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One of my friends wants to start playing 40k, and hes gravitating towards the Tau. I don't have much firsthand experience with them in 5th edition at all, should I talk him out of it due to their weakness as far as playability?

Assuming you're not in a super-competitive play environment, Tau are fine.

The only weakness Tau have is the fact that everyone else has had an updated codex and they have reduced the points cost of pretty much everything everywhere by about 20%... If the points didnt go down the wargear went up for free etc...

Tau are still competitive to TAC lists....

One should never talk someone out of playing an army they like. Especially because Gay Knights are OP and are basically a Insta win army...

Playing as Tau is more about grinding out the win as opposed to smashing someone to bits by turn 3. Last turn heroics are abound with Tau....

If you can win with Tau consistently you are a very capable commander. I like the challange of being a good general as opposed to having a good codex do most of the work.

If all he wants to do is tack another W to his name then NO the Tau arent for him.....

If you want to play a game in your friend's basement to relax and have a good time, Tau are perfectly fine. As is every army.

If you want to play a pickup game at a FLGS in order to get better at the game and to win, Tau really struggle.

If you want to go to a major tournament in order to win a major prize, Tau aren't even worthy of being considered.

Tau adhere to an older game-design time and you'll notice that side-by-side to other lists.

A) Tau don't scale too well to larger games. At 1500 pts. or so they are comparatively fine. But if you're gaming-groups doesn't play hardly anything below 2500 pts. you'll see them struggle more.

B) Tau are (fairly) predictable. There is just no secret to how a Tau army will approach a battle and which unit will do or contribute what. Thus, it is "easier" to adapt to Tau than some other lists.

C) Tau lack "meta-game" manipulation. More recent army lists have included more and more tricks that work with the outer structures of the game.. steal initiative more easily, redeployment of units, outflank, reserve or deepstrike the entire army, manipulate reserve roles, New-Necron-night-fighting, terrain manipulation, Space Wolf units with "inversed" Kill Points, etc.. . Tau have (almost) none of that. They deploy. They play the game.

If you don't mind the above, they can be a mighty fine army to have and use.

Milisim wrote:Gay Knights

Wow, nice clever homophobic slur.

In regards to the intelligent, respectable remainder of your post, I see what your saying.

Nothing wrong with Tau just need alittle updating.

Tau suffer from needing synergy and advanced thought. You can't win with tau as you could with any army that can win by running at their foe and getting into assault.

Tau also fold in melee. Bad. With everyone being able to run, and everything being faster overall, it takes more luck it seems to win as a tau player.

I started off 40k as a tau player, and believe me, I got totaled quite a bit before I learned and collected my army. Once I got to that point, I won game after game, to the point were some players didn't want to fight my tau.

I just did not want him to get discouraged and think warhammer was a real difficult game to play if he kept getting wrecked as tau, but I guess persistence is a virtue.

Trust me, he will be a better player overall if the sticks with tau from the beginning. He will learn much more than your standard derping rhino rush player about how to win, about the rules, and be able to make sound tactical decisions that will carry him to victory with whatever army he plays.

I wouldn't go to tournies with them ATM being that every dex is becoming more CC and oh look we can close the distance on your fast. however I have enjoyed playing the Tau since they were first introduced back in 2001, and I will keep playing them. They are a rough army to get started with , but if you two are playing on a non "power gaming" fun play level he should be able to do just fine.

As long as your casual it's all good, as a matter of fact i can consistently drive my main opponent, a guardsman who (unknowingly) runs some lists pretty close to those netlist to tears.



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However do not expect him to win tournaments as things are.

I dunno, in my local gaming scene I know a guy who won two local tournaments in a row with his tau army, and this is against guys who like to go all the big tournaments in the east coast US area and are super competitive. That said, this guy has been playing for over 10 years and is really good.

You can win with them, it just looks like it takes an insane amount of skill to do so

Everyone in my gaming group calls them that.... Its to the point of normal for us lol..... Same with Failcast....

juraigamer wrote:Trust me, he will be a better player overall if the sticks with tau from the beginning. He will learn much more than your standard derping rhino rush player about how to win, about the rules, and be able to make sound tactical decisions that will carry him to victory with whatever army he plays.

I very much agree with this. I have become better at playing other armies because of my experience with the Tau. They are a One step ahead army and having gotten into that mind set as a result it has helped me with other armies. When I played Chaos Space Marines I had a decent winning streak because of my learned ability to read my opponents movements from having played a sit back army like the Tau. It will enable your friend to learn the game on a different scale then most players and if he decides on a new army he will more likely be proficient with it as long as he can learn how it runs.

Yeah, I play the game very casually and I expect he will too. If he isn't playing casually, then he will probably put forth the extra effort to learn how to play the army.

If he likes the models and the very shooty play style, by all means tell him to pick them up.

If he's new tournaments probably aren't an issue anyway.