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It's often been said that Tau are the least competitive army in the game, and I've never understood why they are as bad as people make them out to be (apart from Ethereals, that's obvious )
So, what I'm asking, is 'what make the Tau bad?' Is it army synergy, or is it just their units are terrible individually?

No. No more of these.

You collect them, you tell us. Oh, and don't feed Coa.

Codex creep...? Who knows but Brother Coa is going to have a field day with this thread.

hahahahaha. I'm wondering if we should do another worst codex rank again.

I'm voting daemons tied with tau and sisters. then black templars tied with dark angels and orks followed by eldar tied with tyranids then the new guys...

Brother Coa in 3... 2...

On topic: They're just old, with old rules and an old army that simply has become obsolete in the current meta of different flavours of SM.

Tau are worst for a few reasons.

They have no melee, they die to grots in melee.

Every army is faster due to being able to run.

Cover saves everywhere hurt the tau.

They can't pump out enough shots to kill the enemy before they reach the tau line when facing most codexes.

Oh for ffs. If you feel like trolling please do so on another site, we have hadd more than enough if these treads.

I still enjoy my Tau. Granted I use FW XV9s and HQ. I win about 75%** of the time (even when I don't use FW models). I'd even bump that up to 85%** of the time againts Mech armies. (9 split firing broadsides help with vehicles). My own opinion is Tau just require more thought to setup and tactics. SM and such are a little more forgiving if you mess up your setup.

edit:** Thats win % in a FLGS environment, not tournament.

Ledabot wrote:You collect them, you tell us. Oh, and don't feed Coa.

Fralethepalewhale wrote:Codex creep...? Who knows but Brother Coa is going to have a field day with this thread.

DeadlySquirrel wrote:Brother Coa in 3... 2...

1....

And here I go:

juraigamer wrote:
They have no melee, they die to grots in melee.

Every army is faster due to being able to run.

Cover saves everywhere hurt the tau.

They can't pump out enough shots to kill the enemy before they reach the tau line when facing most codexes.

Adn this is mu answer.

Thank you very much....

DeadlySquirrel wrote:

KILL IT WITH FIRE.

We need the adeptus sororitus, too bad they got pdf-ed.

There is nothing wrong with Tau other than the codex needs updating and we need some fleshed out fluff/HQ choices....

I wouldnt mind seeing HQ choices from different Septs.. Like SM vanilla get... they can add HQ choices which effect the Units like Vulkan re rolls Melta and Flamer...

Some Shas'O who allows XV8 Re rolls etc =]

Yeah, once they get an update they should be much better off.
They still look fun as hell to play though...

They need to fix the Tau big battle suits weak ankles.

(Also I wish the dakkadakka techs would make it possible to mouse over the flags on someones post so I can see what some of these are that I don't know. )

Painbiro wrote:It's often been said that Tau are the least competitive army in the game, and I've never understood why they are as bad as people make them out to be (apart from Ethereals, that's obvious )
So, what I'm asking, is 'what make the Tau bad?' Is it army synergy, or is it just their units are terrible individually?

Hi dude, Tau are bad because 95% of the people here make terrible Tau list (like all FireWarriors), or play Tau terribly.

Tau are something like tier 1-2 (better than everything else besides maybe SW, IG, DE). They are definitely better than Space Marines, Eldar, Sisters, Nids, and on par with BA, GK, Orks.

The only difference is Tau requires alot of advance 40k knowledge to make it work, which most new comers are not equipped with.

Personally, I like Tau. In point of fact, I just purchased a Tau army.

Tau aren't bad, they just take a lot of practice.

It's like using Voldo in Any Soul Caliber game. Is Voldo bad? No. Is he hard as hell to use effectively at first? Yeah. (Do I always end up maining Voldo? Yes )

If you like Tau, don't worry about it. Get some games in and learn (and remember, you learn more from a loss than a win).

I'm just starting the Tau - when I figure out all of their "secrets" I'll let you know.

Tau are only really effective against low model count armies and suffer at any points level past 1500. Their effective builds are very cookie-cutter and are without much variation.

It's pretty simple(tau strategy).

Most armies are: Chop the shooty and shoot the choppy.

Tau are: Shoot everything, regardless of it's preference to shooty or choppy.

Advanced Tau tactica has a great PDF for basic Tau know-how (target priority and whatnot) and it helps a lot.

It was made back in 4th, so some parts might not make sense, but as a whole the PDF is still worth looking over on their website.

I believe if Tau just had all squad sizes increased by about 20% and a point reduction of about 20% across the board, the army would be fixed, but in general I feel that way about all 4th edition codexes.

Yup, I've got to blaim power creap and the general bad idea of the lack of cc. I know its a really bad thing to say (an it makes me look noobish) that tau need better cc but they probably have the best excuse ever of having good cc units. They can recruit from a huge pool of allies, and none of them could care about getting their hands dirty.