Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Tau can now take some actualy good troops, thanks to having allies. Firewarriors still suck but now you don't have to take more than the bare minimum of them.

saying you can take good troops because of allies is an oxymoron.

I mean, seriously? "Tau is better as you can take less Tau and more of anything else"?

Just play the "anything else" codex then, why even bother with tau to begin with?


I stick with that because I want to play TAU, not because I want to play "Tau, lead to victory by anything else". I want TAU to be good, no to rely on the option to clear room for others to be effective.

 BoomWolf wrote:
saying you can take good troops because of allies is an oxymoron.

I mean, seriously? "Tau is better as you can take less Tau and more of anything else"?

Just play the "anything else" codex then, why even bother with tau to begin with?


I stick with that because I want to play TAU, not because I want to play "Tau, lead to victory by anything else". I want TAU to be good, no to rely on the option to clear room for others to be effective.

The op wanted to know why Tau are now better than before. The ability to take allied troops and therefore elimate a weakness of the current Tau dex is one of the reasons why the army became better.
If you do not wish to use this ability then that is your decision just as Grey Knights/ Sisters players were free to ignore the benefits of taking allies in their old books.

I've been watching a lot of battle reports online since 6th edition came out, and the Tau do indeed seem to lose an awful lot more than they win...

...but its generally because of A: the controlling player making dumb decisions, B: the controlling player forgetting about rules changes, and C: lots of crappy dice rolls, and this one seems to happen a lot.

So, you eliminate a Tau weakness by simply not playing Tau?

That's a bit counter-productive to saying Tau got better, you just replaced them.

You cannot claim something is better by having the option to avoid it, is like saying a bank is better because you can now split your money to another bank instead. if that "other bank" is better for you, then why are you even AT the "first bank"?

Being able to take allies makes a Tau LIST stronger, but adds no value at all to the Tau ARMY, two different things you HAVE to distinguished.

 Micky wrote:
I've been watching a lot of battle reports online since 6th edition came out, and the Tau do indeed seem to lose an awful lot more than they win...

...but its generally because of A: the controlling player making dumb decisions, B: the controlling player forgetting about rules changes, and C: lots of crappy dice rolls, and this one seems to happen a lot.

Yeah, you really can't afford to make any mistakes with Tau, they are not a forgiving army to play. With most other armies you can flub a couple of rolls or screw up a round. You take your lumps but you aren't out of the game. With Tau those lumps are fatal.

It's less of "Tau has gotten so much better", but more "Tau has gotten a bit better". In general, 6th ed favours the shootings, so tau, being the pure shooting army, benefits from the changes. However, as the changes are global and not just tau specific, every army's shooting side has gotten better as well. So if your tau faces a pure assault list/army, they may fare better than they did last ed, but against hybrid or shooting list/army, the gap stays roughly the same, as both side saw the same shooting buffs.

So don't go expecting your tau to be at the GK/necron tier suddenly, you don't get that kinda out-of-codex buffs unless you're the poster boys.

Siphen wrote:So first off, this is going under the assumption that Tau really did improve a ton. I've played a few games with them and I'm completely sold...we're way better now. Your thoughts?

My question is: Why? Or how? Or whatever...

The only massive change to our army was the change to rapid fire. Granted, this is huge. Our main troops can move and fire 30" and can unload tons of Strength 5 firepower at 15". This gives Tau a mobility advantage...but it's just one unit.

This isn't the only major change, but rapid fire at hald and whenever IS huge. The 36" / 21" threat range of basic firewarriors is great and while lesser, Kroot, specifically Krootox get a bonus too.

All of our vehicles have jink now, granting them a 5+ cover save. But we already had disruption pods...for essentially free, our vehicles received a 4+ cover save from lascannons, missiles, etc. Nice, but not a big difference.

It's a 5+ cover all the time when you've moved. Yes Disruption Pods are cheap, but only at over 12", I see the average 20pts I've saved as 2 extra Fire Warriors / gun drones.

Our crisis suits move 2d6 in the assault phase instead of 6". On average, we get an extra 1" movement. We have the potential for more. We could be screwed and only move 2" or 3". A little bit more significant, but still not a huge difference from 5th edition.

I've found it helpful - having units charging across the board just using the 2D6" move

So what really changed to make Tau so much better? On a semi-related note, could other armies become completely revived with just a few minor changes (I'm looking at you, Eldar)? Discuss!

I think ultimately, it's a lot of little things that have made Tau better, not incredibly so, but enough for it to be less of an up hill struggle and more of a fair fight.

I think that the main benefits alongside the Rapid Fire changes, the Overwatch, Jink Save, etc are:
Various special rules conferring to squads - for example, for all of 40pts, the whole army gets to ignore Night Fighting.
Stealth + Shrouded being a +3 to coversaves. Stealth Suits get a 4+ cover save in an open field and a 2+ in just about any given cover, this makes them incredibly resilient and a hell of a speedbump / harrassment unit.

Take 6 with 2 gun drones each, while a fairly large unit, that's 18 Burst Cannon shots, and 12 Twin-Linked Pulse Carbine shots, which makes them a reasonable threat to pretty much everything with an armour save, anything up to AV11 and flyers up to AV11.
Throw in the same again on overwatch, then the sheer number of ablative wounds with a 4+/2+ cover and 3+/4+ standard save...

There's more but I can't remember them off the top of my head, and can't be done with looking for them right now.

Allies can help, but I've not really figured anything out that I'd rather use than more Tau.

But TL;DR - Lots of little things combine to make Tau better than they were.

Steelmage99 wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

Siphen wrote:And the small arms fire is actually pretty bad at dealing with flyers. They can't scratch Vendettas or Storm Ravens. A full squad in rapid fire range gets 0.666 glances against any Necron flyer or the Storm Talon. They can only bring down Dakka Jets and Razorwing Jetfighters with some ease.

Three units of firewarriors takes out nearly a flier a turn just with small arms. This is something every other army can only dream about. You're the only army at the moment that doesn't need dedicated AA power to handle fliers. That's huge.

Yeah, you're not going to take down stormravens or vendettas as quickly, but S10 Ap1 still really screws stuff up, especially against units that can't get a cover save without forgoing shooting. A battery of 3 broadsides will average a hit per turn on a flier. One hit is really all you need.

But saying that 3 Fire Warrior units (360 points) can nearly bring down an AV 10 Flyer (130) points isn't really too impressive. It also assumes that 3 full Fire Warriors are bought for the army. I rarely find that to be the case.

For what it's worth, I currently run 6 squads of 6, and once I can get the other 3 boxes of Fire Warriors I want, it'll be 6 squads of 12 (Then 7 of 12 with the honour guard )

You love them firewarriors don't ya?

Cant blame you, they are one of the best Tau units out there. as sad as it is. I need to extend my firewarrior gallery as well.

 BoomWolf wrote:
So, you eliminate a Tau weakness by simply not playing Tau?

That's a bit counter-productive to saying Tau got better, you just replaced them.

You cannot claim something is better by having the option to avoid it, is like saying a bank is better because you can now split your money to another bank instead. if that "other bank" is better for you, then why are you even AT the "first bank"?

Being able to take allies makes a Tau LIST stronger, but adds no value at all to the Tau ARMY, two different things you HAVE to distinguished.

Exactly this. A 1000 point list can look like this.

Shas'o with fusion blaster and plasma
x2 6 firewarriors in warfishes
1 unit of two death rain crisis suits

Wolf Lord on thunderwolf
1 unit of 10 grey hunters with x2 meltaguns in rhino
1 units of long fangs with 5 missile launchers.

Technically its a Tau list, but is it a tau army? And if it does win, who really gets the credit.

Baronyu wrote:
It's less of "Tau has gotten so much better", but more "Tau has gotten a bit better". In general, 6th ed favours the shootings, so tau, being the pure shooting army, benefits from the changes. However, as the changes are global and not just tau specific, every army's shooting side has gotten better as well. So if your tau faces a pure assault list/army, they may fare better than they did last ed, but against hybrid or shooting list/army, the gap stays roughly the same, as both side saw the same shooting buffs.

So don't go expecting your tau to be at the GK/necron tier suddenly, you don't get that kinda out-of-codex buffs unless you're the poster boys.

I never considered Necrons to be poster boys either.

But, I think what you're missing is that there's the indirect effect of the changes as well as the direct effect.

What I mean is, okay, everyone else's shooting has gotten better too. But, their assault units also got worse, whereas, Tau assault units (?) really couldn't get any worse. And, light vehicles got worse too.

When something gets worse, you see less of it in general. And while other people's shooting got better, what's really going to be a benefit is that their assault units got worse, so you'll see less assault on the table. You'll also see a lot more shooty infantry armies (that Tau are actually pretty good against), and less fully mobile armies that weaken the effectiveness of pulse weapons. The winning army at Nova was a foot slogging SW/IG army. That's a much better proposition for Tau to face than a rhino-rush army.

 BoomWolf wrote:
You love them firewarriors don't ya?

Cant blame you, they are one of the best Tau units out there. as sad as it is. I need to extend my firewarrior gallery as well.

Damn straight they are!

78pts for 6 troops that ignore night fighting, can always regroup at standard leadership, and have a threat range of 6 Str5 shots at 36" / 12 Str5 shots at 21".
-or-
138pts for 12 troops that ignore night fighting, can always regroup at standard leadership, and have a threat range of 12 Str5 shots at 36" / 24 Str5 shots at 21".

84 Firewarriors will be great

Edit: As with all the above - Because we have Target Locks back, Disruption pods give shrouded, and I've not even done going through the FAQ yet.