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As the title says, my brother seems to think that Tau are unbalance and over powered. His main reasoning is Markerlights and the Riptide. He thinks spending 2 tokens for Ignores Cover is completely broken and unfair, not to mention making my squad BS 5 or higher.
He also has a gripe with the Riptide, mainly in comparison to Eldar with their Wraithknight. He comparison their base points for what you get saying things like for 240 points base I don't get an invulnerable save and the Riptide does and it only cost 180 which is a huge difference. But I think that T 8 really smooths things out here because not much can hurt the Wraithknight. He also compares their damage output at base points saying that he only gets 2 S 10 shots where the Riptide get 8 shots at S 6 plus the secondary weapon what ever it may be. He has to pay 300 points for an effective loadout and I only pay around 220 depend on how I run it. He believes the Nova Reactor to be down right because on the abilities I get from it, which are mainly 3++ save and Nova Charged Burst Cannon.

He also likes to complain on our basic troops saying my are always going to beat his because I have support range and can run away 6" and still fire the distance. These are just some of the reasons but what I would like to know is what does DakkaDakka think about the Tau Codex being unbalance, over power and just plain broken?

Tau are good (finally), they're not overpowered.

He needs to reevaluate his army if he's have problems against your Tau. They're definitely not unbeatable.

I have beaten him twice I believe and he has beaten me once, plus a kill team game

He also forgets that the riptide will suffer from about two overheats a game.

Tau really lacks fast scoring units and thats when the Eldar allies come into play.

 IXLoiero95XI wrote:
I have beaten him twice I believe and he has beaten me once, plus a kill team game

Three games with a 1/3 win record is not enough to base an 'unbalanced' tag to an army. Play more games, and see if you winning is a trend. If so, look at helping him figure out ways to counter your army with units in his book if he's unwilling to make the change himself.

Tau aren't unbalanced, but it's easy to build your army in a way that can be severely punished by them.

I think if he realised that killing my pathfinders meant no markerlights he would get a big advantage

Tell him that, then.

I have

I've played a few games against and a few games with and it feels like they're one of the easiest TAC army at the moment. Sure you can beat Tau, but your list has to be designed to do it really, a lot of all round lists will struggle heavily against them I think.

Play more games. he'll figure it out, just takes practice.

He's probably confusing not fun to play against with over powered. Tau have never been fun to play against, and new tau are very powerful, but probably not broken.

Tau are not broken but yes they can be quite boring and not fun to play against since alot of other armies tactics being that I have to get closer and survive the firestorm. I do agree that some of the markerlight shinanigans can be annoying but by doing this: "If there are few marker light units take them out first and if there are alot of markerlight units focus on the stuff that hurts" has actually helped alot in my games vs the Tau.

If people are convinced that it is overpowered it will be near impossible to change their mind.

The silly thing about people's mindset is, they think every unit from every army should be exactly as valuable as one from another army.

Fire warriors should be exactly as valuable for their points as tactical marines, and guardians, and gaunt's, and necron warriors.

Riptides should be exactly as valuable as a wraithknight or a dreadknight, they are all heavy monstrous creatures right?

Nope. Thing is, some armies can have better, say, heavy support, to make up for a lack of another thing, say, troops. Tau heavy support, yep, probably better than the eldar heavy support. But thats because tau are kind of heavy-support based, eldar are more fast attack based. Tau has nothing that can compete with guardian jettbikes, for instance.

TO clarify, tau are.

Shooting: 70%
Mobility: 20%
Resilency: 10%
Assaulty: 0%

Eldar are:

Shooty: 40%
Mobility: 40%
Resiliency: 10%
Assaulty:10% (On dedicated assault units only)

SO yes, that means in a all out gun fight, tau will most likely win, their shooting units, and shooting battlesuit, will most likely outmatch the eldar one. But in doing so, his army is much less mobile, and completely incapable of assaulting well.

The Tau ignore mobility because of their massive range and cover/LOS ignoring tricks.

Basically, against Tau, the Eldar strengths don't count. The more varied cover introduced in this edition doesn't count.

You can try to outshoot them from extreme range or threat range using Wave Serpents to clear off the Pathfinders. With that done, their cover ignoring ability drops significantly and you can begin to start playing to your strengths against them.

Swooping Hawks can kill Pathfinders really dead with their Grenade pack, but they arrive turn 2 at the earliest and you really want to be killing them on turn 1.

Eldar have always been Heavy Support based and not Fast Attack based btw. Until recently, all the good stuff was there until Warp Spiders and Swooping Hawks got buffed.

The 'more valuable' doesn't fly. There's just difference in army selection and choices; balance is done by points costs. Wraithknights should be more valuable than Riptides, as they cost more points; the Wraithknight is just worse for its points overall. Also, it's not true because of the Land Speeder; if it were true, the Land Speeder would be more expensive and the Vyper much cheaper but this is not the case (and the Land Speeder isn't really 'that' good).

 Daba wrote:
The Tau ignore mobility because of their massive range and cover/LOS ignoring tricks.

Basically, against Tau, the Eldar strengths don't count. The more varied cover introduced in this edition doesn't count.

You can try to outshoot them from extreme range or threat range using Wave Serpents to clear off the Pathfinders. With that done, their cover ignoring ability drops significantly and you can begin to start playing to your strengths against them.

Swooping Hawks can kill Pathfinders really dead with their Grenade pack, but they arrive turn 2 at the earliest and you really want to be killing them on turn 1.

Eldar have always been Heavy Support based and not Fast Attack based btw. Until recently, all the good stuff was there until Warp Spiders and Swooping Hawks got buffed.

The 'more valuable' doesn't fly. There's just difference in army selection and choices; balance is done by points costs. Wraithknights should be more valuable than Riptides, as they cost more points; the Wraithknight is just worse for its points overall. Also, it's not true because of the Land Speeder; if it were true, the Land Speeder would be more expensive and the Vyper much cheaper but this is not the case (and the Land Speeder isn't really 'that' good).

Ahh what I meant was, even when eldar have heavy stuff, it's fast.

When tau have heavy stuff, it's really heavy, but generally slow, despite being skimmer based and such. ( Ironically now I think about it, the tau riptide is actually pretty fast so my argument is evaporating xD)

Now, i'll admit i'm no particular expert on either army, but I would think that, if you can get into range with eldar guns (They have short ranges generally on the troops, right?) Then they are in assault range. And even if guardians are no close combat specialists, they should generally still stomp fire warriors. I found getting anything and everything into assault the best way to deal with tau, anyway.

I actually do believe Tau are overpowered. Well, not exactly Tau in general, but a properly built Farsight Enclave list is. I am currently 27-0 with it, versus top lists and decent players (mostly tournament games), and i never had such a high winrate (i don't think i became a 40K god all of a sudden, i am a decent player but nothing more). One thing for sure, the reason they are very strong is not the Riptide (overrated unit, imho).

Oh yeah, the heavy stuff is fast (or at least mobile). The exception being Artillery.

Trying to take on Tau head on generally results in death, as you still have a few turns before reaching assault (turn 3 at the earliest) and they'll have more turns shooting at you. Because of their large range, it's hard to concentrate on one area too.

The problem with the Eldar assault is they won't have the numbers to make it. Outflanking can make them take them out piecemeal rather than having to switch targets too.

Tau (IMO) are the hardest matchup for Eldar though, so it's an uphill struggle. Once the Markerlights go down (Pathfinders are really the main source, the single Markelights don't put the tokens in number to be too bad) then you can start playing using cover effectively, and their shooting will be more average.

 Evileyes wrote:
The silly thing about people's mindset is, they think every unit from every army should be exactly as valuable as one from another army.

Fire warriors should be exactly as valuable for their points as tactical marines, and guardians, and gaunt's, and necron warriors.

Riptides should be exactly as valuable as a wraithknight or a dreadknight, they are all heavy monstrous creatures right?

Nope. Thing is, some armies can have better, say, heavy support, to make up for a lack of another thing, say, troops. Tau heavy support, yep, probably better than the eldar heavy support. But thats because tau are kind of heavy-support based, eldar are more fast attack based. Tau has nothing that can compete with guardian jettbikes, for instance.

TO clarify, tau are.

Shooting: 70%
Mobility: 20%
Resilency: 10%
Assaulty: 0%

Eldar are:

Shooty: 40%
Mobility: 40%
Resiliency: 10%
Assaulty:10% (On dedicated assault units only)

SO yes, that means in a all out gun fight, tau will most likely win, their shooting units, and shooting battlesuit, will most likely outmatch the eldar one. But in doing so, his army is much less mobile, and completely incapable of assaulting well.

In all honesty, that's less because of how the army is supposed to be, and more because the army isn't balanced enough to have everything be good.

It's not like one will say CSM elites suck only because they get heldrakes, it's just frivolous nonsense.

I honestly think the tau army is pretty well balanced internally. There's lots of things you can do, it's just that their easiest and probably best (or at least most broadly useful) strategy is mostly immobile shooting.

Also I was totally expecting this to be a "I just lost to Tau and they suck" thread. I had "Cry some more" all lined up and everything too. I'm sad now...

I've played 4-5 games with the new codex and still get schooled. I think your brother doesn't understand how to exploit tau weaknesses. I felt similar when my brother had the new chaos codex and I was stuck with fourth edition. I felt that the heldrake in particular was uber ok because nothing in my codex could shoot that vermin down. And I felt the troops where way cheep for what they are able to do. Later after getting his codex learned I was whining too much.

 IXLoiero95XI wrote:
I have beaten him twice I believe and he has beaten me once, plus a kill team game

Eldar should smash tau; swap places with him, use the serpent shield to knock all the markerlights off the table, and then win a game with his own army.

Wait, he's playing Eldar?! Come on! Maybe he should grow a pair. Does he know what Wave Serpents, Striking Scorpions, Warp Spiders, Guardians, and Seers are?

Static gunline tau seem to be the more powerful build at the moment.
This build does well against anything that feels the need to come to you across the board slowly or tries to come at you in rhinos.
If it comes at you fast, gives you only 1 turn to decide between targets - Tau can't deal with it well. Bikes, Cavalry, Deep Strikers, outflanking....

Tau suck at objective missions. Most Tau builds will only be able to sit on the objectives they start with, so if you can contest one of those last turn, you'll be ahead of the game.
Most Tau players will be taking an Ethereal. He can be worth 3 victory points in some games, and is T3 with no saves.
Learn to mix up your normal target priority, especially to shoot your lascannons and missiles at Crisis/Broadsides rather than tanks.

Teschio wrote:
I actually do believe Tau are overpowered. Well, not exactly Tau in general, but a properly built Farsight Enclave list is. I am currently 27-0 with it, versus top lists and decent players (mostly tournament games), and i never had such a high winrate (i don't think i became a 40K god all of a sudden, i am a decent player but nothing more). One thing for sure, the reason they are very strong is not the Riptide (overrated unit, imho).

Thanx for posting this.I assume your using a bomb list?

If so I can certainly see what you mean as my main opponent play`s Tau and ive yet to beat him in over a dozen games..im sporting IG,Orks and SM`s.
I also don't think the Riptide is "all that" even though ive been pounded by them.
To me what I see as being "OP`d" about Tau is abilities like allowing units to target multiple enemy units in one shooting phase..as in FSbomb DSing then proceeding to take out 4+ targets in the turn they drop...now most all other armies use DS to get into Melee position with hard hitting CC units but have to weather a turn of shooting to do so.The Tau can pretty much go around all of that with the FS bomb.
With the high average str and low cost of Tau guns its like they can put out more firepower/volume of shots from range than many hard hitting Assault formations can IN close combat..to me that's just wrong especially with 6th editions rules.

And I see many tau players stating that "we suck in melee,just get us in cc and you will wipe the table with us"...yeah,with supporting fire,the ability to increase your overwatch shots to BS2 theres very little chance that a assault army is going to do much to your army..there just wont be enough models left by the time the cc happens.And this tactic of "feed them a weak unit first" doenst work at all as you will be lucky to get ANY unit close enough and big enough to weather the over watch.

Though I must say that I have had the closest games just playing a spam list of either all infantry/soft stuff or all mechanized with a good amount of AV14.

I think that they are indeed overpowerd..for now that is.They are a new codex and have raised the bar/shaken up the meta.Its not unusual to see this though as all game systems work like this.Im sure that over the next years codex releases there will be additions to armys that will marginalize some of the strong stuff Tau can do.Its all part of the "buff,Nerf" cycle.

Tau are good, maybe even great but they are no means overpowered.
I tend to find that fighting them often feels similar to fighting IG in that the first 2 turns decide the game and if you can survive those first few crucial rounds relatively unscathed you have a good chance of winning.

I have beaten Tau with Sisters of Battle. His arguments are invalid.

As a Tau player i say this.
Tell him to be quiet. There are so many ways to kill use. CC with a riptide is an option, as with most other things.

@Hotsauceman1 - my friend tried that with Terminators and did finally bring my Riptide crashing down (not before he took out 3 Terminators himself!!!) for the first time since April. Yup. Before last week he had NEVER been lost in a game (over 30 games now, not lost any).

I agree many armies can struggle to beat Tau if they don't prepare but at my club we write lists and then pick opponents to try and make it fair. I change my list weekly to keep it fresh for myself and my opponent and sometimes it does get a little silly. Last week I ended up against my Smurf friend and I had written a anti-MEQ list (Lots of Ion, Vespids - first game with them, they fooking annihilated a ton of Marines!!!) just to try out so from the outset it was hard.

Out of all the armies I think Tau can tailor against other armies far beyond what they can do to us but as people have said the Pathfinders and Markerlights are our biggest Turn 1/2 advantage and a good Tau player will use these to focus on your most important units in those turns. They should be number one target for our opposition.

Every army is overpowered if you lose to it. Treat this as exactly what it is, your brother being a sore loser.

Do some armies struggle against certain armies? Certainly!

Is 40k's game balance perfect? Of course not!

Does this mean folks should be on here 7 days a week screaming to the peanut gallery that X army is overpowered because they lost to it? Hell no.

In short, roll your eye's at him and tell him to stop being such a b****.