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Play without makerlights, then tau is fine.

 Brutallica wrote:
Play without makerlights, then tau is fine.

That's like telling a Marine to play without chapter tactics or Gaurd to play without orders. Doable but really why?

One way to have fun with Tau while not being cheesy but hilarious is to make your Crisis Commander suit Commander One-Punch Man. Take Iriduim Armor, Onager Gauntlet and Vectored-Retro Thrusters. Run up and smack things with your one hit, s10 AP1 punch. While obviously not optimized, it's a fun and unexpected way to run him. I even ID'd a Necron Overlord one time who proceeded to fail his RP roll. XD

Myself I like the kamikaze crisis suicide bomber gambit. Lone naked bodyguard XV8 + failsafe detonator. Throw him into CC with something big soft and hordey and laugh as he ties them up for a few turns until they finally kill him and he drops a S5 large blast in their faces. 42pts but worth every penny for the comedy value alone

The "Tau OP Cheese" cries seem to be related to two things - parking lot battlefields allowing them to concentrate fire and heavy hitter spam boosted to insanity with markerlights. They can easily sweep entire squads away if you play on a board where all of the Tau units have unrestricted LOS!

With enough terrain Tau aren't that bad to fight. And an opponent who takes more infantry and vehicles than suits will also make it more fun. I've yet to lose against our Tau player, even if I never manage to get all his suits. By the end of the game he's usually left with only suits JSJing around trying to take out my scoring units while avoiding return fire from Exorcists.

When you play Tau you're playing an all or nothing game, either you kill your opponent's stuff before it gets close to your expensive stuff or your opponent's stuff destroys your expensive stuff.
It's not that Tau are cheesy, it's that they only do one thing well - shoot or lose.

Just avoid deploying the stormsurge and more than 2 riptides, maybe bring just a single one of them.

I vote for mech Tau. Devilfish mounted troops and Hammerhead tanks!

Take it old school!

 SickSix wrote:
I vote for mech Tau. Devilfish mounted troops and Hammerhead tanks!

Take it old school!

Put Breachers in the Fish and make it new old skool!

 oldzoggy wrote:
second attempt. Do not use marker lights or anything that can make a jump move ; )

Your a monster!

Buy the models you want to paint. Then work it into a list. Simple as.

My experience as quite a noob playing Tau for a few months is that for some unknown reason anybody who doesn't play them thinks they are cheese..... despite no psychic, poor BS for a "shooty" army, ultra low WS, T, I. Zero options for assault based units, limited HQ options, absolutely dog gak special characters. The list goes on...

They are an army that to be competitive (by this i mean actually win a game) with you must play a certain way, but if you play that way you will get abuse (JSJ, positioning models for supporting fire, using ignores cover; again, the list goes on)

Eldar get soulburst (among other things), imperium gets endless underpointed (RG) special characters and the ability to ally with basically anything they need (got no assault? run an allied space wolf detachment), but if tau bring anything remotely dangerous then you are a cheesey cheater whos no fun to play.

I played against an 1850 Tau list intentionally toned down and won with my "probably the best my army can actually bring" pure IG list. He had a Commander with 4 marker drones, 2 units of Fire Warriors and an Ethereal, some sniper drones with controller, 2 broadsides with a couple drones, DS stealth suits, outflanking piranhas, bleachers in a devilish, and two Riptides. Tau can be in a lot of trouble if they don't go first, and with my IG having a good amount of Ignores Cover, that Tau army was without its Devilfish or any of its Breachers and down plenty of Fire Warriors before they even got to move.

Now having some real experience against Tau, I can safely say they're a lot more fun to play when they bring lots of infantry, don't have formations, don't pack a Stormsurge, but still pose a challenge to beat. My game would've been a draw if one of his Riptides didn't fail a 5" charge to kill my Pasknisher at 1 HP then consolidate into my deployment zone for StW and linebreaker. Even with a fantastic first turn, I was by no means guaranteed to win, and the fact that it was anyone's game during the whole game is what really makes games more fun.

Process wrote:
Buy the models you want to paint. Then work it into a list. Simple as.

My experience as quite a noob playing Tau for a few months is that for some unknown reason anybody who doesn't play them thinks they are cheese..... despite no psychic, poor BS for a "shooty" army, ultra low WS, T, I. Zero options for assault based units, limited HQ options, absolutely dog gak special characters. The list goes on...

They are an army that to be competitive (by this i mean actually win a game) with you must play a certain way, but if you play that way you will get abuse (JSJ, positioning models for supporting fire, using ignores cover; again, the list goes on)

Eldar get soulburst (among other things), imperium gets endless underpointed (RG) special characters and the ability to ally with basically anything they need (got no assault? run an allied space wolf detachment), but if tau bring anything remotely dangerous then you are a cheesey cheater whos no fun to play.

You'd be surprised to see how soulburst is 100% irrelevant to competitive Eldar, and how close competitive Eldar is to competitive Tau.

Actually, Eldar is even more based on two really strong units, whereas Tau pretty much has a nice top 4 with Ta'Unar, Riptide Wing, Stormsurge, Ghostkeels.

With Eldar, if you don't bring either scatbike spam or warp spiders, you can go back to fighting mid-tier armies at best.

With Tau, you have to get rid of 3 units before you leave top tier.

Sikplex wrote:
So I've been interested in starting Tau (1500pt?) and after reading through forums etc it seems lile they get a lot of Hate.
I've yet to play against one(beginner) or see a Tau army.

Now, I don't need my army to be full competitive- I want to be able to enjoy playing it without cheese!

So I was thinking maybe just 1 Riptide? And basing my army on infantry/ stealth suits?

What would a generic list look like without the Riptide spam and cheese?

And is the Start Collecting box a good start?

Thanks guys.

People hate Tau for a variety of reasons that I am sure you'll have read before.

Tau are great. Pick them up.

If you want to not play cheesy tau, you must choose to play them with extreme mobility. That majority of the hate come from players finding it boring and that they just pack up their models.

Here is a non-boring list -
Use the CAD Detachment
Commander with signature systems that buff his unit.
Farsight
Crisis suit squad
Make a*EDITED "Little" bomb out of these guys and drop them right in the think of the enemy. Give the crisis suits target locks so you can take out a maybe 2 units. give the squad gun drones to hit a 3rd unit and act as extra wounds.

Then get some breacher squads in devilfish transports and scoot up field and unload the breachers at point blank range to blast them with S6 AP3 shotguns.
Also just Kroot infantry are great. 2x10 kroot squads to run up and fight as well.

Marker drone formation is great because it gives you mobile marker light solution so they too are moving or get some skyrays.

Get some piranhas also scoot around the field to get objectives or put the hurt on light infantry or light vehicles

Lastly get a storm surge and have it run around and not sit back and just shoot. get it into combat.

Then tell the whiners that you're undoubtedly going to play against to STFU as you've met the following conditions:
No Gun Line
No Broadsidebomb
No Riptide wing
No Optimized Stealth Cadre
No Hunter Contingent
You moved.
You got up in their face.

Playing this way is fun. I do this. It's risky because you will get charged and will die in CC. You will also put yourself in range of psykers. Your Stormsurge is expensive but is only T6 with 3+ save. But atleast you risked it dying by being aggressive.

Farsight bomb isn't, and never has been, fun for anyone to play against, it;s not very strong, but it's not interactive, like basically every other deathstar in the game.

Just one note- I usually fought against shadowsun, farsight, buffmander and I think like 9 bodyguards all with target lock and various weapons.

Well he/she probably still would like to have a chance at also having fun and even winning so a light Farsight, buffmander and 3 crisis suits squad isn't unreasonable

morgoth wrote:

Process wrote:
Buy the models you want to paint. Then work it into a list. Simple as.

My experience as quite a noob playing Tau for a few months is that for some unknown reason anybody who doesn't play them thinks they are cheese..... despite no psychic, poor BS for a "shooty" army, ultra low WS, T, I. Zero options for assault based units, limited HQ options, absolutely dog gak special characters. The list goes on...

They are an army that to be competitive (by this i mean actually win a game) with you must play a certain way, but if you play that way you will get abuse (JSJ, positioning models for supporting fire, using ignores cover; again, the list goes on)

Eldar get soulburst (among other things), imperium gets endless underpointed (RG) special characters and the ability to ally with basically anything they need (got no assault? run an allied space wolf detachment), but if tau bring anything remotely dangerous then you are a cheesey cheater whos no fun to play.

You'd be surprised to see how soulburst is 100% irrelevant to competitive Eldar, and how close competitive Eldar is to competitive Tau.

Actually, Eldar is even more based on two really strong units, whereas Tau pretty much has a nice top 4 with Ta'Unar, Riptide Wing, Stormsurge, Ghostkeels.

With Eldar, if you don't bring either scatbike spam or warp spiders, you can go back to fighting mid-tier armies at best.

With Tau, you have to get rid of 3 units before you leave top tier.

I just dont think thats true considering the Psychic abilities and multitude of strong units available to Eldar at quite low cost. Tell me how a riptide wing counters a full unit of Wraithguard teleporting within 6inches, with invisibility, and twin linked (another psychic power) D weapons hitting on 3+.... then doing it all again after destroying the first riptide with their soul burst action. ohhh and just incase that wasnt enough of a dick punch- avatar of ynead drops where one the 2 dead riptides once stood. But nahh, scatbikes and warp spiders are all that makes eldar good.....

 SolarCross wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:
Play without makerlights, then tau is fine.

That's like telling a Marine to play without chapter tactics or Gaurd to play without orders. Doable but really why?

Because he asked for Tau minus the cheese, and markerlights break all sorts of rules in the game, and make cover irrelevant.

Process wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Process wrote:
Buy the models you want to paint. Then work it into a list. Simple as.

My experience as quite a noob playing Tau for a few months is that for some unknown reason anybody who doesn't play them thinks they are cheese..... despite no psychic, poor BS for a "shooty" army, ultra low WS, T, I. Zero options for assault based units, limited HQ options, absolutely dog gak special characters. The list goes on...

They are an army that to be competitive (by this i mean actually win a game) with you must play a certain way, but if you play that way you will get abuse (JSJ, positioning models for supporting fire, using ignores cover; again, the list goes on)

Eldar get soulburst (among other things), imperium gets endless underpointed (RG) special characters and the ability to ally with basically anything they need (got no assault? run an allied space wolf detachment), but if tau bring anything remotely dangerous then you are a cheesey cheater whos no fun to play.

You'd be surprised to see how soulburst is 100% irrelevant to competitive Eldar, and how close competitive Eldar is to competitive Tau.

Actually, Eldar is even more based on two really strong units, whereas Tau pretty much has a nice top 4 with Ta'Unar, Riptide Wing, Stormsurge, Ghostkeels.

With Eldar, if you don't bring either scatbike spam or warp spiders, you can go back to fighting mid-tier armies at best.

With Tau, you have to get rid of 3 units before you leave top tier.

I just dont think thats true considering the Psychic abilities and multitude of strong units available to Eldar at quite low cost. Tell me how a riptide wing counters a full unit of Wraithguard teleporting within 6inches, with invisibility, and twin linked (another psychic power) D weapons hitting on 3+.... then doing it all again after destroying the first riptide with their soul burst action. ohhh and just incase that wasnt enough of a dick punch- avatar of ynead drops where one the 2 dead riptides once stood. But nahh, scatbikes and warp spiders are all that makes eldar good.....

I think you misunderstand what is required to win tournaments.
Your big flamestar would cost more than 700 points, be totally dependent on powers they cannot guarantee, and can only have one soulburst action per turn.
While they may in theory be good against a Riptide Wing, they may not do that great in the overall meta, which is what being competitive is about.

 Jaxler wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Dragobeth wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:

get devilfish for your fir warriors and actually play mobile tau. it is both fun to play and fun to play against while still being fairly strong.

Is there a list for that? Sounds cool.

basic 1850

shadowsun
riptide
stealthsuits
crisisx3 burst cannon and missiles

2x10 breachers with emp grenades in devilfish
2x fir warriors with emp in devilfish

1 razershark

2x broadsides each its own unit rail rifle and missiles velocity trackers and EWO

troops take objectives zip around in devilfish and get in good positions

crisis suits jump around and stealthsuits try and cover hop

everything but the broadsides stay in motion

Can't take 2 support systems on a broadside

one each, one handles anti air preferably behind good cover but has to survive a round or two of shooting (razershark backup). one handles intercepting unexpected visitors.

 Brutallica wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:
Play without makerlights, then tau is fine.

That's like telling a Marine to play without chapter tactics or Gaurd to play without orders. Doable but really why?

Because he asked for Tau minus the cheese, and markerlights break all sorts of rules in the game, and make cover irrelevant.

Marker lights are not more cheesy than SM chapter tactics, Guard orders, ad mech canticles of the ommissiah / doctina imperitives. I'd take guard orders over markerlights anyday.

Guard can also negate cover using their orders and do alot more besides. Silent ignores cover exists on every close combat weapon in the game which is why tau really could use some means of putting ignores cover on their shooting because of all the factions they are the worse for CC.

I think sometimes people just cry cheese because they can't play for gak and can't admit it.

 SolarCross wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:
Play without makerlights, then tau is fine.

That's like telling a Marine to play without chapter tactics or Gaurd to play without orders. Doable but really why?

Because he asked for Tau minus the cheese, and markerlights break all sorts of rules in the game, and make cover irrelevant.

Marker lights are not more cheesy than SM chapter tactics, Guard orders, ad mech canticles of the ommissiah / doctina imperitives. I'd take guard orders over markerlights anyday.

Guard can also negate cover using their orders and do alot more besides. Silent ignores cover exists on every close combat weapon in the game which is why tau really could use some means of putting ignores cover on their shooting because of all the factions they are the worse for CC.

I think sometimes people just cry cheese because they can't play for gak and can't admit it.

THIS!!!

BUT. I will argue that there are just some codexes that are very week and maybe have 1 or 2 viable builds.

 SolarCross wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:
Play without makerlights, then tau is fine.

That's like telling a Marine to play without chapter tactics or Gaurd to play without orders. Doable but really why?

Because he asked for Tau minus the cheese, and markerlights break all sorts of rules in the game, and make cover irrelevant.

Marker lights are not more cheesy than SM chapter tactics, Guard orders, ad mech canticles of the ommissiah / doctina imperitives. I'd take guard orders over markerlights anyday.

Guard can also negate cover using their orders and do alot more besides. Silent ignores cover exists on every close combat weapon in the game which is why tau really could use some means of putting ignores cover on their shooting because of all the factions they are the worse for CC.

I think sometimes people just cry cheese because they can't play for gak and can't admit it.

Okay, you can have my BA and I'll take tau. After the 20th loss in a row, maybe you'll get it.

I just started Tau myself. Before I bought some models I started this thread.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/719520.page

I also wanted to play something that would be fun for my opponents. Light on the cheese. I got a pretty fun looking list posted up by the end of the thread. I have almost all of it built now and should get a game or 2 this weekend to test it out.

Lots of tanks. Lots of troops. Some crisis suits.

Martel732 wrote:


Okay, you can have my BA and I'll take tau. After the 20th loss in a row, maybe you'll get it.

Is it just Tau you lose against or do you lose against everyone? Even if it is just Tau you struggle against that may just be because BA or the way you play them are not especially good against Tau, but that doesn't make Tau cheese.

Tau can shoot but they can't do much else and even their shooting is only really strong when focus firing gak down which makes MSU a good approach against them. I don't know much about BA but I gather from 1d4chan/tactics that they are fast marines which lean heavily on choppy rather than shooty. You should have no trouble with Tau then if you can get into CC with them. So presumably they are deleted too much of your forces before you can get in their fishy faces. Are you constituted as MSU or deathstar?

Usually very heavy MSU. They are ridiculously lethal in the shooting phase. Yeah, I know go after the marker lights, but that's easier said than done with marine weapons.

Tau are probably my very worst matchup actually. Sometimes against Eldar they get cocky and don't reserve when they should or they get a WK eaten by Mephiston. Sometimes. Demons aren't great either, but it's a very different problem. The reality is that most BA units can't beat a Riptide in CC even if they get there. They're a choppy army that can't chop.

Martel732 wrote:
Usually very heavy MSU. They are ridiculously lethal in the shooting phase. Yeah, I know go after the marker lights, but that's easier said than done with marine weapons.

Tau are probably my very worst matchup actually. Sometimes against Eldar they get cocky and don't reserve when they should or they get a WK eaten by Mephiston. Sometimes. Demons aren't great either, but it's a very different problem. The reality is that most BA units can't beat a Riptide in CC even if they get there. They're a choppy army that can't chop.

flamers are usually pretty efficient at making tau pathfinders disappear if you are having that much trouble with them.

additionally an allied thunderfire cannon with the ignore cover ammo works wonders.

I don't think anyone should base their opinion of balance on one BA player who's always complaining in every single thread.

Make sure you understand your meta before you go all the way to garbage lists, you may end up losing all the time and that's no fun either.

The drones are significantly tougher.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:
I don't think anyone should base their opinion of balance on one BA player who's always complaining in every single thread.

Make sure you understand your meta before you go all the way to garbage lists, you may end up losing all the time and that's no fun either.

I'm not saying the marker lights are cheese. The game rules are just heavily skewed to the way the Tau operate. On top of their few critical undercosted units like Riptides and Stormsurges.

morgoth wrote:
I don't think anyone should base their opinion of balance on one BA player who's always complaining in every single thread..

IIRC his group refuses to use proper terrain so he either fights on a parking lot or goes home without a game. Meaning his BA start with a massive handicap just from the board setup every single time.