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

Cheers

Good shooting bad close combat.

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


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

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


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But thanks for help

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

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

Cheers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skriker

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

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

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

4. Really fragile and inflexible troops choices.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The codex needs a better counter assault unit than kroot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Problems with Tau in 5th edition

Rubbish at melee.

Rubbish Leadership.

Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

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

Only one good character.

Few good special rules.

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

The basic Troops can’t have any support weapons.

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

Creeping Dementia wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skriker

Skriker wrote:

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

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

Skriker

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

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

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

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

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

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