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- Pardon my ignorance...but, Is 'overwatch' the rule that lets you shoot DSers within a certain radius? If it is, then I fully agree.

- How about Upping the cost of Crisis suits (by a moderate amount 50+) and allowing the player to freely choose weapons at the start of EVERY game (and MAYBE support options...but never HW stuff). It would hurt us points-wise, but the tactical edge would be huge. Would you take a 300pt unit of 3 suits if it had flamers/BC when you fought nids and PR/FB vs 'crons, etc...? Could this be made to work? (obviously I am thinking in a tournament mindset, where you need a TakeAllComers army from the start)

- I suppose it is almost Anti-tradition, but rail rifles (one per four FWs) in FW squads...why not make them ANTI-INFANTRY...instead of anti light troops.

- As I am quite tired I will see if this makes sense in the morning.

Freefall wrote:Is 'overwatch' the rule that lets you shoot DSers within a certain radius? If it is, then I fully agree.

It's not. You're thinking of the ability the daemonhunter's Mystics provide, though I don't think it has a finite name for it's ability. Overwatch, if I'm not mistaken, is a rather old 40k rule, though I'm not familiar with it specifically. By definition the term overwatch basically means to be vigilant for enemies to show up in LOS and within range, and you then promptly fill them with shells of all calibre.

The idea of on-the-spot equipped Crisis suits probably could not work, as you would be unable to accurately portray it on your models. Say, at the start of the match, you decide to equip one team with TL fusion and shield generators, and another squad with plasma and missile pods. How are you (and more importantly your enemy) going to be able to tell which is which? You could magnetize your suits, as alot of people do, but that's not really a reasonable baseline expectation. It would make our suits whip rediculous amounts of ass though!

The Defenestrator wrote:The idea of on-the-spot equipped Crisis suits probably could not work, as you would be unable to accurately portray it on your models. Say, at the start of the match, you decide to equip one team with TL fusion and shield generators, and another squad with plasma and missile pods. How are you (and more importantly your enemy) going to be able to tell which is which? You could magnetize your suits, as alot of people do, but that's not really a reasonable baseline expectation. It would make our suits whip rediculous amounts of ass though!

- Then again, we are talking about a game where my entire army could very well be represented by marshmallows of various sizes. Yes, I was taking magnetizing into account when I typed that up. On the other hand...you could just buy a ton of suits and make several per setup...that line of thought should guarantee GW will like my new rule.

You'll have to excuse me, I'm far too particular about my WYSIWYG Nasty habit of mine, being such a visual creature.

And don't talk about this idea too loudly, GW might go for it and ban rare earth metals from all tournaments and gaming tables while they're at it

I am just brain storming and could be going on a limb, but I will float this idea to you all. In basic Warhamer 40k there is only on tank that comes with AA that I can think of and that is the SkyRay.

Why not give it a chance to be a Anti Aircraft Mount.

Every other AA Tank is only used in Forgeworld, because it is the in that rules you get Flyers. Why make us pay for AA in a tank that will never use its ability in a basic game.


Give it a chance to knock pods down. on a 6 or 5 it get to fire a missle at a pod before it lands. Then it will stop us bitching about not getting any defense against pods and assault will now feel at least there is a chance

Have I gone to far?

Over watch is a rule from 2nd ed.

Basically:

You forgo moving and firing in your turn. Then on the next enemy turn you get to stop any movement and declare your shooting. Basically give gun line to pick the range they want when a units charges them. I move my genes at my fire warrior squad. The tau player then informs the genes they must stop 9 inches away from the firewarriors and the fire warriors pull the triggers. kills 4 of them, then after shooting they finish there movement and then assault. All it does is allow the defender to fire on a incoming unit as it charges instead of sitting there with the mouths open. But then there is a bad thing also. If nothing come into view that units wastes a movement and a fire turn.

That is overwatch]


Or what it does is allow a shooting turn as the assault marine jump from cover and boost at the gun line. This is in because of the idea that men would not just set there as there getting assaulted and give a gun line a scare factor to assault armies who now have to be smart about hitting gun lines.. and also why you all have assault land raiders. in 2nd you would use that wonderfull armor to run in front of gun lines and assault out of tanks!

its early sorry for bad grammer

- Overwatch seems like overkill (sorry about the pun LoL). I think shooting at DSers and infiltrators would be better because the enemy can willingly not get shot, but then have to walk into our wall-o-ouch or outflank. It would enhance our "we shoot you from far away aspect".

Yes.. Free Fall... but the problem is this. What army walk across the table any more. Our Range is no longer a threat


Orks: do but when you can field 120 orcs and everyone gets cover saves because there mixed together.

Every one else transports now. Str 5 will not cut the mustered.

Stern Guard and even basic marines in pods drop an inch away and bolter your units to death or you get the 18 inch Fleeting Assault marines.

It's been a while since I worked with my Tau, but one thing I always wanted to see was the ability to give upgraded weapons to a Gun Drone. FW handled some of that with their Heavy Gun Drones, but I don't think they really went far enough. Specifically, I'd like to see Heavy Gun Drones opened up to use all of the regular Crisis weaponry. In addition, make a new option for the Drone Controller the ability to take a single Heavy Gun Drone instead of 1-2 Gun Drones (sort of like Terminator Armor takes up two model slots in transports).

Not really sure about how to handle the fact that it usually feels like Tau are designed to play a game different than all of the other armies (ie ranged-only instead of CC).

Think your codex is bad? Go play CSM. Or dark eldar. Or space wolves for that matter...

PanzerSmurf wrote:Think your codex is bad? Go play CSM. Or dark eldar. Or space wolves for that matter...

I do not think Chaos Space Marines or Dark Eldar have it that bad in 5th edition. Sure the Dark Eldar model range sucks, but rules-wise they are pretty nice. Space Wolves I can agree on, but hey, they are getting a new codex sooner than the Tau are so.
The Tau have been absolutely murdered by the coming of 5th edition.

A small list of negative changes for the Tau:
-Their entire game was based on victory point denial, more often than not by using LOS blocking terrain to their advantage. This has gotten a lot harder to do with the true-LOS rules.
-Skimmers were nerfed (in comparison to the other tank types that is, I do know Tau have Disruption Pods and that their skimmers have become slightly more surviveable)
-The change to troops being the only scoring units really sucks for the Tau as well, as their troops are just not as good as those of the better armies.
-Shooting got worse (everyone now gets 4+ cover saves).
-And to top it all off, everyone and his grandmother got faster in 5th edition, giving the Tau less time to blow people to shreds.

To help the Tau in the new edition, I would suggest the following:
-Adjust the base price of all jump pack users. JSJ got all but terminated, so the value of the jump pack has been reduced, reduce the cost accordingly!
-Let crisis suits take the same weapons twice (like warwalkers and carnifexes)!
-Make vehicle mounted gun drones NOT give up any kill points!
-Let players pick the Devilfish's secondary weapon option (like the Hammerhead). No more paying 20 points extra for the SMS while the already included gun drones are worth the same!

I'm sure I forgot to address some issues the Tau have. These are just the first that popped into my mind.

Make Drones in general (detachable and squads) worth 0 KP. Part of the Tau army's strength was throw away units to speed bump the enemy.

As I said in the Ogryn thread, I think the Tau also need more allies:
- Donorian Clawed Fiend (more-uber Ogryns)
- Hrud (more-uber Ratlings)

These would be Elites.

The main problem with Tau in 5th is IMHO the missions. I agree that many (not all) of Airmaniac's observations are present. However it is the missions and how they interact with those points that make winning with Tau that much harder.

Frankly, I've stopped enjoying 40K with 5th edition. I tried to like it, even changed back to Eldar which seems to play okay in 5th. Right now they only way I think I could enjoy 40K is to play marines, and I am not ready to do that just now.

Next to Eldar, a remotely decent Tau list is probably one of the best armies in the game. Yes, they have some problems, the same as Guard. But where Tau don't muck about trying to be not entirely incompetent in assault like the Guard vainly does, they save their points and reinvest them in things like Battlesuits and Railguns with sub-munitions. If your Tau army is faultering, it's either because your opponent is very good at getting into assault, or you're trying to use the Tau from something their list can't reflect.

No, I'm running into KP issues with all my non-S5 weapons being worth 2+KPs and the weakest units in my army being unable to hold an objective against a strong breeze.

Frankly, with the changes to the game in 5th, it isn't hard to get the Tau in assault. Running around in Devilfish to avoid HTH and try to make it to objectives is not a fun game for me.

Edit: The changes in 5th edition wouldn't be much of an issue if it wasn't for the kill points rule and requiring all members of a unit to be wiped out to avoid contesting objectives. Those are mission rules. Under the old VP system and objective rules those problems didn't exist and I think the Tau would still be a competitive and fun army to play.

Skinnattittar wrote: If your Tau army is faultering, it's either because your opponent is very good at getting into assault, or you're trying to use the Tau from something their list can't reflect.

Thats part of the problem. It is sssooooooooo much easier to get into assault right now. Outflank, shorter deployment zones, increased tank survivability, no more entanglement, run. Need I go on? If I don't get first turn, my Tau are most likely engaged in some sort of HTH on turn 2.

Personally, I feel its just a points issue. The Tau equipment was expensive because of what it could do in 4th ed. It can't function as well in 5th ed, but it currently costs the same. Plasma rifles and sniper drones are stupidly overpriced now that everything has cover saves, JSJ has lost most of its effectiveness because of TLOS. Our tanks/vehicles are overpriced because being a skimmer is no longer nearly as benifical as it used to be. The only difference I can see between a non-fast skimmer and normal non-fast tank is dodging a Ram on a 3+. There is a reason Rhinos went down to 35 points.

If one grants the points issue, the problem is you can't solve it by an across the board points reduction unless you relax some restrictions on the amount of equipment to be taken. It's of no help to make FWs cheaper when putting more of them on the table can be a liability. More Battlesuits would be nice but the maximum possible is currently 9 in Elites.

The standard non-farsight tau list can take a total of 15 crisis suits if you really want to. 9 in elites, 6 in HQ and bodyguards. That is more than enough for probably anyone.

Yes but in a general way just making everything cheaper still doesn't work.

Some units probably ought to be cheaper and others ought to be better. Like, make Hammerheads 14/13/12 or something.

The idea of adding allies might help and fits the Tau fluff (all friends together, working for the Greater Good.) The problem is that the Tau already have everything they need except really good assault troops and that lack is one of the defining characteristics of the army.

It would be easy for example to invent a close combat drone armed with a flamethrower, flechettes and a circular saw around the rim.

Agreed.

Making my troops cheaper doesn't make them any better at seizing and holding objectives. It doesn't stop my opponent from racking up KPs with a running tac squad armed with butter knives.

It isn't too hard to get a unit below 50% with mass fire warrior squads. It is hard to completely wipe them out however which is required so often for victories. OTOH, it is fairly easy to wipe out/destory a FW squad in HTH thanks to the rules. The modifiers for losing HTH really put the hurt on troops with average LD and poor I.

I suppose I could arm all my battlesuits slightly different so I can avoid the standard wound allocation. But after reading GW's explanation of doing that multiple times, I found the process is just too painful (and still confusing) in practice. IIRC that section of the rules even admits it is much less clear. I'd rather just arm them the same to keep it simple and not have my opponent ask me what I'm doing or griping that I am taking too much time.

So much for better rules.

I'm not sure what could be changed to help the army as a whole. Rumors of Guard being able to avoid the 4+ cover save for firing through other Guard units sounds nice and helps them with all the units they can field. I just can't think of an analog for the Tau.

To save themselves in assault, give (for free) firewarrior/pathfinders a disruption grenade of some kind. In short, any Tau unit falling back from an assault cannot be killed off on a sweeping advance, all the enemy can do is consolidate.

It will help leave a few guys on the table to spit pulse death at the assaulting unit.

I donno, but Tau troop survivability is a huge problem in 5th ed.

This wouldn't make Tau any better or anything, but I had an idea for the Commander. Why not give him access to the XV22 Battlesuit? I think it would be pretty neat to give him that option. Not sure what it would do though. Maybe make him even faster in exchange for one weapon system?

Here's a thought for the Vespid: The Codex/Fluff talks alot about how they are fast moving, highly mobile, work closely with infiltrating Pathfinder teams, and outflank their enemies... further, the Codex mentions that Vespid have "diamond-hard claws" and such...

Why not give Vespid the Scout USR and Rending in close combat? Possibly, bump their strength and WS up to 4. This would make them better, though may have the potential of making them too good (Though T4 5+sv models aren't the most amazing creatures ever, even with Outflank, Rending, and Jump Packs... one bolter salvo and there goes the whole unit, especially if the strain leader gets whacked).

rmeju wrote:

Some fun things I've been noodling:

Railguns:
-Should cause instant death regardless of toughness, or at least cause two wounds. This would really help out vs. nidzilla. Immunity to instant death would not be circumvented by this rule; and/or
-Can only pen

Rmeju

Against nidzilla a unit of three broadsides with target locks would cause so great devastation. They are pretty accurate, they wound every nid monster on 2+. With good luck they could kill 2 carnifexes in a turn, if they do not get cover save (happens quite often in 5th edition). Two wounds per shot would still be a bit unbalanced I think. These kind of rules fit into weapons like titan-killers.

Your second thought would only be reasonable if railguns had ap of 2, so they wouldn't get +1 to their damage rolls. These are my thoughts.

Another idea I've mentioned before but in a different thread -- give pulse rifles a rapid fire range of 15.

Some more thoughts about this.

I'm not yet convinced that Tau have become completely uncompetitive but if they have, the way to cure it is not just to make them cheaper. Some models could be cheaper and allow more of them in a unit. For example, knock some points off the Crisis Suit and allow four in a unit. That would help.

The other way of curing things would be to make things a bit better here and there. I have mentioned raising the Hammerhead frontal armour to 14, and giving the Pulse Rifle a rapid fire range of 15. Crisis suits could be allowed four hardpoints and weapons. They could all carry a flamer as well as their normal load.

Frontal armour 14 hammerhead would be a nightmare!

If tau could get some sort of shooting defense upgrade like the orks KFF they'd be a bit better at holding objectives, yeah?

Da Boss wrote:Frontal armour 14 hammerhead would be a nightmare!

If tau could get some sort of shooting defense upgrade like the orks KFF they'd be a bit better at holding objectives, yeah?

That was just an idea I threw up.

I would like Tau to get improvements that are "fluffy" for their army. They shouldn't get good at assault and they should prefer to avoid being assaulted. In general, things that improve their firepower, mobility and ability to avoid assaults would be preferable.

Combat tactics would have been better for Tau I think. It would make them nasty.