
Oh ah. All I got to say is your fighting a dumb as gak Tau player if he is wasting markerlight charges on those. He also brought terrible Pathfinders which are easily kill able by just about anything.
Also if you have not thought of a way to thin out his markerlights in your army your a bad player man. I keep telling my friends over and over AND OVER AND OVER (to the point where no one plays with me anymore) to just shoot the markerlights and kill them.
The only player to listen was the Tyranids player who nearly won that game as a result. From then on he tried to go for them more often and stood more of a fighting chance. Heck he was the only player to ever beat me in my short 40k career. So he had it in him. If he studied the rest of my army more and learned to prioritize what to kill after he ML went down he would have done better.
Still he didn't want to take anymore help after that so he never won again and I never did get to upgrade my list to a more cheesy one.
That's my experience with 40k players as a whole. Terrible. And they are so bad they don't want to actually learn new things when I tried. Heck I even suggested swapping armies for a game.
They wouldn't hear it. That's all I've learned from the dumbass community that hates Tau players irrationally.
I tried toning down my lists to rail rifle broadsides and vespids and just playing to objective and not the pure shooting game. Still couldn't lose. The IG and Ork players were laughing at how ineffective my railrifle was and yet that didn't stop me from winning. Heck I even charged my Riptide up the field one day just to watch it die for once. Just because I was so bored. I was trying to lose and couldn't do it.
So if your that tier if player then lord help you son your probably never going to get good.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player...
So.. you only played two games of 7th edition then...?
I can't remember a game I had where I -didn't- hit with my overwatch - and I don't play gunline. Look, I'm with you, I don't want Tau nerfed into uselessness because of internet hate, but lets not pretend that we don't have the best overwatch ability currently available in the game.
Trying to hand-wave it away with statements like that aren't doing our argument any favors, on top of making you seem woefully uninformed about the strengths of the Tau.
When most of your army is kroot and mobile suits all over the board and skyrays in the back I NEVER used that ability.
I even did a super heavy terrain series of games and still won. Other then two losses to my 40k career when I've never lost. One was when I was beginning my career and learning the rules and the other was a tough son of a bitch of a fight against that Tyranid player who won by the skin of his teeth.
I can't get any more games now. 24 wins and 2 losses. Not even trying to win half of them. I retired form playing to just collecting.
If it helps my friends liken me to Lelouch and Tywin Lannister. If there was a way for me to get to serious tournaments with actual competition I would probably be there.
Edit
As a matter of fact I found that supporting fire was so worthless due to its highly random nature I designed my army not to use it. More of a last resort than an actual tactic.
Gamgee wrote: Oh ah. All I got to say is your fighting a dumb as gak Tau player if he is wasting markerlight charges on those.
It's free Overwatch? What else would he shoot with: pulse carbines? Especially when the markerlights only need to hit, and then they exponentially improve the shooting of the other units Overwatching?
If you didn't use Markerlights in that situation, I would be genuinely confused about your quality of generalship.
He also brought terrible Pathfinders which are easily kill able by just about anything.
Lasguns? Grot blastas? Or is that just hyperbole?
And again, how else do you get Markerlights? Marker drones? Their BS isn't too good, and die easier than Pathfinders, IIRC. And, I think they also lack Supporting Fire, which is what makes a Marker-ed up Tau Overwatch so effective.
Also if you have not thought of a way to thin out his markerlights in your army your a bad player man. I keep telling my friends over and over AND OVER AND OVER (to the point where no one plays with me anymore) to just shoot the markerlights and kill them.
That's all well and good if you can actually do so. Perhaps the powerful Tau long ranged shooting from Riptides, Stormsurges, HYMP and SMS have thinned out the shooting potential of an already poor-at-shooting Ork list, making retaliation against the Pathfinders, who are most likely behind the Fire Warriors, and then benefiting from a cover save, negligent.
Again, we're looking at this situation in a vacuum, so your "advice" isn't applicable. To a real game, maybe, but in the scenario, we have no knowledge of the previous shooting phase, and only that six units of Orks charged a gunline of Tau.
And again, there may be multiple other reasons people don't play with you, not just that. I don't know, I don't play with you.
The only player to listen was the Tyranids player who nearly won that game as a result. From then on he tried to go for them more often and stood more of a fighting chance. Heck he was the only player to ever beat me in my short 40k career. So he had it in him. If he studied the rest of my army more and learned to prioritize what to kill after he ML went down he would have done better.
Still he didn't want to take anymore help after that so he never won again and I never did get to upgrade my list to a more cheesy one.
As far as I knew, Tyranids have better shooting than Orks. So, how do you advise Orks to outshoot Tau, with your seeming expertise in your "short 40k career"
That's my experience with 40k players as a whole. Terrible. And they are so bad they don't want to actually learn new things when I tried. Heck I even suggested swapping armies for a game.
They wouldn't hear it. That's all I've learned from the dumbass community that hates Tau players irrationally.
Or, perhaps Tau are genuinely so unlike every other faction that they hard-counter many threats, and are genuinely that powerful? Or has that not crossed your mind, and instead, it must be the entire "dumbass community" (really appreciating the blanket statement about an entire community of gamers there ) that is in the wrong.
I tried toning down my lists to rail rifle broadsides and vespids and just playing to objective and not the pure shooting game. Still couldn't lose. The IG and Ork players were laughing at how ineffective my railrifle was and yet that didn't stop me from winning. Heck I even charged my Riptide up the field one day just to watch it die for once. Just because I was so bored. I was trying to lose and couldn't do it.
So if your that tier if player then lord help you son your probably never going to get good.
Or, MAYBE, it's just that the Tau, even when using Vespid and Rail Rifle Broadsides, are still beyond the power level of IG and Orks. I've eked out victories against competent Tau players, but if I had to do it with Orks, I feel sure I'd have little chance. Orks are not a shooty army, and the sheer firepower Tau can put out would stop so many charges flat out. Just see the example given above for how bad it'd be.
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Gamgee wrote: I can't get any more games now. 24 wins and 2 losses. Not even trying to win half of them.
And was that all with Tau?
If you want to prove generalship, and that it's not the army that's doing all the heavy lifting, try playing Orks, or CSM, or Blood Angels, as Martel would propose.
Actually, Marker-Drones are generally superior to Pathfinders for several reasons
1) Better toughness (4) and Sv (4+).
2) Relentless Jet Pack infantry; so they can reposition easier. And, iirc, if taken in the Drone-Net formation, they benefit from +1 BS, so have the same BS as Pathfinders.
3) Can be joined by a Commander w/ a Drone Controller for BS5 markerlights
Most of your 'competetive' Tau lists will have no Pathfinders in their army at all, just Marker Drones.
Vryce wrote: Actually, Marker-Drones are generally superior to Pathfinders for several reasons
1) Better toughness (4) and Sv (4+).
2) Relentless Jet Pack infantry; so they can reposition easier. And, iirc, if taken in the Drone-Net formation, they benefit from +1 BS, so have the same BS as Pathfinders.
3) Can be joined by a Commander w/ a Drone Controller for BS5 markerlights
Most of your 'competetive' Tau lists will have no Pathfinders in their army at all, just Marker Drones.
Ah, I will concede the durability point. Good catch!
However, excluding Formations and added Characters, which could improve Pathfinders in similar ways, Drones have less BS (not relevant for Overwatch though), and AFAIK lack Supporting Fire.
Vryce wrote: Actually, Marker-Drones are generally superior to Pathfinders for several reasons
1) Better toughness (4) and Sv (4+).
2) Relentless Jet Pack infantry; so they can reposition easier. And, iirc, if taken in the Drone-Net formation, they benefit from +1 BS, so have the same BS as Pathfinders.
3) Can be joined by a Commander w/ a Drone Controller for BS5 markerlights
Most of your 'competetive' Tau lists will have no Pathfinders in their army at all, just Marker Drones.
Ah, I will concede the durability point. Good catch!
However, excluding Formations and added Characters, which could improve Pathfinders in similar ways, Drones have less BS (not relevant for Overwatch though), and AFAIK lack Supporting Fire.
Drones do have Supporting Fire. And the lower BS is countered by the fact that they're Relentless, but you're right, that doesn't matter in the case of Overwatch.
I even did a super heavy terrain series of games and still won. Other then two losses to my 40k career when I've never lost. One was when I was beginning my career and learning the rules and the other was a tough son of a bitch of a fight against that Tyranid player who won by the skin of his teeth.
So your argument for Tau not being overpowered is that ever since you learned the rules, you've only ever lost one game ever, and even that was close as hell?
Maybe your rejection of reality is why your opponents wont play against you anymore. I knew a Tau player who was exactly the same as you, I put it to you to pick up your friends Orks and play against your own Tau army. Believe it or not, there is much more strategy than just "focus the pathfinders" especially if you've positioned them sensibly, and contrary to what you seem to believe on the matter, the army doesn't just fold the instant the pathfinders get mopped, which is usually multiple turns in and heavy losses for the armies you described. BS3 is not a death sentence, the army can perform fine with it at that stage, pretty much everything in Nids is BS3. Orks too but at least they have better assault.
Vryce wrote: Actually, Marker-Drones are generally superior to Pathfinders for several reasons
1) Better toughness (4) and Sv (4+).
2) Relentless Jet Pack infantry; so they can reposition easier. And, iirc, if taken in the Drone-Net formation, they benefit from +1 BS, so have the same BS as Pathfinders.
3) Can be joined by a Commander w/ a Drone Controller for BS5 markerlights
Most of your 'competetive' Tau lists will have no Pathfinders in their army at all, just Marker Drones.
Ah, I will concede the durability point. Good catch!
However, excluding Formations and added Characters, which could improve Pathfinders in similar ways, Drones have less BS (not relevant for Overwatch though), and AFAIK lack Supporting Fire.
You have no idea what your talking about do you. A Tau Commander upgraded can buff his drones to BS 5. Then join a unit of them. Since his drones are his equipment he can split fire on a key target and then the other 4 drones in the squad markerdrone someone else. It was common before drone net formation. Also all of your examples are just in a vacuum as well and prove nothing just as much as mine. Also I don't have any of those codices and its been so long I can't even begin to remember what they have to kill marker lights. All I know is I was not given the chance to swap armies to try and see it from the other side.
So hey I can't help it if the 40k fanbase has a stick so far up its ass I can't even try learn other armies. My community in particular is extremely hostile. I met another nids player and complimented his army. We were talking for about 10 mins and him and his 3 friends. Then as soon as I mention I play Tau they all go stone faced and say they don't play Tau and don't want to talk to me anymore.
What the gak am I supposed to do man? What next Tau player go straight into the incinerator next?
40k community can rip itself to pieces for all I care now. The Tau are not overpowered. The orks are underpowered and need buffs. The Nids too. That is what you should be selling the whole 40k community and you would have more support. I would be there with you. But when you go and pick on one race as if it's the most powerful thing and nothing else your just being discriminatory. If your pathetic armies can't even dent the balanced Tau then I can only imagine how ineffective they would be against Eldar, Chaos Deamons, and super friends death stars.
You can't compare things like Khorne to Tau and say 'see! they're both one dimensional!' Why? Because Tau counters the actual strategy you'd use against them. They're a long range, squishy (well, in melee) army that's pretty static. So deep striking seems like the best counter to that right? They have more skyfire/interceptor than any army. You WILL lose drop pods. That leaves you with running up the board, against the longest ranged, shootiest army in the game. You are always fighting on their terms. Khorne are walking up the board with 5+ saves. Might as well be orks at that point.
But this is all irrelevant anyways when the new edition drops, so lets just put our torches and pitchforks away until then if we can.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player. Also not shooting at enemies charging you is dumb. As dumb as the charger not attacking first was and is in 7th.
True.
But the ability to fire at every unit charging at them as long as you keep killing them/they keep falling on their face is just dumb.
Gamgee wrote: I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.
Really guys? You got that from my post?
I state one "dimensional" in conjunction with "unbalance". I then broke down what I meant by "Unbalanced". None of it equaled "sucks" or "is good". Talk about reading something and missing the mark.........(ie, someone talks about the Raiders black and silver uniforms and you post, "Yeah, people like black and silver because Nazi's wore black and had silver SS pins!")
If you look at his posts he's been that way the entire thread when it comes to Tau.
I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.
He started in with a strong bias.
But yeah maybe you'll get through to the other players in this thread.
Khorne is exactly as unbalanced and one dimensional as Tau just, yunno, melee, but the conversation was focused on Tau and how to fix Tau when there are plenty of terribly designed one dimensional armies in 40k (GK, Tzeentch, Khorne, Tau, Tyranids, even SoB no matter how much I love them) But Tau seems to get an unfair amount of critisism because they're good and they're not chaos(which is basically a magical anti-hate forcefield when THOSE armies are good).
You may not of said you were complaining about Tau because they're good, but the implication is pretty clear when you single them out in a sea of terrible boring armies.
The implication is pretty clear? I am talking about Tau because I play them....I don't play Khorne = hence a discussion about Tau and not one about Khorne....................Talk about someone blinded by their own issues.
The problem with Tau is that, especially now, their entire army design is one dimensional. They do one thing and they do it better than almost all other armies, and the only time they move is to take objectives. A faction that mechanically ignores 2 main phases of the game is just horribly designed and incredibly boring to play against it- add up the fact that it's often overpowered as hell against mid-tier armies and you get something so bad you're forced to boycott anybody who doesn't play a heavily nerfed list. There's no point in playing a game you know you have a 70% or greater chance of losing.
In all honesty what would really help is if Tau didn't get to avoid the gets hot rule. I imagine if Fire Warriors and Battlesuits ran the risk of exploding if you ran an all-gun army and new melee units were added to the Tau similar to Farsight, you wouldn't see Tau players pitch a tent on one side of the board.
And Khorne armies are not one dimensional like the Tau. Not only do they move around a lot, but they don't just engage in melee. They shoot quite a fair bit as well. The only thing they do is ignore the psychic phase, like Necrons.
Yeah, the hate for Tau is more a meme and community thing that based in facts. People hated Tau from the moment they hit the setting. Both from their playstile and their aesthetic and fluff.
When they introduce the OP combos with Riptides and Stormsurges all get worse. I'm lucky that I play with a narrative crow and I always play my Tau's without the OP things.
It helps that they are full mature persons that take this as a hobby, and don't follow the internet culture and take this game more seriously that what it is.
They don't need to make Tau a versatile army to fix them. Adding meele units, more than a token defensive meele one is a very bad thing. Tau's only need to be fixed, to don't have broken combos and make usable the other 70% of their unit roster. The "Movile, medium range-shooting with strong meele and elite troops" are the Eldar.
As a Tau player I move about a lot as well. More so than my IG friend at any rate. Actually I was probably the most mobile player running all around the map.
Gamgee wrote: As a Tau player I move about a lot as well. More so than my IG friend at any rate. Actually I was probably the most mobile player running all around the map.
Imperial Guard is the most static army in the game, much much more than Tau. But they suck, and are loved for their aesthetics and fluff. Thats why nobody use the "they are boring because they are static" argument against them.
Personally, I like my Tau movile too. Devilfish, Breacher teams, Stealth Suits, etc... but I don't want them to be the Shooty-Movile army entirely because thats what Eldars are.
Vryce wrote: Actually, Marker-Drones are generally superior to Pathfinders for several reasons
1) Better toughness (4) and Sv (4+).
2) Relentless Jet Pack infantry; so they can reposition easier. And, iirc, if taken in the Drone-Net formation, they benefit from +1 BS, so have the same BS as Pathfinders.
3) Can be joined by a Commander w/ a Drone Controller for BS5 markerlights
Most of your 'competetive' Tau lists will have no Pathfinders in their army at all, just Marker Drones.
Ah, I will concede the durability point. Good catch!
However, excluding Formations and added Characters, which could improve Pathfinders in similar ways, Drones have less BS (not relevant for Overwatch though), and AFAIK lack Supporting Fire.
You have no idea what your talking about do you. A Tau Commander upgraded can buff his drones to BS 5. Then join a unit of them. Since his drones are his equipment he can split fire on a key target and then the other 4 drones in the squad markerdrone someone else. It was common before drone net formation. Also all of your examples are just in a vacuum as well and prove nothing just as much as mine. Also I don't have any of those codices and its been so long I can't even begin to remember what they have to kill marker lights. All I know is I was not given the chance to swap armies to try and see it from the other side.
Yes, I'll admit I'm not solid on Tau drone - I rarely face them. What I do know is that your BS upgrades are useless in Overwatch, and the general essence of the post was that it was the MARKERLIGHTS, not the Pathfinders, that made Tau overwatch so powerful.
So, let's address the actual Overwatch point then, yes?
And now we see that you actually have no idea what Orks (As per the example given) could even use in this case to kill off the Drones. Let me just say that Ork shooting is, generally, one of the worse in the game. Given that your Markerlight bearers in this situation are close enough to the Fire Warriors to benefit from Supporting Fire, they can't really be charged out, without this situation happening, and any shooting will be negligent, as the Tau player can take out the few decent Ork shooting units with Stormsurges, Seeker Missiles, etc etc.
So, any hints for the Ork player?
So hey I can't help it if the 40k fanbase has a stick so far up its ass I can't even try learn other armies.
What was stopping you learning other armies? And again, loving the generalisation.
My community in particular is extremely hostile. I met another nids player and complimented his army. We were talking for about 10 mins and him and his 3 friends. Then as soon as I mention I play Tau they all go stone faced and say they don't play Tau and don't want to talk to me anymore.
What the gak am I supposed to do man? What next Tau player go straight into the incinerator next?
Talk to them, and understand their problem, instead of insulting them en masse? I don't know, I would need full context to judge that.
40k community can rip itself to pieces for all I care now. The Tau are not overpowered. The orks are underpowered and need buffs. The Nids too. That is what you should be selling the whole 40k community and you would have more support. I would be there with you. But when you go and pick on one race as if it's the most powerful thing and nothing else your just being discriminatory. If your pathetic armies can't even dent the balanced Tau then I can only imagine how ineffective they would be against Eldar, Chaos Deamons, and super friends death stars.
I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
I am selling Ork buffs, Nid buffs, CSM buffs etc etc - I'm selling balance all over. I'm not saying the Tau are the ONLY issue in the game, that would be reductionist of me. I am, however, admitting they're not perfectly balanced, and not the paragon of balance this game should aspire to.
Do you honestly believe that Tau are the single most balanced army in 40k? Asking without any malice, is that your opinion?
Gamgee wrote: Oh ah. All I got to say is your fighting a dumb as gak Tau player if he is wasting markerlight charges on those. He also brought terrible Pathfinders which are easily kill able by just about anything.
those are the markerlights he is using in OVERWATCH. On his turn he can fire them at whatever he wants. This 18 units of firing are on my turn.
Also if you have not thought of a way to thin out his markerlights in your army your a bad player man. I keep telling my friends over and over AND OVER AND OVER (to the point where no one plays with me anymore) to just shoot the markerlights and kill them.
agreed. But their armor and cover stack, so they will likely have 2+ or 3+ saves. I'd love to be able to kill those at range. You tau players seem to think we can shoot that far. we can't. They are out of range. Do we need to tell you that OVER AND OVER?
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player...
So.. you only played two games of 7th edition then...?
I can't remember a game I had where I -didn't- hit with my overwatch - and I don't play gunline. Look, I'm with you, I don't want Tau nerfed into uselessness because of internet hate, but lets not pretend that we don't have the best overwatch ability currently available in the game.
Trying to hand-wave it away with statements like that aren't doing our argument any favors, on top of making you seem woefully uninformed about the strengths of the Tau.
Have you ever done the math for Overwatch? Like ever?
It's such a negligible threat that it should almost not exist, but it makes sense as a mechanic.
Gamgee wrote: Yeah I can barely every remember hitting anything with my overwatch as a Tau player.
That's OK. The rest of the 40k players can remember it for you. We can even remind you of it, if you like.
Edited to add: Imagine 3 units of pathfinders stationed behind units of fire warriors but in front of the suits. 6 units of ork charge in a furious Waaagh! Those 3 units of pathfinders gets to fire at ALL of the 6 charges, hitting the orks with 18 (18!!) units full of markerlight shots before any of the fire warriors and the suits get to fire. All of the fire warriors and suits get to fire on the first charge, then if any of the charges (by miracle) actually make it to combat, 1 fewer unit of warriors get to fire again on the remaining orks. The suits and bots to get fire 6 times each, all with full bs because the marker lights lit up the orks like Chrismas trees.
So really, in this case, we've multiplied the Tau shooting phase by a factor of six.
Does anyone else see this as broken?
It's not just Tau. Dark Angels are also a massive head ache when it comes to overwatch. So are wraithguard with D flamers.
Personally, I would have preferred them to have taken overwatch out of the game altogether.
Wyzilla wrote: The problem with Tau is that, especially now, their entire army design is one dimensional. They do one thing and they do it better than almost all other armies, and the only time they move is to take objectives. A faction that mechanically ignores 2 main phases of the game is just horribly designed and incredibly boring to play against it- add up the fact that it's often overpowered as hell against mid-tier armies and you get something so bad you're forced to boycott anybody who doesn't play a heavily nerfed list. There's no point in playing a game you know you have a 70% or greater chance of losing.
In all honesty what would really help is if Tau didn't get to avoid the gets hot rule. I imagine if Fire Warriors and Battlesuits ran the risk of exploding if you ran an all-gun army and new melee units were added to the Tau similar to Farsight, you wouldn't see Tau players pitch a tent on one side of the board.
And Khorne armies are not one dimensional like the Tau. Not only do they move around a lot, but they don't just engage in melee. They shoot quite a fair bit as well. The only thing they do is ignore the psychic phase, like Necrons.
Emphasis mine.
Tau have always been one dimensional in design. They were introduced with the idea that they, as a species, found close combat to be an anathema to their way of war. So, they had their allies, the Kroot, for that. Unfortunately, they were horribly designed for it. They had no save, no real 'combat' ability, and had Rapid Fire weapons. At best, they were a screening unit. Tau have had shooting as their bread and butter for ~16yrs now. The basic rules have just come to a position that drastically highlights this particular way of war. And of course, the codex writers jumped the proverbial shark, as it were, when writing their 6th/7th ed codeci.
And Tau don't get to avoid the Gets Hot! rule. Our plasma weaponry is lower strength then Imperial variants, so therefore, does not Get Hot!. All the other weaponry we have that does Get Hot!, unless it is twin-linked, or boosted to the point of re-rolls for high BS, we have to worry about killing/hurting us too. And we aren't the only army that has twin-linked Gets Hot! weapons, so that's not all on us either.
Also, please stop trying to shove 'melee suits' down our throats. Very few of us want that (at least the players that enjoy the Tau for their fluff certainly don't). We don't "Set up a tent" across the table from you because we can't engage in melee. We play to the strengths in our army that the current rules encourage. Speaking for myself only here, castling up in my deployment zone makes for a hellaciously boring game. I'm far more mobile than most marine armies I face, actually.
I've said it many times in this thread, but those of us who actually love the army for its fluff, are as unhappy with the ultra-suit spam and the ungodly formation benefits we enjoy that many of you are - and those of us with an ounce of sportsmanship have actively decided not to use the grossly ridiculous offenders.
And now we see that you actually have no idea what Orks (As per the example given) could even use in this case to kill off the Drones. Let me just say that Ork shooting is, generally, one of the worse in the game. Given that your Markerlight bearers in this situation are close enough to the Fire Warriors to benefit from Supporting Fire, they can't really be charged out, without this situation happening, and any shooting will be negligent, as the Tau player can take out the few decent Ork shooting units with Stormsurges, Seeker Missiles, etc etc.
Well, Ork Lootas are a good shooting unit to take out any markerlight unit as they outrange the markerlight and also negate saves. So then it is a matter of getting them into position and keeping them alive. Or there is Lobbas. Again they outrange markerlights, they also negate pathfinder armour and could potentially negate cover depending on what cover the pathfinders have. They don't require LOS either.
So then it is just a matter of keeping those units alive, which is best done by distracting the scary stuff with your scary CC stuff loaded in battlewagons and keeping their AV14 pointing at the Tau army. Hold them back out of markerlight range until you've weakened the markerlight units. The Tau player will have to react in order to try and take out the units hitting their markerlight sources, which can pull their units out of position and into the range of your own guns.
And now we see that you actually have no idea what Orks (As per the example given) could even use in this case to kill off the Drones. Let me just say that Ork shooting is, generally, one of the worse in the game. Given that your Markerlight bearers in this situation are close enough to the Fire Warriors to benefit from Supporting Fire, they can't really be charged out, without this situation happening, and any shooting will be negligent, as the Tau player can take out the few decent Ork shooting units with Stormsurges, Seeker Missiles, etc etc.
Well, Ork Lootas are a good shooting unit to take out any markerlight unit as they outrange the markerlight and also negate saves. So then it is a matter of getting them into position and keeping them alive. Or there is Lobbas. Again they outrange markerlights, they also negate pathfinder armour and could potentially negate cover depending on what cover the pathfinders have. They don't require LOS either.
So then it is just a matter of keeping those units alive, which is best done by distracting the scary stuff with your scary CC stuff loaded in battlewagons and keeping their AV14 pointing at the Tau army. Hold them back out of markerlight range until you've weakened the markerlight units. The Tau player will have to react in order to try and take out the units hitting their markerlight sources, which can pull their units out of position and into the range of your own guns.
Yeaahhh in practice that doesn't work well.. AV14 pointed at the enemy tends to be avoided by the simple ability to jet around to pick at the much weaker sides and provide them with easy kills, and many of the better weapons on Tau are able to reach Loota range and no cover saves will protect Da looterz. Who are still beholden to that awful D3 mechanic of how much shots you'll be able to plink at them with BS2.
Tau are not fair. They are more fair than some Imperial death stars and certain eldar builds. That's about it. They have severely undercosted MCs at their disposal that shoot as well as fight in CC.
They also have access to too many low AP blasts, making them strong vs units that already sucked, and making their "weakness" other MCs, which were already too good.
Their shooting output is just far too high for the point investment of their units in a shooting-dominant rule set. Being weak to melee that never happens isn't a weakness. And even then, monster mash can beat a lot of other lists in CC.
Wyzilla wrote: The problem with Tau is that, especially now, their entire army design is one dimensional. They do one thing and they do it better than almost all other armies, and the only time they move is to take objectives. A faction that mechanically ignores 2 main phases of the game is just horribly designed and incredibly boring to play against it- add up the fact that it's often overpowered as hell against mid-tier armies and you get something so bad you're forced to boycott anybody who doesn't play a heavily nerfed list. There's no point in playing a game you know you have a 70% or greater chance of losing.
In all honesty what would really help is if Tau didn't get to avoid the gets hot rule. I imagine if Fire Warriors and Battlesuits ran the risk of exploding if you ran an all-gun army and new melee units were added to the Tau similar to Farsight, you wouldn't see Tau players pitch a tent on one side of the board.
And Khorne armies are not one dimensional like the Tau. Not only do they move around a lot, but they don't just engage in melee. They shoot quite a fair bit as well. The only thing they do is ignore the psychic phase, like Necrons.
Emphasis mine.
Tau have always been one dimensional in design. They were introduced with the idea that they, as a species, found close combat to be an anathema to their way of war. So, they had their allies, the Kroot, for that. Unfortunately, they were horribly designed for it. They had no save, no real 'combat' ability, and had Rapid Fire weapons. At best, they were a screening unit. Tau have had shooting as their bread and butter for ~16yrs now. The basic rules have just come to a position that drastically highlights this particular way of war. And of course, the codex writers jumped the proverbial shark, as it were, when writing their 6th/7th ed codeci.
And Tau don't get to avoid the Gets Hot! rule. Our plasma weaponry is lower strength then Imperial variants, so therefore, does not Get Hot!. All the other weaponry we have that does Get Hot!, unless it is twin-linked, or boosted to the point of re-rolls for high BS, we have to worry about killing/hurting us too. And we aren't the only army that has twin-linked Gets Hot! weapons, so that's not all on us either.
Also, please stop trying to shove 'melee suits' down our throats. Very few of us want that (at least the players that enjoy the Tau for their fluff certainly don't). We don't "Set up a tent" across the table from you because we can't engage in melee. We play to the strengths in our army that the current rules encourage. Speaking for myself only here, castling up in my deployment zone makes for a hellaciously boring game. I'm far more mobile than most marine armies I face, actually.
I've said it many times in this thread, but those of us who actually love the army for its fluff, are as unhappy with the ultra-suit spam and the ungodly formation benefits we enjoy that many of you are - and those of us with an ounce of sportsmanship have actively decided not to use the grossly ridiculous offenders.
I've never seen Tau really jump around in games except with suits. Most of the time they sit behind some cover or a wall and shoot, venturing out to seize objectives. And I'm talking about perhaps giving pulse rifles -1 rend but at the cost of gets hot, as it would very least incentivize the player to not act in that matter, and adding melee units allows the Tau to function normally instead of being some weird one-off. The problem with Tau is that building them from the start to ignore most phases of the game is a mistake and bad game design. When you make a game, everything should participate as much as possible. Creating a faction that plays so you ignore multiple aspects of the game itself means you've made an army for the wrong game. An army that purely shoots at things doesn't belong in 40k, it belongs in Flames of War.
Adding melee units isn't just for the benefit of the Tau, it's adding them for the benefit of opponents as well so Tau aren't boring as hell to fight/a shooting gallery.
Narratively you can easily spin it as the Farsight Enclaves realizing that sticking power swords on their Battlesuits isn't a bad idea after Mont'ka.
And now we see that you actually have no idea what Orks (As per the example given) could even use in this case to kill off the Drones. Let me just say that Ork shooting is, generally, one of the worse in the game. Given that your Markerlight bearers in this situation are close enough to the Fire Warriors to benefit from Supporting Fire, they can't really be charged out, without this situation happening, and any shooting will be negligent, as the Tau player can take out the few decent Ork shooting units with Stormsurges, Seeker Missiles, etc etc.
Well, Ork Lootas are a good shooting unit to take out any markerlight unit as they outrange the markerlight and also negate saves. So then it is a matter of getting them into position and keeping them alive. Or there is Lobbas. Again they outrange markerlights, they also negate pathfinder armour and could potentially negate cover depending on what cover the pathfinders have. They don't require LOS either.
So then it is just a matter of keeping those units alive, which is best done by distracting the scary stuff with your scary CC stuff loaded in battlewagons and keeping their AV14 pointing at the Tau army. Hold them back out of markerlight range until you've weakened the markerlight units. The Tau player will have to react in order to try and take out the units hitting their markerlight sources, which can pull their units out of position and into the range of your own guns.
Yeaahhh in practice that doesn't work well.. AV14 pointed at the enemy tends to be avoided by the simple ability to jet around to pick at the much weaker sides and provide them with easy kills, and many of the better weapons on Tau are able to reach Loota range and no cover saves will protect Da looterz. Who are still beholden to that awful D3 mechanic of how much shots you'll be able to plink at them with BS2.
Tau firepower is actually often localised between the 24" to 42" range bracket (6" move and 18" burst cannon and 6" move and 36" missile pod). Their innate Ignores Cover weaponry has a max range of 42" (12" move and then 30" SMS).
Tau weapons with ranges of 48" or greater are the HRR, Railgun, Ion Cannon, Ion Accelerator, Seeker Missile, Longshot Pulse Rifle, Pulse Driver Cannon, Destroyer Missile and Cluster Rocket System.
Out of them, the HRR is never used, Railgun and Ion Cannon also basically never sees the table, Seeker Missile is a one shot, one use only krak missile, Longshot is just a sniper rifle and only available on one unit which is competing with Broadsides. The Ion Accelerator is only present on one unit in the Tau army (Riptide), admittedly one which is often spammed. The Pulse Driver Cannon, Destroyer Missile and CRS are all on the same unit (Stormsurge) and none of them have innate ignores cover. Neither of the units with access to the most widely used guns with 48" range or greater can benefit from ignores cover except from markerlights. They cannot get it from a commander as they are monstrous creatures and none of the formation bonuses give it to them.
Wyzilla wrote: The problem with Tau is that, especially now, their entire army design is one dimensional. They do one thing and they do it better than almost all other armies, and the only time they move is to take objectives. A faction that mechanically ignores 2 main phases of the game is just horribly designed and incredibly boring to play against it- add up the fact that it's often overpowered as hell against mid-tier armies and you get something so bad you're forced to boycott anybody who doesn't play a heavily nerfed list. There's no point in playing a game you know you have a 70% or greater chance of losing.
In all honesty what would really help is if Tau didn't get to avoid the gets hot rule. I imagine if Fire Warriors and Battlesuits ran the risk of exploding if you ran an all-gun army and new melee units were added to the Tau similar to Farsight, you wouldn't see Tau players pitch a tent on one side of the board.
And Khorne armies are not one dimensional like the Tau. Not only do they move around a lot, but they don't just engage in melee. They shoot quite a fair bit as well. The only thing they do is ignore the psychic phase, like Necrons.
Emphasis mine.
Tau have always been one dimensional in design. They were introduced with the idea that they, as a species, found close combat to be an anathema to their way of war. So, they had their allies, the Kroot, for that. Unfortunately, they were horribly designed for it. They had no save, no real 'combat' ability, and had Rapid Fire weapons. At best, they were a screening unit. Tau have had shooting as their bread and butter for ~16yrs now. The basic rules have just come to a position that drastically highlights this particular way of war. And of course, the codex writers jumped the proverbial shark, as it were, when writing their 6th/7th ed codeci.
And Tau don't get to avoid the Gets Hot! rule. Our plasma weaponry is lower strength then Imperial variants, so therefore, does not Get Hot!. All the other weaponry we have that does Get Hot!, unless it is twin-linked, or boosted to the point of re-rolls for high BS, we have to worry about killing/hurting us too. And we aren't the only army that has twin-linked Gets Hot! weapons, so that's not all on us either.
Also, please stop trying to shove 'melee suits' down our throats. Very few of us want that (at least the players that enjoy the Tau for their fluff certainly don't). We don't "Set up a tent" across the table from you because we can't engage in melee. We play to the strengths in our army that the current rules encourage. Speaking for myself only here, castling up in my deployment zone makes for a hellaciously boring game. I'm far more mobile than most marine armies I face, actually.
I've said it many times in this thread, but those of us who actually love the army for its fluff, are as unhappy with the ultra-suit spam and the ungodly formation benefits we enjoy that many of you are - and those of us with an ounce of sportsmanship have actively decided not to use the grossly ridiculous offenders.
I've never seen Tau really jump around in games except with suits. Most of the time they sit behind some cover or a wall and shoot, venturing out to seize objectives. And I'm talking about perhaps giving pulse rifles -1 rend but at the cost of gets hot, as it would very least incentivize the player to not act in that matter, and adding melee units allows the Tau to function normally instead of being some weird one-off. The problem with Tau is that building them from the start to ignore most phases of the game is a mistake and bad game design. When you make a game, everything should participate as much as possible. Creating a faction that plays so you ignore multiple aspects of the game itself means you've made an army for the wrong game. An army that purely shoots at things doesn't belong in 40k, it belongs in Flames of War.
Adding melee units isn't just for the benefit of the Tau, it's adding them for the benefit of opponents as well so Tau aren't boring as hell to fight/a shooting gallery.
Narratively you can easily spin it as the Farsight Enclaves realizing that sticking power swords on their Battlesuits isn't a bad idea after Mont'ka.
You are assuming that meele is the epithome of fun gameplay. A totally meele game is as boring as a totally shooting game based in inmovile gunlines. Just move, charge, and roll dice because once you are engaged in meele you have 0 choice capacity. If you don't like Tau gameplay, thats fine. I don't like Necron gameplay too, but I don't say that they don't belong to 40k from a gameplay perspective.
Tau can be fun to play without needing meele units. They can shoot, move, use the cover, the map, etc...
But to that happen, you need to nerf the most OP stuff in the codex that favour a static gunline style of play and make the more movile stuff and short range units viable.
And put more damm terrain on the table and play to objetives!
Wyzilla wrote: The problem with Tau is that building them from the start to ignore most phases of the game is a mistake and bad game design.
Tau weren't built from the start to ignore most phases of the game. They were built to be a mobile mechanised force with more limited numbers than the Imperial Guard who had increased mobility and firepower to counter that and keep themselves alive.
So Tau were designed to make the most of the shooting and movement phases with all their units, and the assault phase for their jetpacks. So that is two out of three phases of the game (at the time). Even now with the Psychic phase being a thing if Tau were to revert back to their initial concept they would still participate in half of the phases of the game, which is not ignoring most phases
GW then gave them models which did not require to move due to the long range of their weapons and were tough enough to just stand there in the open and not die and special rules which rewarded you for castling up. The issue is not Tau focusing on shooting over melee combat, it is that GW is gak at writing rules and creating interesting units which reflect the fluff.
I mean, lets look at the Fish of Fury tactic, the epitome of Tau cheese (apart from maybe S10 spam) in 4th edition. This was where a devilfish would drive up to the enemy, drop out a unit of fire warriors in rapid fire range and detach its drones, positioning all three units in such a way as to prevent the opponent from being able to charge the fire warriors thanks to the "cannot move within 1" of enemy model unless charging" rule. The Fire Warriors would then unload on the enemy thanks to the LOS rules regarding skimmers in 4th ed (they didn't block LOS for friendly models). On their next turn (if they were still alive) they hop back into the fish (if it is still alive) and repeat the procedure.
So the original Tau cheese strategy required careful movement and positioning of your units in order to work. The issue is therefore obviously not having an army focus on shooting over melee combat, but creating units which can do so whilst also being able to ignore the movement phase, which is not how the Tau were originally designed.
Wyzilla wrote: The problem with Tau is that, especially now, their entire army design is one dimensional. They do one thing and they do it better than almost all other armies, and the only time they move is to take objectives. A faction that mechanically ignores 2 main phases of the game is just horribly designed and incredibly boring to play against it- add up the fact that it's often overpowered as hell against mid-tier armies and you get something so bad you're forced to boycott anybody who doesn't play a heavily nerfed list. There's no point in playing a game you know you have a 70% or greater chance of losing.
In all honesty what would really help is if Tau didn't get to avoid the gets hot rule. I imagine if Fire Warriors and Battlesuits ran the risk of exploding if you ran an all-gun army and new melee units were added to the Tau similar to Farsight, you wouldn't see Tau players pitch a tent on one side of the board.
And Khorne armies are not one dimensional like the Tau. Not only do they move around a lot, but they don't just engage in melee. They shoot quite a fair bit as well. The only thing they do is ignore the psychic phase, like Necrons.
Emphasis mine.
Tau have always been one dimensional in design. They were introduced with the idea that they, as a species, found close combat to be an anathema to their way of war. So, they had their allies, the Kroot, for that. Unfortunately, they were horribly designed for it. They had no save, no real 'combat' ability, and had Rapid Fire weapons. At best, they were a screening unit. Tau have had shooting as their bread and butter for ~16yrs now. The basic rules have just come to a position that drastically highlights this particular way of war. And of course, the codex writers jumped the proverbial shark, as it were, when writing their 6th/7th ed codeci.
And Tau don't get to avoid the Gets Hot! rule. Our plasma weaponry is lower strength then Imperial variants, so therefore, does not Get Hot!. All the other weaponry we have that does Get Hot!, unless it is twin-linked, or boosted to the point of re-rolls for high BS, we have to worry about killing/hurting us too. And we aren't the only army that has twin-linked Gets Hot! weapons, so that's not all on us either.
Also, please stop trying to shove 'melee suits' down our throats. Very few of us want that (at least the players that enjoy the Tau for their fluff certainly don't). We don't "Set up a tent" across the table from you because we can't engage in melee. We play to the strengths in our army that the current rules encourage. Speaking for myself only here, castling up in my deployment zone makes for a hellaciously boring game. I'm far more mobile than most marine armies I face, actually.
I've said it many times in this thread, but those of us who actually love the army for its fluff, are as unhappy with the ultra-suit spam and the ungodly formation benefits we enjoy that many of you are - and those of us with an ounce of sportsmanship have actively decided not to use the grossly ridiculous offenders.
I've never seen Tau really jump around in games except with suits. Most of the time they sit behind some cover or a wall and shoot, venturing out to seize objectives. And I'm talking about perhaps giving pulse rifles -1 rend but at the cost of gets hot, as it would very least incentivize the player to not act in that matter, and adding melee units allows the Tau to function normally instead of being some weird one-off. The problem with Tau is that building them from the start to ignore most phases of the game is a mistake and bad game design. When you make a game, everything should participate as much as possible. Creating a faction that plays so you ignore multiple aspects of the game itself means you've made an army for the wrong game. An army that purely shoots at things doesn't belong in 40k, it belongs in Flames of War.
Adding melee units isn't just for the benefit of the Tau, it's adding them for the benefit of opponents as well so Tau aren't boring as hell to fight/a shooting gallery.
Narratively you can easily spin it as the Farsight Enclaves realizing that sticking power swords on their Battlesuits isn't a bad idea after Mont'ka.
So, let me get this straight - you want to give our basic infantry weapon, a special rule that no other basic infantry weapon has in exchange for -1 rend, to what..? Make us stop shooting?? To make us go out and take objectives? (hint - in order win most games, we actually have to do that) Look, just because we don't have melee units, doesn't mean we don't 'function normally'. Do gun-line SM armies not function normally? What about IG? Necrons? And if they don't 'function normally', do their basic weapons have to have Gets Hot! too?
You simply want to pile nerfs on us because "You've never seen Tau really jump around in games except with suits." Tell ya what, if suddenly all our pulse rifles/carbines did Get Hot!, all you would ever see on a table with Tau would be battle suits, and you would have stopped nothing. Seriously, if you've seen as many Tau players play as you imply, playing the way you've implied they play, you would know that there's maybe 10-15 Firewarriors on the board, and the rest is suits. If those players no longer see any point to running Firewarriors because they'll kill 2-3 Firewarriors per shooting phase with Gets Hot! rolls, then guess what those points will be spent on instead - MORE SUITS!
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
Didn't in the last major Tournament, Tau only get like mid ranks overall?
Vryce wrote: Actually, Marker-Drones are generally superior to Pathfinders for several reasons
1) Better toughness (4) and Sv (4+).
2) Relentless Jet Pack infantry; so they can reposition easier. And, iirc, if taken in the Drone-Net formation, they benefit from +1 BS, so have the same BS as Pathfinders.
3) Can be joined by a Commander w/ a Drone Controller for BS5 markerlights
Most of your 'competetive' Tau lists will have no Pathfinders in their army at all, just Marker Drones.
Ah, I will concede the durability point. Good catch!
However, excluding Formations and added Characters, which could improve Pathfinders in similar ways, Drones have less BS (not relevant for Overwatch though), and AFAIK lack Supporting Fire.
You have no idea what your talking about do you. A Tau Commander upgraded can buff his drones to BS 5. Then join a unit of them. Since his drones are his equipment he can split fire on a key target and then the other 4 drones in the squad markerdrone someone else. It was common before drone net formation. Also all of your examples are just in a vacuum as well and prove nothing just as much as mine. Also I don't have any of those codices and its been so long I can't even begin to remember what they have to kill marker lights. All I know is I was not given the chance to swap armies to try and see it from the other side.
So hey I can't help it if the 40k fanbase has a stick so far up its ass I can't even try learn other armies. My community in particular is extremely hostile. I met another nids player and complimented his army. We were talking for about 10 mins and him and his 3 friends. Then as soon as I mention I play Tau they all go stone faced and say they don't play Tau and don't want to talk to me anymore.
I would posit that, if these are the people you play with, you need to find a different playgroup or hobby, because your frustrations with Tau are only a symptom, not the cause, if this is *really* the way people behave. It won't matter if you play Tau or Spehse Muhreens or Eldar or any other army, if they're willing to behave like that then you're going to have problems regardless.
I can say having played this game for a significant portion of my life and through many tournaments large and small, at many events in and through many playgroups in multiple cities, I have never witnessed people literally just stop speaking to someone or act in anything near this manner simply based on the fact that they play army X or Y. I've seen people act like jerks for all sorts of reasons, but never have I encountered such strong hate towards any single army, much less Tau in particular, that they would behave like that just because you play that army.
The worst I've ever seen is a "oh great, not again", but even then that's directed at either having to play against Marines for the 43rd week in a row or a very obvious and cookiecutter Eldar netlist or something.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
Didn't in the last major Tournament, Tau only get like mid ranks overall?
Renegades dominated tho
Over two years of play a Tau player finally made the top 10 took 7th at this years LVO. The first major tournament win for the faction. Funnily enough the only in meta thing he used was Riptide Wing. Other than that he used a fairly anti-meta list. He had four skyrays and only one stormsurge. There have been some minor wins here and there at smaller ITC tournaments, but it's an incredibly low number. Top lists this year was chaos deamons with magnus who had two of the top 8 spots. Then an eldar player, a super friends death star (space marines), and I forget. Check out blood of kittens even shows their lists. An interesting thing to note a primary detachment of Dark Eldar placed 9th place with only a minor amount of Eldar in his list. That dude is amazing. The only other time Tau dominate are the big no holds barred once in awhile style games because of the Ta'uanr. However regular play it is banned since it's basically a titan.
Nothing in this thread that I've seen has given me any faith that these are anything but scrub tier players who are just butt hurt and taking it out on the Tau instead of getting mad at GW and asking for buffs.
Edit
Except Traditio he cool. He reasonable even if he doesn't like the Tau.
Edit
Well congratulations Vak. You must have some nice people there. Doesn't solve my problem that they don't play Tau players. As a matter of fact I know one other dude who collects Tau and he has a lot of problems getting games. They tolerate him more since he has been there for so long (founding member of the group kinda guy) and also has an IG army. Even the store owner doesn't want to play with the 40k crowd here anymore and has sold off everything he had. It's a right sad state. I'm sure there's decent players in my town somewhere, but I can't find them. I sometimes regret getting into the hobby. I see shitposting on the internet like in this thread and laugh it off as impossible, but then it happens to me. I too once had faith humanity Vak. I thought it was ridiculous when I heard stories online about Tau discrimination. Who could take a dumb game of toy plastic soldiers so seriously, but the answer is a lot of people.
The Riptide can also (theoretically) benefit from physical cover in a way it never really has been able to before, however.
But yes, I think the Riptide in 8th will probably be more vulnerable to the sort of anti-tank weapons it should, while being even more durable against the pitter patter of the lasguns, bolters, and the like.
Unusual Suspect wrote: The Riptide can also (theoretically) benefit from physical cover in a way it never really has been able to before, however.
This remains to be seen.
GW has told us that craters will only provide cover to infantry. So we know that the riptide won't be able to benefit from at least some kinds of cover.
I also wish to note that the changes to templates are a major nerf to the riptide.
Have fun dropping that pie plate on all of my marines...oh...wait...That's right. You don't HAVE a pie plate any more.
Unusual Suspect wrote: The Riptide can also (theoretically) benefit from physical cover in a way it never really has been able to before, however.
This remains to be seen.
GW has told us that craters will only provide cover to infantry. So we know that the riptide won't be able to benefit from at least some kinds of cover.
I also wish to note that the changes to templates are a major nerf to the riptide.
Have fun dropping that pie plate on all of my marines...oh...wait...That's right. You don't HAVE a pie plate any more.
True, we know some cover limits who can benefit, but I have a hard time imagining that Riptides (or any model that isn't a Flyer, for that matter) will be unable to benefit from ANY physical cover.
The changes to templates may or may not be a major nerf - we won't really know until we see what Blasts and Large Blasts look like.
If the Flamer is indicative of the general direction, the Riptide is certainly more vulnerable to Template weapons (what used to be a single auto-hit became 1d6 autohits) and likely Blasts/Large Blasts (presumably 1d3 and 1d6 respectively, but that's just speculation).
But then, most of my opponents were spacing their models to the max when at all possible, so aside from Deepstriking non-Droppod units like Terminators (where a Large Blast could catch 5-10 models if you hit right on), I was only really getting 2-4 models under my Large Blasts anyway (when they didn't scatter off target - I didn't always have 8+ MLs to ignore cover and get BS 10), and that was limited to single hits against bigger targets like Vehicles and MCs.
With the proposed presumed change, my Riptides may well have become significantly more reliable (1d6 auto hits versus 2-4 hits around 3/4 of the time, albeit with a lower maximum number of wounds) and significantly more capable against other MCs/Vehicles.
Don't get me wrong, I think the Riptide (and other OPMCs) will be getting knocked down a peg or two, but I wouldn't be too quick to gloat about template changes - based on reasonable speculation, they're not nearly as weakened as you seem to think.
Unusual Suspect wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think the Riptide (and other OPMCs) will be getting knocked down a peg or two, but I wouldn't be too quick to gloat about template changes - based on reasonable speculation, they're not nearly as weakened as you seem to think.
I think that what you said was basically accurate.
This is why I think it's a nerf to riptides:
Yes, you are going to be doing more reliable damage. You'll also be doing more damage to single models.
However:
The damage is going to be limited to single units. You won't be able to do multi-unit damage with blasts.
Also, this will allow your opponent to crowd models together in cover.
Unusual Suspect wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think the Riptide (and other OPMCs) will be getting knocked down a peg or two, but I wouldn't be too quick to gloat about template changes - based on reasonable speculation, they're not nearly as weakened as you seem to think.
I think that what you said was basically accurate.
This is why I think it's a nerf to riptides:
Yes, you are going to be doing more reliable damage. You'll also be doing more damage to single models.
However:
The damage is going to be limited to single units. You won't be able to do multi-unit damage with blasts.
True (barring some Split Fire shenanigans we haven't heard about yet, anyway).
To be honest, aside from the occasional lucky (and the even more rare UNlucky) scatter dice, I really wasn't hitting more than one unit anyway (and if I was, I wasn't inflicting much in the way of casualties on the originally targetted unit - kinda a zero sum game, when it comes to fitting well-spaced models under a Blast Marker).
That is to say, to whatever extent that nerf applies, I'm getting even MORE consistency in inflicting wounds against my preferred target.
Unusual Suspect wrote:(and the even more rare UNlucky) scatter dice
While true, that isn't really relevant to whether the Riptide is nerfed or not...
It's an indirect nerf, to be sure, but I think it will be a noticeable one.
Basically, in 7th, if I see that you have a riptide, then my focus in deployment and movement will be to minimize the impact of those pie plates. That might have to mean that some of my models are outside of cover, or else, in less than optimal cover.
Now that this is no longer an issue, you'll likely find that, even though you have a riptide on the field, more of your opponents' models are in cover.
Again, it's not a direct nerf to the Riptide per se, but it is an indirect nerf to armies that normally use riptides.
Your army is going to be slightly less effective overall.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
Didn't in the last major Tournament, Tau only get like mid ranks overall?
Renegades dominated tho
Over two years of play a Tau player finally made the top 10 took 7th at this years LVO. The first major tournament win for the faction. Funnily enough the only in meta thing he used was Riptide Wing. Other than that he used a fairly anti-meta list. He had four skyrays and only one stormsurge. There have been some minor wins here and there at smaller ITC tournaments, but it's an incredibly low number. Top lists this year was chaos deamons with magnus who had two of the top 8 spots. Then an eldar player, a super friends death star (space marines), and I forget. Check out blood of kittens even shows their lists. An interesting thing to note a primary detachment of Dark Eldar placed 9th place with only a minor amount of Eldar in his list. That dude is amazing. The only other time Tau dominate are the big no holds barred once in awhile style games because of the Ta'uanr. However regular play it is banned since it's basically a titan.
Nothing in this thread that I've seen has given me any faith that these are anything but scrub tier players who are just butt hurt and taking it out on the Tau instead of getting mad at GW and asking for buffs.
Edit
Except Traditio he cool. He reasonable even if he doesn't like the Tau.
Edit
Well congratulations Vak. You must have some nice people there. Doesn't solve my problem that they don't play Tau players. As a matter of fact I know one other dude who collects Tau and he has a lot of problems getting games. They tolerate him more since he has been there for so long (founding member of the group kinda guy) and also has an IG army. Even the store owner doesn't want to play with the 40k crowd here anymore and has sold off everything he had. It's a right sad state. I'm sure there's decent players in my town somewhere, but I can't find them. I sometimes regret getting into the hobby. I see shitposting on the internet like in this thread and laugh it off as impossible, but then it happens to me. I too once had faith humanity Vak. I thought it was ridiculous when I heard stories online about Tau discrimination. Who could take a dumb game of toy plastic soldiers so seriously, but the answer is a lot of people.
Gamgee, I can understand your rage. The tau hate on internet can be tiresome after years of reading it. But calling people buthurtts doesn't help. Keep 1# please. Just relax, this is a game at the end of the day.
The answer to people calling the obvious OP things of Tau (Riptide Wing, Stormsurge) is not "git gud". But I can agree that I have seen here some people that just don't want to change their tactics to take down a opponent.
And after many years of warhammer and warhammer40k I have seen that many times. I understand, models are expensive, and changing your list and army is not a thing that you can do from day to day. But I have encounter many many people that just don't want to change their playstile, ignoring the oponent they face, and then they are destroyed by some oponents that don't are really OP, just have a army that they don't know how to play against.
Is more easy to call things "OP OMG CHANGE TAU MONODIMENSIONAL THEY ARE BORING!" that recognise our own lack of tactical skill.
But, before anyone get offended by this, Tau have some OP things, thats a fact. Not many really because 80% of the unit roster is quasi useless, but what they have OP, is very OP. But really, you can see the same with the Flyrant spam, and they don't receive the same hate, or the hate in the same way.
People say "Make Tyranid viable again, and nerf the Flyrant spam buffing the rest of the codex!"
When people talk about the Tau they don't say "Make the rest of the codex viable and keep them fluffy, and balance Stormsurge and Riptides, and eliminate Riptide Wing!". No. You keep earing "Tau are just booring, their style/fluff/gameplay/game mechanic is just unfun and don't fit with 40k. Make them something that they don't are so they enter what I think should be 40k!"
And, in your history about Tau discrimination...
Spoiler:
Lucky, my group is very cool and 100% narrative driven. But years ago, in a vacation trip to another city, I bringed my 1850 tau list, even without Riptides! And just saying that I played Tau make all the 6 players in the store look at me put condescending faces to me. I ended playing with a child, givin him 500 points of my force to use in a kind of "demo" game.
Unusual Suspect wrote:(and the even more rare UNlucky) scatter dice
While true, that isn't really relevant to whether the Riptide is nerfed or not...
It's an indirect nerf, to be sure, but I think it will be a noticeable one.
Basically, in 7th, if I see that you have a riptide, then my focus in deployment and movement will be to minimize the impact of those pie plates. That might have to mean that some of my models are outside of cover, or else, in less than optimal cover.
Now that this is no longer an issue, you'll likely find that, even though you have a riptide on the field, more of your opponents' models are in cover.
Again, it's not a direct nerf to the Riptide per se, but it is an indirect nerf to armies that normally use riptides.
Your army is going to be slightly less effective overall.
Re: Spoiler, I see your point.
Re: Effectiveness, don't count your Ethereal Scalps before the battle's over!
Unlimited number of Overwatch attacks, the ability to voluntarily withdraw, and the general speed available to some part of the Tau Empire army (battlesuits, Piranhas, Tanks, 'Tides, 'Keels, etc.)... let's just say I think its a bit early to call.
Galas wrote:N]o. You keep [h]earing "Tau are just booring, their style/fluff/gameplay/game mechanic is just unfun and don't fit with 40k. Make them something that they don't are so they enter what I think should be 40k!"
There really is some hypocrisy in all of this, though, isn't there?
I don't see many threads complaining about the IG playstyle.
Nor do I see many threads complaining about Leeman Russes, or Wyverns or Manticores.
Except threads started by me. I occasionally complain about those things.
Galas wrote:N]o. You keep [h]earing "Tau are just booring, their style/fluff/gameplay/game mechanic is just unfun and don't fit with 40k. Make them something that they don't are so they enter what I think should be 40k!"
There really is some hypocrisy in all of this, though, isn't there?
I don't see many threads complaining about the IG playstyle.
Nor do I see many threads complaining about Leeman Russes, or Wyverns or Manticores.
Except threads started by me. I occasionally complain about those things.
Like just now.
Yeah. I said it before. The hate for Tau started for their aesthetics and their fluff. Then, even when they where pretty crappy in gaming power, they receive hate for they shooting focused playstile. When the OP fest began, it was just the cherry on top. Other armies have been much more OP, or have just the same "boring" playstile, as you said, the Imperial Guard, but never receive as much hate as the Tau. (Maybe Grey Knights, a combination of Mat Ward-ness hate+Baby carrier OP combos)
Unusual Suspect wrote:Unlimited number of Overwatch attacks, the ability to voluntarily withdraw, and the general speed available to some part of the Tau Empire army (battlesuits, Piranhas, Tanks, 'Tides, 'Keels, etc.)... let's just say I think its a bit early to call.
To be sure!
I will say this, though:
I am feeling VERY optimistic about all of this. [And for the record, if what Galef said in the other thread is true, I think that the previous concern I voiced about unlimited overwatched may actually be without warrant...might we start to see consolidations into close combat again?]
Given that GW is actually doing significant playtesting this time around and getting input from TOs...
...I think that we are going to end up with something amazing.
So amazing, that when power armored marines meet the Tau and riptides, we will hear no longer the tortured screams of Martel, but rather...
Unusual Suspect wrote:Unlimited number of Overwatch attacks, the ability to voluntarily withdraw, and the general speed available to some part of the Tau Empire army (battlesuits, Piranhas, Tanks, 'Tides, 'Keels, etc.)... let's just say I think its a bit early to call.
To be sure!
I will say this, though:
I am feeling VERY optimistic about all of this. [And for the record, if what Galef said in the other thread is true, I think that the previous concern I voiced about unlimited overwatched may actually be without warrant...might we start to see consolidations into close combat again?]
Given that GW is actually doing significant playtesting this time around and getting input from TOs...
...I think that we are going to end up with something amazing.
So amazing, that when power armored marines meet the Tau and riptides, we will hear no longer the tortured screams of Martel, but rather...
As a Tau player, the sing of a Dreadnought ripping appart a Riptide in meele just tingle my inner child. Really, I just wan't to fight against the most iconic things in warhammer, Marines, Dreadnoughts, etc... with my lines after lines of Tau Warriors. The fact that the most iconic things of every army are... the most useless thing in every army, shows how 7th is. Personally I can't see it getting worse, and after playing AoS, I doubt it will be. I'm very optimistic.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
Didn't in the last major Tournament, Tau only get like mid ranks overall?
Renegades dominated tho
Over two years of play a Tau player finally made the top 10 took 7th at this years LVO. The first major tournament win for the faction. Funnily enough the only in meta thing he used was Riptide Wing. Other than that he used a fairly anti-meta list. He had four skyrays and only one stormsurge. There have been some minor wins here and there at smaller ITC tournaments, but it's an incredibly low number. Top lists this year was chaos deamons with magnus who had two of the top 8 spots. Then an eldar player, a super friends death star (space marines), and I forget. Check out blood of kittens even shows their lists. An interesting thing to note a primary detachment of Dark Eldar placed 9th place with only a minor amount of Eldar in his list. That dude is amazing. The only other time Tau dominate are the big no holds barred once in awhile style games because of the Ta'uanr. However regular play it is banned since it's basically a titan.
Nothing in this thread that I've seen has given me any faith that these are anything but scrub tier players who are just butt hurt and taking it out on the Tau instead of getting mad at GW and asking for buffs.
Edit
Except Traditio he cool. He reasonable even if he doesn't like the Tau.
Edit
Well congratulations Vak. You must have some nice people there. Doesn't solve my problem that they don't play Tau players. As a matter of fact I know one other dude who collects Tau and he has a lot of problems getting games. They tolerate him more since he has been there for so long (founding member of the group kinda guy) and also has an IG army. Even the store owner doesn't want to play with the 40k crowd here anymore and has sold off everything he had. It's a right sad state. I'm sure there's decent players in my town somewhere, but I can't find them. I sometimes regret getting into the hobby. I see shitposting on the internet like in this thread and laugh it off as impossible, but then it happens to me. I too once had faith humanity Vak. I thought it was ridiculous when I heard stories online about Tau discrimination. Who could take a dumb game of toy plastic soldiers so seriously, but the answer is a lot of people.
Gamgee, I can understand your rage. The tau hate on internet can be tiresome after years of reading it. But calling people buthurtts doesn't help. Keep 1# please. Just relax, this is a game at the end of the day.
The answer to people calling the obvious OP things of Tau (Riptide Wing, Stormsurge) is not "git gud". But I can agree that I have seen here some people that just don't want to change their tactics to take down a opponent.
And after many years of warhammer and warhammer40k I have seen that many times. I understand, models are expensive, and changing your list and army is not a thing that you can do from day to day. But I have encounter many many people that just don't want to change their playstile, ignoring the oponent they face, and then they are destroyed by some oponents that don't are really OP, just have a army that they don't know how to play against.
Is more easy to call things "OP OMG CHANGE TAU MONODIMENSIONAL THEY ARE BORING!" that recognise our own lack of tactical skill.
But, before anyone get offended by this, Tau have some OP things, thats a fact. Not many really because 80% of the unit roster is quasi useless, but what they have OP, is very OP. But really, you can see the same with the Flyrant spam, and they don't receive the same hate, or the hate in the same way.
People say "Make Tyranid viable again, and nerf the Flyrant spam buffing the rest of the codex!"
When people talk about the Tau they don't say "Make the rest of the codex viable and keep them fluffy, and balance Stormsurge and Riptides, and eliminate Riptide Wing!". No. You keep earing "Tau are just booring, their style/fluff/gameplay/game mechanic is just unfun and don't fit with 40k. Make them something that they don't are so they enter what I think should be 40k!"
And, in your history about Tau discrimination...
Spoiler:
Lucky, my group is very cool and 100% narrative driven. But years ago, in a vacation trip to another city, I bringed my 1850 tau list, even without Riptides! And just saying that I played Tau make all the 6 players in the store look at me put condescending faces to me. I ended playing with a child, givin him 500 points of my force to use in a kind of "demo" game.
Thanks. There are definitely a few things op with Tau, but like you said it's only a small amount of things. Perhaps someday I'll find open minded players like yourself out there somewhere. Hopefully you don't ever have to experience what I do. Hopefully no one of any army does.
I've tried every ba list scheme other than dread party due to lack of lucius pods. Threre is no adapting to tau for the boys in red right now. It's hard when your codex has no miscosted units to spam and abuse.
All that crying about Tau... Nerf their ability to ignore cover and give riptides and stormsurges proper points costs and they are totally fine. Still not getting the hate towards them. Probably other people don't play maelstrom missions where you can easily concentrate on your objectives. Unlike against Necrons it's easy to fulfil all the "kill X" objectives against them, as Tau are really squishy. If you can't kill units with T4/3+, or T3/4+ I can't help you.
1. Why bring a knife to a gun fight in the first place...all warfare determines if you can reach out and touch someone without being touched in return is the smart thing to do.
2. When you boil the Tau down they are just the mechanics of the army's of today implanted into 40K, combined arms mutual support and increasing technology in order to achieve a fire power superiority over your opponent isn't just smart its being responsible to those under your command.
3. Tau have always been a mutual support, combined arms approach. This is their advantage, problem is a lot of people don't apply this approach to other armies always trying to have units solo stuff...
4. I find static gun lines a. boring b. unable to shape the opponent that I face the tau codex even states that a mix of both is prime as it allows you to switch between Kauyon and Mont'ka...this tactic is seen right through even down to boxing.. strike & evade.
a. The idea is to apply the correct amount of fire power on the required point of an army's centre of gravity.. i.e if your centre of gravity is close combat then i will remove your fast moving close combat units first as these pose the most threat.
b. Next is to achieve firepower supremacy and then target your heavy weapons capable of reaching out and touching me. Thing is that say you set up an engagement area in a certain area of terrain like any smart player should in order to shape my movement like any smart general would, i will take advantage of my ability to bypass that terrain through anti grav and jetpacks like any smart general would to prevent the shaping of my forces to such an extent.
c. From there I would maintain mobility supremacy by targeting transports so that I am able to strike when and where I like without much competition, I can then focus on being able to position myself in such a way that I have dominance over objectives. Tau can't just charge across the battlefield they have to provide themselves mobility corridors in order to allow continued shooting, anti-grav and JSJ assist with this but can lead to over confidence and isolation of units.
If you look at the fluff behind of the game only two armies really evolve to the changing level of warfare...Tyranids and Tau...Mankind won't invent new stuff it's heresy, chaos may seem like it's constantly changes but it's limited to what emotions are being felt so until new emotions are felt they stay the same, orks just ork, Eldar both High Elves and Dark Elves have not adapted new technology, Necrons hit their ceiling before going into statis.
Tau and tyranids have evolution and adaption built into their fluff...In warfare stagnation is death when you stop running the arms race you lose.
Actually new stuff is created all the time. Funny as the meme may be but there are sections of the Mechanicus that look through new tech and approve of minor changes to STC's after some time, the issue is coming to non-mechanicus allowed changes, but several things have managed to force them through (Some space marine stuff).
chaos may seem like it's constantly changes but it's limited to what emotions are being felt so until new emotions are felt they stay the same,
The heck kind of argument is this? Dark Mechanicus tends towards making new things for war and shoving daemons in things, but you will have some new changes here and there.. Even if it's horrific ones like the Daemoncubla, Fabius Bile's genetic technology constantly advances and things like the Defiler and Dinosaur Friends are advances in Daemon/Mankind Technology.
orks just ork,
Actually the Orks have been creating new technology thanks to the great Ork genius Orkimedes. Creating powerful teleportation tech that's actually bringing them throughout the galaxy bypassing many Imperial areas to strike. It's also said that in the golden days of the beasts that their technology had hit a true peak back when the full Waaagh! but thanks to being destroyed there hasn't been any true genius rising up yet because of the scattered WAAAGH!
Eldar both High Elves and Dark Elves have not adapted new technology
Dark Eldar Haemonculi seem to disagree with this statement.. Eldar... yeah.
Necrons hit their ceiling before going into statis.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
Didn't in the last major Tournament, Tau only get like mid ranks overall?
Renegades dominated tho
In Tournaments, maybe so. However, in a game wherein neither player is outright trying to bring netlists and be ultra-competitive, Tau are rather effective, due to a strong shooting potential across their army generally. They don't need to minmax or spam certain tactics if their neutral list is good as it is.
Again, I'm not saying they're ULTRAOMG powerful. They're beatable, they aren't horrendous, barring a few units. However, they are undoubtedly a strong codex, especially compared to Dark Eldar, Orks, Blood Angels, CSM, Harlequins, Imperial Guard, etc etc
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
Didn't in the last major Tournament, Tau only get like mid ranks overall?
Renegades dominated tho
Over two years of play a Tau player finally made the top 10 took 7th at this years LVO. The first major tournament win for the faction. Funnily enough the only in meta thing he used was Riptide Wing. Other than that he used a fairly anti-meta list. He had four skyrays and only one stormsurge. There have been some minor wins here and there at smaller ITC tournaments, but it's an incredibly low number. Top lists this year was chaos deamons with magnus who had two of the top 8 spots. Then an eldar player, a super friends death star (space marines), and I forget. Check out blood of kittens even shows their lists. An interesting thing to note a primary detachment of Dark Eldar placed 9th place with only a minor amount of Eldar in his list. That dude is amazing. The only other time Tau dominate are the big no holds barred once in awhile style games because of the Ta'uanr. However regular play it is banned since it's basically a titan.
Nothing in this thread that I've seen has given me any faith that these are anything but scrub tier players who are just butt hurt and taking it out on the Tau instead of getting mad at GW and asking for buffs.
Edit
Except Traditio he cool. He reasonable even if he doesn't like the Tau.
Edit
Well congratulations Vak. You must have some nice people there. Doesn't solve my problem that they don't play Tau players. As a matter of fact I know one other dude who collects Tau and he has a lot of problems getting games. They tolerate him more since he has been there for so long (founding member of the group kinda guy) and also has an IG army. Even the store owner doesn't want to play with the 40k crowd here anymore and has sold off everything he had. It's a right sad state. I'm sure there's decent players in my town somewhere, but I can't find them. I sometimes regret getting into the hobby. I see shitposting on the internet like in this thread and laugh it off as impossible, but then it happens to me. I too once had faith humanity Vak. I thought it was ridiculous when I heard stories online about Tau discrimination. Who could take a dumb game of toy plastic soldiers so seriously, but the answer is a lot of people.
I'm just going to say, that's more rule 1 coming into play there - "scrub tier players"? Not exactly polite.
I'm hardly butthurt. Hell, Tau is the army I'm actually going to start once I finish off my current projects. I like the faction, their aesthetic, their lore, aspects of their gameplay. However, much as I like them, I'm not going to pretend they're perfect. They're not the worst, but they're not the paragon of balance. If that makes me "scrub tier", then I really have nothing left to say.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm not for nerfing Tau to the ground. I'm for making them balanced. They are not balanced at the moment. That doesn't mean making them S2 AP- pulse rifles and suchlike - it means making sure they can actually be threatened by most threats in the game.
Didn't in the last major Tournament, Tau only get like mid ranks overall?
Renegades dominated tho
Over two years of play a Tau player finally made the top 10 took 7th at this years LVO. The first major tournament win for the faction. Funnily enough the only in meta thing he used was Riptide Wing. Other than that he used a fairly anti-meta list. He had four skyrays and only one stormsurge. There have been some minor wins here and there at smaller ITC tournaments, but it's an incredibly low number. Top lists this year was chaos deamons with magnus who had two of the top 8 spots. Then an eldar player, a super friends death star (space marines), and I forget. Check out blood of kittens even shows their lists. An interesting thing to note a primary detachment of Dark Eldar placed 9th place with only a minor amount of Eldar in his list. That dude is amazing. The only other time Tau dominate are the big no holds barred once in awhile style games because of the Ta'uanr. However regular play it is banned since it's basically a titan.
Nothing in this thread that I've seen has given me any faith that these are anything but scrub tier players who are just butt hurt and taking it out on the Tau instead of getting mad at GW and asking for buffs.
Edit
Except Traditio he cool. He reasonable even if he doesn't like the Tau.
Edit
Well congratulations Vak. You must have some nice people there. Doesn't solve my problem that they don't play Tau players. As a matter of fact I know one other dude who collects Tau and he has a lot of problems getting games. They tolerate him more since he has been there for so long (founding member of the group kinda guy) and also has an IG army. Even the store owner doesn't want to play with the 40k crowd here anymore and has sold off everything he had. It's a right sad state. I'm sure there's decent players in my town somewhere, but I can't find them. I sometimes regret getting into the hobby. I see shitposting on the internet like in this thread and laugh it off as impossible, but then it happens to me. I too once had faith humanity Vak. I thought it was ridiculous when I heard stories online about Tau discrimination. Who could take a dumb game of toy plastic soldiers so seriously, but the answer is a lot of people.
Gamgee, I can understand your rage. The tau hate on internet can be tiresome after years of reading it. But calling people buthurtts doesn't help. Keep 1# please. Just relax, this is a game at the end of the day.
The answer to people calling the obvious OP things of Tau (Riptide Wing, Stormsurge) is not "git gud". But I can agree that I have seen here some people that just don't want to change their tactics to take down a opponent.
And after many years of warhammer and warhammer40k I have seen that many times. I understand, models are expensive, and changing your list and army is not a thing that you can do from day to day. But I have encounter many many people that just don't want to change their playstile, ignoring the oponent they face, and then they are destroyed by some oponents that don't are really OP, just have a army that they don't know how to play against.
Is more easy to call things "OP OMG CHANGE TAU MONODIMENSIONAL THEY ARE BORING!" that recognise our own lack of tactical skill.
But, before anyone get offended by this, Tau have some OP things, thats a fact. Not many really because 80% of the unit roster is quasi useless, but what they have OP, is very OP. But really, you can see the same with the Flyrant spam, and they don't receive the same hate, or the hate in the same way.
People say "Make Tyranid viable again, and nerf the Flyrant spam buffing the rest of the codex!"
When people talk about the Tau they don't say "Make the rest of the codex viable and keep them fluffy, and balance Stormsurge and Riptides, and eliminate Riptide Wing!". No. You keep earing "Tau are just booring, their style/fluff/gameplay/game mechanic is just unfun and don't fit with 40k. Make them something that they don't are so they enter what I think should be 40k!"
And, in your history about Tau discrimination...
Spoiler:
Lucky, my group is very cool and 100% narrative driven. But years ago, in a vacation trip to another city, I bringed my 1850 tau list, even without Riptides! And just saying that I played Tau make all the 6 players in the store look at me put condescending faces to me. I ended playing with a child, givin him 500 points of my force to use in a kind of "demo" game.
Thanks. There are definitely a few things op with Tau, but like you said it's only a small amount of things. Perhaps someday I'll find open minded players like yourself out there somewhere. Hopefully you don't ever have to experience what I do. Hopefully no one of any army does.
Spoiler:
I'm just going to pick out quotes here:
"...OP OMG CHANGE TAU MONODIMENSIONAL THEY ARE BORING!"
"Tau are just booring..."
"...their style/fluff/gameplay/game mechanic is just unfun..."
"...don't fit with 40k. Make them something that they don't are so they enter what I think should be 40k!"
"Tau have some OP things, thats a fact..."
"...Not many really because 80% of the unit roster is quasi useless..."
"...but what they have OP, is very OP"
"There are definitely a few things op with Tau"
Out of all those points, which of those do I support and am in favour of?
In fact, I'll put a list of them in spoilers:
Spoiler:
"Tau have some OP things, thats a fact..."
"...but what they have OP, is very OP"
"There are definitely a few things op with Tau"
I have no hatred to Tau. I like the faction. They're not the least balanced, but they're not perfect. They are a powerful army, and especially in the context given (which I all I've based my points on, for the record), they are very strong against Orks. That's all I'm saying. And I quote "they're not perfectly balanced, and not the paragon of balance this game should aspire to". In fact, you even say so ("There are definitely a few things op with Tau"), which I guess answers my as-of-yet unanswered question: "Do you honestly believe that Tau are the single most balanced army in 40k? Asking without any malice, is that your opinion?"
Why do you label me as "butthurt" "scrub tier" "discriminatory" and "dumbass" all the same?
I am gonna say that I love tau, they were the first models I ever saw. The only reason I don't play them is cause of their one dimensionalness. I want an army that can shoot and do assault, maybe not at the same time, but one that has options. What I love about tau is their inclusion of other races or tech to fill their voids, so im hoping something like this happens
Tau have always been one dimensional in design. They were introduced with the idea that they, as a species, found close combat to be an anathema to their way of war. So, they had their allies, the Kroot, for that. Unfortunately, they were horribly designed for it. They had no save, no real 'combat' ability, and had Rapid Fire weapons. At best, they were a screening unit. Tau have had shooting as their bread and butter for ~16yrs now. The basic rules have just come to a position that drastically highlights this particular way of war. And of course, the codex writers jumped the proverbial shark, as it were, when writing their 6th/7th ed codeci.
In fact, Tau lore explicitly mentions that they are interested mostly on ally races who can be used to support their own way of war, rather than someone who would do the "dirty close combat fighting" for them. Kroot were primarily shooty infantry who just happened to be better at close combat than Fire Warriors. In fact point-per-point, their shooting was more powerful than Fire Warriors. Vespid, of course, are not great in assault either. That said, it was still disappointing and totally against the lore how Kroot close combat abilities were nerfed below to that of Fire Warriors in 6th Edition.
As for "Tau hate", they are designed to be antagonists, and thus hated, their design is just more clever and subtle than Chaos or Tyranids. They are role-reversal from typical scifi-cliche human-alien dynamic. They "out-human" the humans, so of course humans find them annoying. It's pretty brilliant when you think about it.
Sgt_Smudge, I was not adressing those assertions to you specifically, but I think you have confuse me with Gamgee because you quoted me but then you talk to Gamgee. Or my english understanding is failing me, thats another posibility Other posters had used literally the phrases I used, but not you!
Galas wrote: Sgt_Smudge, I was not adressing those assertions to you specifically, but I think you have confuse me with Gamgee because you quoted me but then you talk to Gamgee. Or my english understanding is failing me, thats another posibility Other posters had used literally the phrases I used, but not you!
Nah, I had no intent of directing that at you, no worries. Your point is absolutely fine, and I agree with it, maybe except on the "80% of Tau units being quasi-useless" but otherwise it's completely solid.
I just used your quotations because Gamgee was using them as support to say that people are *insert derogatory term here* because they do/not not good those views, and that, seeing as I never used those terms, I seem to be tarred with the brush of *derogatory term*. I was just after clarity, nothing on your part!
As for "Tau hate", they are designed to be antagonists, and thus hated, their design is just more clever and subtle than Chaos or Tyranids. They are role-reversal from typical scifi-cliche human-alien dynamic. They "out-human" the humans, so of course humans find them annoying. It's pretty brilliant when you think about it.
Are they? I thought they were one of the good guys, possibly even more so than IoM at times
As for "Tau hate", they are designed to be antagonists, and thus hated, their design is just more clever and subtle than Chaos or Tyranids. They are role-reversal from typical scifi-cliche human-alien dynamic. They "out-human" the humans, so of course humans find them annoying. It's pretty brilliant when you think about it.
Are they? I thought they were one of the good guys, possibly even more so than IoM at times
At the risk of running OT, there are really no 'good guy' races in 40k. Everything is a graduating scale of 'bad guys'. We can take this to PM or start another thread about it, however if you wish. Lets not derail the thread w/ the good guy/bad guy topic.
As for "Tau hate", they are designed to be antagonists, and thus hated, their design is just more clever and subtle than Chaos or Tyranids. They are role-reversal from typical scifi-cliche human-alien dynamic. They "out-human" the humans, so of course humans find them annoying. It's pretty brilliant when you think about it.
Are they? I thought they were one of the good guys, possibly even more so than IoM at times
At the risk of running OT, there are really no 'good guy' races in 40k. Everything is a graduating scale of 'bad guys'. We can take this to PM or start another thread about it, however if you wish. Lets not derail the thread w/ the good guy/bad guy topic.
As for "Tau hate", they are designed to be antagonists, and thus hated, their design is just more clever and subtle than Chaos or Tyranids. They are role-reversal from typical scifi-cliche human-alien dynamic. They "out-human" the humans, so of course humans find them annoying. It's pretty brilliant when you think about it.
And to add insult to injury, the Tau are doing it the communist way
As far as them being the good guys of 40k, they are probably the ones who can actually get away with that title. Sure, they are expanding aggressively, but at least they give other races the opportunity to avoid total annihilation.
I've always liked the idea that the Tau are far more insidious than it first appears. They aren't in your face "evil" like chaos, or utterly brutal like the Imperium, but are more "whisper in you ear and make you lose who you are" kinda creepy.
Hollow wrote: I've always liked the idea that the Tau are far more insidious than it first appears. They aren't in your face "evil" like chaos, or utterly brutal like the Imperium, but are more "whisper in you ear and make you lose who you are" kinda creepy.
Yeah 'far more insidious than it first appears' is my favourite way of looking at it.
They're a totalitarian oligarchy founded on the principle that the universe would be better off if it followed their philosophy, which just so happens to place their race in charge of everyone else. All of this 'come join the greater good, the Tau Empire is really nice' reeks of propaganda.
Just think of the publicity places like communist China and Korea put out. On the official channels it's very little other than how excellent their countries are and how nice it is to live in them, all the while keeping the truth of the outside world hidden from their restricted and oppressed population, and the truth of how oppressive their regime is hidden from those who might join it.
Backfire wrote:
As for "Tau hate", they are designed to be antagonists, and thus hated, their design is just more clever and subtle than Chaos or Tyranids. They are role-reversal from typical scifi-cliche human-alien dynamic. They "out-human" the humans, so of course humans find them annoying. It's pretty brilliant when you think about it.
Are they? I thought they were one of the good guys, possibly even more so than IoM at times
Well think about it. Tau are physically not very strong, short-lived, dynamic, adaptable, tolerant of many other cultures, technologically innovative, totally ignorant of Galaxy's dark secrets, preach their naive ideology to everyone...
It's pretty much all Star Trek/B5 human clichés, but projected to a non-human xeno race.
I don't necessarily think they are the biggest fans of other cultures. They are using them because it allows for faster expansion. The new map of the galaxy shows how much they grown in what is a very short period of time. Crushing every tom dick and harry you come across like the IOM has would mean it would be thousands of years before they had a half decent sized empire.
I think people exagerate the Grimdark of the Tau Empire because they don't like how "good" they are. But as always, the fluff is normally contradictory.
Reading the Tau Codex, even the more grimdark of 7th and 6th edition, you can see how they threat with respect other races like Gue'vesa and Kroot, and without letting them "govern" the Empire (Because not even Tau can lead. The leaders are the Ethereals) they are threated as full citizens, taking care of their welfare and wellness. The Tau RESPECT the Kroot. Is not subyugation, or using them as a tools. They respect them as Allies and a valuable Race and "Friends". And even they take care of the Humans that join the Tau Empire, givin them new homes in the internal Septs of the Tau empire to protect them from the Imperium (And thats in the codex, I'm not inventing anything)
Then you have the Farsight Enclaves Codex where the Ethereals are depicted as moustache twirling villains, but even then, only the Ethereals are the bad guys. But they aren't really bad, because the "Mental control" that they use in others Tau affect them too.
Theres a history where a Daemon try to corrupt an Ethereal (Or it was Dark Eldar?) and they just can't, because the Ethereal is just as convinced of the "Greater Good" as all the others.
But even putting asside the Ethereals, the rest of the Empire in general is well loaded. Obviously that they kill people. Obviously that they make wars. Thats inevitable. But they are the most reasonable race out there.
But as this is OT, I will not continue, I just want to give other perspective to the "The Tau are pure propaganda and they are totalitarian communist!"
Hollow wrote: I've always liked the idea that the Tau are far more insidious than it first appears. They aren't in your face "evil" like chaos, or utterly brutal like the Imperium, but are more "whisper in you ear and make you lose who you are" kinda creepy.
I always preferred the naively innocent approach that the tau first released with (IIRC) - The presence of a race which thinks "sure, they seem nice" when dealing with the dark eldar (and subsequent shocked surprise when they see the results of their cultural exchange programme) makes the rest of the universe seem that much darker. IMO, the tau didn't diminish the grimdark of 40k, they enhanced it.
Hollow wrote: I've always liked the idea that the Tau are far more insidious than it first appears. They aren't in your face "evil" like chaos, or utterly brutal like the Imperium, but are more "whisper in you ear and make you lose who you are" kinda creepy.
I always preferred the naively innocent approach that the tau first released with (IIRC) - The presence of a race which thinks "sure, they seem nice" when dealing with the dark elder (and subsequent shocked surprise when they see the results of their cultural exchange programme) makes the rest of the universe seem that much darker. IMO, the tau didn't diminish the grimdark of 40k, they enhanced it.
Hollow wrote: I've always liked the idea that the Tau are far more insidious than it first appears. They aren't in your face "evil" like chaos, or utterly brutal like the Imperium, but are more "whisper in you ear and make you lose who you are" kinda creepy.
I always preferred the naively innocent approach that the tau first released with (IIRC) - The presence of a race which thinks "sure, they seem nice" when dealing with the dark elder (and subsequent shocked surprise when they see the results of their cultural exchange programme) makes the rest of the universe seem that much darker. IMO, the tau didn't diminish the grimdark of 40k, they enhanced it.
I like it this way, too. The tiny glimmer of light only serves to highlight the darkness around it. You cannot have shadow without light, after all.
Hollow wrote: I've always liked the idea that the Tau are far more insidious than it first appears. They aren't in your face "evil" like chaos, or utterly brutal like the Imperium, but are more "whisper in you ear and make you lose who you are" kinda creepy.
I always preferred the naively innocent approach that the tau first released with (IIRC) - The presence of a race which thinks "sure, they seem nice" when dealing with the dark elder (and subsequent shocked surprise when they see the results of their cultural exchange programme) makes the rest of the universe seem that much darker. IMO, the tau didn't diminish the grimdark of 40k, they enhanced it.
I like it this way, too. The tiny glimmer of light only serves to highlight the darkness around it. You cannot have shadow without light, after all.
True, but isn't it just so40k if even the glimmer of light in this dark universe is still a fascist totalitarian oligarchy?
It's better than the alternative...but it's hardly 'good'.
The two interpretations can live in harmony if you like. They can be a cold-war propaganda state...that's still naive about the true nature of the horrors of the universe. They're like Soviet Russia setting out to unite all of the Eastern Bloc countries under the banner of Communism...except they don't realise yet that most of the Eastern Bloc countries are actually daemons that want to bathe in their blood.
Noble cause. Totalitarian propaganda state. Unaware that the universe is filled with psychopaths. Perfect
The two interpretations can live in harmony if you like. They can be a cold-war propaganda state...that's still naive about the true nature of the horrors of the universe. They're like Soviet Russia setting out to unite all of the Eastern Bloc countries under the banner of Communism...except they don't realise yet that most of the Eastern Bloc countries are actually daemons that want to bathe in their blood.
Noble cause. Totalitarian propaganda state. Unaware that the universe is filled with psychopaths. Perfect
Replace 'Eastern Bloc' with Afghanistan there and you got a good analogy
, and I can't believe that people actually like them. But, I would never advocate a nerf-bat to them (
