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.

I always hear Tau players saying "Tau are no longer viable with 5th Edition rules" or something along those lines. I also rarely see Tau armies on the tabletop these days. What is it about 5th Ed that makes Tau no longer viable anymore?

I am just curious because I started playing shortly after 5th was released.

You know those Tau players who say that? Don't listen to them, the Tau codex is perfectly fine the way it is and is still usable. Yes it could use a few updates to be more in sync with current rules but the army works just fine the way it is if you know how to use it (which is how every army works).

That being said I think you may be seeing less and less Tau armies being played because there are newer more powerfull and up to date codices that they'd rather play.

Very briefly;

5th edition boosted melee armies by letting them run faster.

It penalised shooty armies by providing more cover.

The 5th edition codexes show significant power creep in terms of new special rules and cheaper units.

A few minor other things got worse too.

The Disruption Pod became awesome, which helps.

While Tau haven't become unviable, they are harder to play with than before, and Tau were never a strong codex in the first place.

Another big one is that 5th edition put a HUGE emphasis on troop choices. Considering that they are required to capture objectives and 2/3 of the missions are objective based.

Almost all 5th edition and late 4th edition armies have troop choices that can be specialized to specific tasks and do them very well. Marines, IG, DE, BA, SW, CM, etc all have scoring units that are very customizable and have great flexibility. By comparison, the tau troop choices suck.

Firewarriors are one of the worst troop choices in the game. Easy to kill, bad in CC, and no gun options. The pulse rifle seems awesome on paper, but isn't that great. BS3 is bad and they can only kill troop choices....and not well either. A full 12-man squad at rapid-fire range will kill on average 4 marines.......and then promptly get wiped out in CC.

Kroot are their best choice, but not because they are great at killing anything. You can take a lot of them, throw in hounds for a good initiative value, and then use them to protect your suits/ prevent outflankers/mess with enemy movement so your crisis suits/broadsides/and hammerheads can do the damage.

Most other armies (except necrons) have troop choices than can be customized to kill just about anything in the game. Tau can't. Tau really on their suits to do damage and so over-priced (points and $) Elite and Heavy Support choice have to do all the heavy lifting.

It's basically because the tau can't do their job that well anymore before getting totaled.

How I put it is playing my tau isn't fun anymore (against infantry guard spam... grrrr) because you can't really do the shooting job as well.

Overpriced markerlights? check.
Crap troops? check.
Useless special HQ's? check.
Several units in the codex are basically unusable? check (note: I love my vespid, but sniper teams, krootox, skyrays and ethereals suck something awful)
ect, ect, and ect

The problem is not that the Tau are not viable at fifth edition rules. As a matter of fact they only have one of two things that I have ever seen in the codex that does not work as it deals with target priority instead of LOS. The main problem is, as Nungunz said, that the firewarriors are no good, as they can not be upgraded with any heavy weapons, and the elites are too expenisve both in points and money. I have played as the Tau for three years now and the only battles I can win is against mobile armies that have a lot of vehicles and little soldiers. I have used everything in the codex except the skyray and vespids but it does not matter as all of the updated teams have very good CC troops. At first I though it was cause I was no good but whenever I play Marines, Orks, or Necrons I win.

How the heck do fire warriors suck? They have fething STRENGTH 5 weapons. You don't need heavy weapons with a squad packing that much firepower, and battlesuits and hammerheads fill the heavy weapons niche very nicely. I have an easier time playing Tau than I do space marines. Just stay out of range of your enemy's weapons and you'll do fine. Fire warriors also have decent saves. The only thing that sucks with Tau is BS 3.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nungunz wrote:Another big one is that 5th edition put a HUGE emphasis on troop choices. Considering that they are required to capture objectives and 2/3 of the missions are objective based.

Almost all 5th edition and late 4th edition armies have troop choices that can be specialized to specific tasks and do them very well. Marines, IG, DE, BA, SW, CM, etc all have scoring units that are very customizable and have great flexibility. By comparison, the tau troop choices suck.

Firewarriors are one of the worst troop choices in the game. Easy to kill, bad in CC, and no gun options. The pulse rifle seems awesome on paper, but isn't that great. BS3 is bad and they can only kill troop choices....and not well either. A full 12-man squad at rapid-fire range will kill on average 4 marines.......and then promptly get wiped out in CC.

Kroot are their best choice, but not because they are great at killing anything. You can take a lot of them, throw in hounds for a good initiative value, and then use them to protect your suits/ prevent outflankers/mess with enemy movement so your crisis suits/broadsides/and hammerheads can do the damage.

Most other armies (except necrons) have troop choices than can be customized to kill just about anything in the game. Tau can't. Tau really on their suits to do damage and so over-priced (points and $) Elite and Heavy Support choice have to do all the heavy lifting.

You can take out a predator with a pulse rifle if you fire at the rear armor. What the feth are you talking about? I've taken out several rhinos too. Rolling a six with twelve firewarriors is not all that hard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've also had one kroot kill two tactical marines and put two wounds on a SM commander. ONE kroot. (Okay, I know that is just luck)

Maybe they suck because they cost 10 points and crumple in melee and the only reason you would ever kill a tank with them is if your opponent seriously feths up.

How the heck do fire warriors suck? They have fething STRENGTH 5 weapons.

AP5
BS3
No combat ability
10pts apiece
6-12 FWs per squad

You can take out a predator with a pulse rifle if you fire at the rear armor.

You can do this with a heavy bolter too, I don't see what all ths fuss with meltaguns and missile launchers is about.

Whoever shows the rear armour of their tank to your frontline deserves it quite honestly.

I've taken out several rhinos too. Rolling a six with twelve firewarriors is not all that hard.

You cannot take out rhinos with fire warriors unless they too prefer to reverse up to you or you get a lucky string of immobolised and weapons destroyed results. As for it not being hard, math-hammer vs front armour:

12 Shot, 6 hits, 1 glance. 1 Glance per unit of 12 Fire Warriors firing at the Rhino. If you're taking out Rhinos using these statistics, then you must be extremely lucky.

Anecdotes don't mean much. You'd need 3 Weapon Destroyed/Immobilised/Combination of the Two in order to wreck a Rhino. You would need a glancing 5 or 6 three times.

In short, Fire Warriors aren't worth 10pts each for what they have. They don't even have grenades, they need to buy them. They're only AP5, and anything with armour that thin is usually sitting waist-deep in a 4+ cover save anyway.

They might have a better gun than most armies, but opponents tend to have cover saves or armour saves that render the difference negligible. 12 Fire Warriors kill 0.2 more MEQs than 10 Marines. 8 marines, costing the same as 12 fire warriors, kill 0.9 MEQs. It's a difference of 0.4, but speaking statistically, they both only kill 1 marine due to rounding.

I don't care. Tau are fun to play and have awesome guns. 10 pts isn't all that bad. Have you looked at eldar? they are still considered a competitive army and their infantry has a range of twelve inches. Fail. At least Tau can take out more than half of an ork army before it gets within twelve inches. Then the tau can just mount up and move to the other side of the board and do it over again. There are worse armies than Tau. I've taken out a vindicator with a shot from one gun drone, by the way. Oh, and strength ten AP 1 railguns. Does that even need an explanation?

GalacticDefender wrote:I don't care. Tau are fun to play and have awesome guns. 10 pts isn't all that bad. Have you looked at eldar? they are still considered a competitive army and their infantry has a range of twelve inches. Fail. At least Tau can take out more than half of an ork army before it gets within twelve inches. Then the tau can just mount up and move to the other side of the board and do it over again. There are worse armies than Tau. I've taken out a vindicator with a shot from one gun drone, by the way. Oh, and strength ten AP 1 railguns. Does that even need an explanation?

Amazing attitude; really makes me want to keep discussing this.

Yes, I have looked at Eldar, I have the codex, i collected them for a while. Their infantry has a range of 12", yes, which is why guardians are avoided. Nobody takes them. Dire Avengers are only used because they're the cheapest troops option there. Rangers are sub-optimal too. They're considered competative (at least semi) because of their other units. Fragons in a Wave Serpent toast vehicles, their mech builds are brutal, and Jetcouncils are nigh unkillable. Their troops are not used for anything more than sitting on an objective, because that's all they're good at.

As for the Ork comment, who have you been playing against recently? a 3 year old? Because whoever they are, they apparently have the tactical ability of a dog in heat; reversing Rhinos and Orks being thrown around with what appears to be no cover at all. You don't simply 'mount up and move to the other side of the board', you mount up, move 12" and get shot down or cornered.

There are worse armies than Tau, I never said Tau were the worst army. I play Tau, I have done for ~2 years. It's my second favourite army next to Chaos. I don't get your point; nor do I understand the anecdote about the gun drone vs the Vindicator. I've had 6 Khornate Terminators survive a volley from a baneblade without a single casualty, does that mean I can expect that happen all the time? I've had Fire Warriors beat down harlequins and lictors, does that mean i should go into CC at the first chance i get? No, it means I got damn lucky.

As for Railguns, I know they're S10 Ap1, but they can't be taken on fire warriors, which I thought was the main topic here?

I thought Tau was the main topic here And the thing about the gun drone was just a funny moment I felt like sharing. And IIRC a tau pulse rifle can take on the front armor of a rhino, so why would he have to reverse it?

And my friend who plays orks... He pretty much just green tides everything, ignoring most things. Works in some cases, fails epically in others.

Pulse rifles can take on the front armour of a Rhino, but can only ever glance. The reversing is because you mentioned how pulse rifles can penetrate the rear armour of tanks, and it's rare that you can get a pulse rifle facing the rear armour of anything that isn;t reversing towards you.

I always find casual Tau armies very easy to play, it usualy ends up with him killing a tank or two and me focus firing his stuff to bits then assaulting

Tau were designed very much with the 3E and especially 4E Skimmer and LoS rules in mind. In the previous edition, their skimmers were nigh immune to CC destruction and many times more resistant to fire than tracked tanks, and the terrain rules meant there was lots of LoS to be completely blocked, so skimmers could hide as they moved and Crisis suits could move out to shoot and then back out of LoS before the opponents next turn.

These two single changes more than anything have harmed the Tau as their battle plan no longer works the same way (getting a 4+ cover at best and being out of LoS are very different things) and their skimmers are highly vulnerable to CC attacks now. They are still fairly resistant to much of the AT out there thanks to Disruption pods acting *totally* different than they did previously, but the CC issues (along with CC opponents being able to get into combat faster) along with their reduction in durability and the increased durability of tracked vehicles makes Tau a harder army to play.

That and Fire Warriors are terrible.

Ah 3rd edition when Tau and Eldar tanks were feared...the time of the peekaboo grav-tank. How I miss those days.

Honestly, I'd rather take a guard blob than a firewarrior squad; with orders (FRFSRF) they pump out so many shots with those flashlights that anything left standing is in some serious pain....

The problem with 5th is that most armies can produce the same quality of fire and many produce even more volume of fire than the Tau. This was their whole focus so GW basically kicked their last leg out from under them and laughed at them while they squirmed on the ground in pain. So most armies can now outshoot Tau (I field 3 plasma cannons, 5 las cannons and a sprinkling of autocannons with my marines at 2000 pts which has longer range and does a great deal more damage than anything the Tau have) and a slight breeze kills them in close combat.

Nothing really happened to Tau. Just newer armies with big shiney toys came along.

The Pulse Rifle is not the end all be all weapon. It's nice, but it's not that nice when you consider those Fire Warriors are flying about in a Devilfish with no firing points(Mech is king. Accept it).

(I field 3 plasma cannons, 5 las cannons and a sprinkling of autocannons with my marines at 2000 pts which has longer range and does a great deal more damage than anything the Tau have)

Railguns aside?

Avatar 720 wrote:

(I field 3 plasma cannons, 5 las cannons and a sprinkling of autocannons with my marines at 2000 pts which has longer range and does a great deal more damage than anything the Tau have)

Railguns aside?

at 2000 points I only field 5 railguns (two HHs and a squad of 3 broadsides). I could easily double that in lascannons with marines and god knows how many in an IG list. Not to mention free melta guns in squads of tac marines. Lose one AP and one Strength on the shot for more reliability and volume of fire....ok.

Battlesuits aside there's no flexibility or surprise to a Tau list, people know what they're going to get; a few grav tanks a bunch of crisis suits and maybe some broadsides and they all have fairly standard loadouts (fireknife, deathrain etc) and are fairly easy to counter and extremely easy to kill. Every army in the game can drop pie plates at range and force armor saves that kill those expensive suits (easily more expensive than a TH/SS Termi).

Ok first off, every army in the game is viable, and playable, and winnable, Yes I'm even talking about Daemonhunters. The fact of the matter is that most old school Tau players hate Tau now because of the nerf in a lot of the rules that were in the old rulebook.

The biggest rule I remember from the 4th edition rulebook that Tau used almost exclusively to their advantage was a rule that allowed you to remove units from close combat from the front row and then fallback without the fear of being overrun. I used to hate it when my Tac squads in Rhinos would assault a Tau squad that just got out of a Devilfish, kill 5 Tau, and then the Tau would run and on their turn shoot my squad to death. Yes bonding knives back then were AWESOME!

Tau are still a good army in the right hands, it just requires people to know how to play them effectively. Much like Daemonhunters, although you have to be Einstein to use them right!

Sanguinis wrote:
Tau are still a good army in the right hands, it just requires people to know how to play them effectively. Much like Daemonhunters, although you have to be Einstein to use them right!

100% agree here. Tau are a difficult army to play well. Those that do, tend to beat most armies in the face.

I honestly want to start a Tau army just for the challenge. Unemployed college student kinda conflicts with that, though.

agnosto wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:

(I field 3 plasma cannons, 5 las cannons and a sprinkling of autocannons with my marines at 2000 pts which has longer range and does a great deal more damage than anything the Tau have)

Railguns aside?

at 2000 points I only field 5 railguns (two HHs and a squad of 3 broadsides). I could easily double that in lascannons with marines and god knows how many in an IG list. Not to mention free melta guns in squads of tac marines. Lose one AP and one Strength on the shot for more reliability and volume of fire....ok.

Battlesuits aside there's no flexibility or surprise to a Tau list, people know what they're going to get; a few grav tanks a bunch of crisis suits and maybe some broadsides and they all have fairly standard loadouts (fireknife, deathrain etc) and are fairly easy to counter and extremely easy to kill. Every army in the game can drop pie plates at range and force armor saves that kill those expensive suits (easily more expensive than a TH/SS Termi).

Not every army can drop strength 6 large templates at range though!

You are right. Some can drop S10 large blast templates.

agnosto wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:

(I field 3 plasma cannons, 5 las cannons and a sprinkling of autocannons with my marines at 2000 pts which has longer range and does a great deal more damage than anything the Tau have)

Railguns aside?

at 2000 points I only field 5 railguns (two HHs and a squad of 3 broadsides). I could easily double that in lascannons with marines and god knows how many in an IG list. Not to mention free melta guns in squads of tac marines. Lose one AP and one Strength on the shot for more reliability and volume of fire....ok.

I wasn't asking how many you can take, I was asking if you didn't include railguns when you compared ranges and damage output. I don't care about how many you can field or volume of fire, you said that your list of weapons have longer ranges and deal more damage than anything in the Tau army.

Iur_tae_mont wrote:You are right. Some can drop S10 large blast templates.

or Str10 AP1 Barrage 3 templates. . . looking at you, IG


the few times i've won with this army i had to feild what is considered an "Unbalanced army", as most tournaments will penalize you for not have a decent Troop-to-restofarmy Ratio. I wind up taking only the mandatory minimum squad of firewarriors, then max out elite slots with Crisis Suits, add some broadsides and some hammerheads, some Melta-Piranhas, and a Pathfinder squad to spot for everyone (Eliminating cover saves is fun!) and you have a viable army against most opponents if you outfit your suits right. and if you are worried about getting Charged and wiped out, bubble-wrap your army with some Kroot Tarpits

....I was asking if you didn't include railguns when you compared ranges and damage output...

Anyone who doesnt have at least 3-4 railguns in a Tau army is Asking to get tabled

I just did the math. Other than the superior range, the Tau Gun is no better than a Bolter against MEQs. Against GEQs, the Bolter is actually superior because the firer has BS4, resulting in actually a higher chance of landing hits instead of higher wounds. The Pulse Rifle is marginally better at killing T5 and 6 creatures however.

agnosto wrote:Ah 3rd edition when Tau and Eldar tanks were feared...the time of the peekaboo grav-tank. How I miss those days.

You're probably the only one, 4E skimmers were *dumb*.

A Tau player won our latest local tournament on Saturday. He is a very good player with any army, but it shows that Tau are not hopeless when used well..

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:I just did the math. Other than the superior range, the Tau Gun is no better than a Bolter against MEQs. Against GEQs, the Bolter is actually superior because the firer has BS4, resulting in actually a higher chance of landing hits instead of higher wounds. The Pulse Rifle is marginally better at killing T5 and 6 creatures however.

The pulse rifle is the same as a bolter vs MEQ, but when comparing squads through points costs, it comes out on top. 120pts of Fire Warriors kill 0.4 more MEQs than 120pts of marines, and 0.2 more MEQs than 150pts of marines. It take 180pts worth of marines to match the MEQ kill rate of a Fire Warrior squad worth 120pts.

However, Marines can take heavy weapons, have a better armour save and are combat capable, Tau cannot take heavy weapons apart from a markerlight, have a worse armour save and are far from combat capable. They also need to spend 4pts each to have the same grenade loadout as a marine (which pushes their cost to just 1pt under than of a marine, who is better in every way stat-wise and armour-wise).

In an equal fire-fight between 12 Fire Warriors and the equivilant cost of marines (8 marines) the marines will lose, but it's never that equal, the chance of your fire warriors having an uninterrupted shoot-out with 8 marines is small, and usually the marines will be mounted in a vehicle, have heavier weapons or some other modifier.

Avatar 720 wrote:
I wasn't asking how many you can take, I was asking if you didn't include railguns when you compared ranges and damage output. I don't care about how many you can field or volume of fire, you said that your list of weapons have longer ranges and deal more damage than anything in the Tau army.

Maybe if you would take the time to provide a longer comment than you did, I wouldn't have misunderstood your statement. My comment was more in comparing strength, accuracy and results than range. Yes, railguns have long range but on your average table it's moot.

Don't get me wrong, I love tau and have since they first came out but 5th edition has taken away most of the things that made them an effective army. You can still win with them but they are an unforgiving mistress now and one mistake will cost you the game.