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If tau are so advanced why does most of their war gear suck so bad? Yes their battlesuits are pretty baller butt thats about it. They are no better at shooting then IG unless they have marker lights. In my opinion IG are way more versitile and their weapons and armor options blow Tau off the battle field literally. For the Imperium posing the biggest threat to them you would think that their weapons would be more geared to defending against them. Let me know what you think.

Someone's confusing crunch and fluff.

In general, in fluff, Tau technology for standard, run-of-the-mill troops, is far superior to Imperium.

Pulse Rifles are produced as the equivalent to the lasgun, and are SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful. Their heavy weapon du jour, the railgun, is one of the strongest heavy weapons in the entire setting.

They also embrace flexible tactics far more readily than Imperium.

lost_soul wrote:If tau are so advanced why does most of their war gear suck so bad? Yes their battlesuits are pretty baller butt thats about it. They are no better at shooting then IG unless they have marker lights. In my opinion IG are way more versitile and their weapon and armor opions blow Tau off the battle field literally. For the Imperium posing the biggest threat to them you would think that their weapons would be more geared to defending against them. Let me know what you think.

It's because the Tau isn't that advanced. They are techy and shiny, but 99% of their gear is 'meh' even by Ork standards.

As a DE player the only things in the Tau codex that scare me are the broadsides and hammerheads, but DL's can make quick work of these if you make your rolls.

lost_soul wrote:As a DE player the only things in the Tau codex that scare me are the broadsides and hammerheads, but DL's can make quick work of these if you make your rolls.

Considering a unit of 12 FW can expect 1 glance and 1 pen hit against all of your vehicles. most of your stuff is open topped meaning from that FW squad I have a 16% chance of wrecking you on both the pen and the glance, and a 33% chance of exploding your vehicle on the pen. Maybe you should fear more than just the Railguns =P

Considering I take night shields and flicker fields you would have to be at least 24" away and I still get to make my 5+ save for every hit if you hit with your weak BS3.

The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

In my opinion when the Tau do get an update they will be one of the toughest races to play against. Seeing the updates necrons and DE got this will be interesting.

lost_soul wrote:In my opinion when the Tau do get an update they will be one of the toughest races to play against. Seeing the updates necrons and DE got this will be interesting.

Me too. I've never been very much for battlesuits or kroot, and a Tau army without them would be gimptastic. If the new update allows Tau armies to shift away from castling up and blocking every game I would very much be interested in starting a Tau army.

lost_soul wrote:In my opinion when the Tau do get an update they will be one of the toughest races to play against. Seeing the updates necrons and DE got this will be interesting.

For you, Tau are already the hardest race you to play against, you're 0 and 3.

Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Which makes winning with them feel so sweet for me

Simple: because the codex is out of date, and it was written to fix issues in a codex that was way, way OP and may have overdone it in some regards.

Also simple: because this is a game that is trying to be at least a little balanced and meet the expectations of a wargame. If the Tau Codex said "at the start of the game inform your opponent that his army was destroyed before deployment by a long-range artillery and seeker missiles" it wouldn't be a lot of fun. Neither would it be fun if every Tau model had BS 5 thanks to advanced targeting systems, could Infiltrate thanks to advanced Stealth systems, or had any number of other broken advantages. There are certain conventions of wargames that must be observed to produce fun gaming experience on both sides, which is what GW is trying to do.

Honestly, your question is a weird combination of inflammatory and obvious. Why do space marines - the most personally badass dudes in the setting - ride around in metal boxes rather than fighting their foes face-to-face? If the Blood Angels like close combat so much, why do you only see fast Razorbacks on the table? If the Imperial Guard is made of countless legions of half-trained cannon fodder, why do you only see veteran squads? If the Eldar are a dying race why do they field infantry?

What were you expecting? Tau players to defend how our faction is the best so you could mock us for our weak codex? People who hate Tau to jump on the bandwagon so you could all agree on how lame the Tau and their players are?

Really? What were you looking for here?

lost_soul wrote:Considering I take night shields and flicker fields you would have to be at least 24" away and I still get to make my 5+ save for every hit if you hit with your weak BS3.

24" Is a long distance, and a 5+ is only 1/3 of a chance. Crunching the numbers gives 12 FWs 12 shots, 6 hits, 2 successfully damage the vehicle, 1.334 get through flickerfields. That's without markerlight support, Battlesuits helping out, Devilfish helping out, no Railguns involved etc.

Really, you're looking at Crisis Suits taking the transports out rather than the Pulse Rifles; the rifles will be chewing through what spills out thanks to DE armour (or lack thereof).

A Deathrain suit can spit out 2 twin-linked BS4 missile pod shots at 36", reduced to 30" (which is a goodly distance), that damage AV10 on 3s, meaning that half the time they are penetrating. 2 Shots from a single Deathrain deals 0.791012642 damaging results after calculating hits, armour penetration and flickerfields. 3/4 Of those results will have been penetrating, therefore you can expect 0.5932594815 penetrating hits, rounding up to 1. That hit then has a 50% chance of wrecking the vehicle.

Well I take a razorwing also, so which is more of a threat to you? choose wisely cause the wrong choice could be very bad for you. And my 6 man squad of reavers can do a number on almost any unit on the field.

It's mostly because the IG (and the IoM) are much more fleshed out then the tau and a little because their codex is out of date.

ElectricPaladin wrote:Simple: because the codex is out of date, and it was written to fix issues in a codex that was way, way OP and may have overdone it in some regards.

Also simple: because this is a game that is trying to be at least a little balanced and meet the expectations of a wargame. If the Tau Codex said "at the start of the game inform your opponent that his army was destroyed before deployment by a long-range artillery and seeker missiles" it wouldn't be a lot of fun. Neither would it be fun if every Tau model had BS 5 thanks to advanced targeting systems, could Infiltrate thanks to advanced Stealth systems, or had any number of other broken advantages. There are certain conventions of wargames that must be observed to produce fun gaming experience on both sides, which is what GW is trying to do.

Honestly, your question is a weird combination of inflammatory and obvious. Why do space marines - the most personally badass dudes in the setting - ride around in metal boxes rather than fighting their foes face-to-face? If the Blood Angels like close combat so much, why do you only see fast Razorbacks on the table? If the Imperial Guard is made of countless legions of half-trained cannon fodder, why do you only see veteran squads? If the Eldar are a dying race why do they field infantry?

What were you expecting? Tau players to defend how our faction is the best so you could mock us for our weak codex? People who hate Tau to jump on the bandwagon so you could all agree on how lame the Tau and their players are?

Really? What were you looking for here?

To defend him, me and him have been at work for like 16 hours... so he started this thread to mess with me... a pretty newbie Tau player that's smacked him around a every time I play him. He was just trying to have fun xD Go easy! And why does it seem like everyone on dakka has a Tau Army?

To ElectricPaladin- I personally like Tau I just think they got the short end of the stick. They are supposed to be advanced so make them advanced. They dont get the gear they deserve so hopefully their new codex will fix that.

lost_soul wrote:Well I take a razorwing also, so which is more of a threat to you? choose wisely cause the wrong choice could be very bad for you. And my 6 man squad of reavers can do a number on almost any unit on the field.

Considering that I will have ~8+ Crisis Battlesuits alone on the field, I think I can cope; not to mention the Broadsides that can have your Razorwings down if my other units are pre-occupied. Your reavers also die to pulse rifles, and 6 are not hard to take down when our basic weapons are still killing them on 3s. I also wouldn't count on turbo-boost cover saves from them, since Markerlights can have those down if required.

Dark Eldar can be a decent match-up for Tau, simply because they're paper thin. The best armour you have on your vehicles is 11, save the Dais, so Railguns are still guaranteed to do damage if they hit, and the sheer amount of S6 and S7 weaponry on the myriad Crisis Suits, combined with the S5 on everything else means that your vehicles are threatened the second they hit the board; everything has a decent chance of taking them out.

A Broadside unit that has been equipped right can target two units, making a heavy support of 9 Broadsides able to target 6 units, with Crisis Suits sharing this ability with the right wargear. A Broadside without a targeting array has a 0.75 chance of penetrating any AV10, and a 66% chance of that penetrating hit resulting in a Wrecked roll. Unless you can kill every single Broadside quickly (they'll have shield drones and will likely also be sitting in cover, making this a hard task) you're looking at 4 damaged vehicles (6 without flickerfields) from one turn of shooting, just from the Broadsides. Crisis Suits and Warfish or Piranhas can add to this tally, as can regular Fire Warriors.

Using the Eldar reserve tactic is also very risky, since you're facing an army that doesn't need several turns of shooting to reduce your mech list, it just needs one or two, so depriving them of the first shooting phase just gives them time to get into position. You'd best be able to counter Crisis Suits, Broadsides, Pathfinders, Piranhas and Devilfish-mounted Fire Warriors from the turn you hit the board, or you'll quickly find yourself footslogging through S5+.

I am by no means saying that DE are an auto-win match-up for Tau; no army is auto-win against another unless you're Warp Quake GKs vs Daemons, but it is far more complicated than simply "I have X, Y and Z units, so you can't win.".

Tau are highly advanced, not as much as the eldar or nercons, but getting closer. Keep in mind though fluff doesn't equal rules, unless we are talking the f-king plasma siphon...

lost_soul wrote:Considering I take night shields and flicker fields you would have to be at least 24" away and I still get to make my 5+ save for every hit if you hit with your weak BS3.

If you want to put silly upgrades on your cardboard boxes, you're welcome to. You can't pass every 5+ save, and it just means you have less on the field for me to shoot at.

I would normally run against a real DE player, not one of those wych spamming scrubs, with a tau list that had no crisis suits. I would win every game. Trust me, the DE player was good. Not saying that DE are screwed against tau, but under normal circumstances, it's not in DE's favor.

crazyK wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Which makes winning with them feel so sweet for me

Exactly. I can't tell you the joy I feel when I use 60 kroot and stuff (no crisis suits) table grey knight players.

Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Worse than SoB?

I havent won a single game with my Wyches against Tau but im still learning this army. Its just fun to how upset Tau players get when you challenge them. I realise that the only good way to fight Tau with DE is shooty agianst shooty, but the whole reason I started DE was to get in your face, not stand back and shoot. I used to play IG, but got bored with it because of just standing back and shooting.

In honesty I have played DE 2 times 1 on 1. I tabled the guy my first game and won the second pretty handily. DE are tough opponents if get into CC (ESPECIALLY against Tau) but if they are forced to walk across the board their lack of armor obviously hurts them big time.The whole thing for DE would be using cover to get as close as possible without losing their transports. For Tau it comes down to popping the most important target first and then taking out the smooshier targets after. Maybe try running jet bikes and throw those in his face to make him shoot them first to get an extra turn or 2 out of your transports. Or just go shooty that tends to get annoying for the Tau player!

Tau wargear isn't bad in the table top. The crisis suits have a great wide range of cool toys, as well as the Broadsides and vehicles. Kroot and vespid don't need war gear. The only ad war gear is what is available to fire warriors. But in my opinion they do not need good war gear, just a point drop. What bad war gear could you possibly be talking about?

ElectricPaladin wrote:Simple: because the codex is out of date, and it was written to fix issues in a codex that was way, way OP and may have overdone it in some regards.

Also simple: because this is a game that is trying to be at least a little balanced and meet the expectations of a wargame. If the Tau Codex said "at the start of the game inform your opponent that his army was destroyed before deployment by a long-range artillery and seeker missiles" it wouldn't be a lot of fun. Neither would it be fun if every Tau model had BS 5 thanks to advanced targeting systems, could Infiltrate thanks to advanced Stealth systems, or had any number of other broken advantages. There are certain conventions of wargames that must be observed to produce fun gaming experience on both sides, which is what GW is trying to do.

Honestly, your question is a weird combination of inflammatory and obvious. Why do space marines - the most personally badass dudes in the setting - ride around in metal boxes rather than fighting their foes face-to-face? If the Blood Angels like close combat so much, why do you only see fast Razorbacks on the table? If the Imperial Guard is made of countless legions of half-trained cannon fodder, why do you only see veteran squads? If the Eldar are a dying race why do they field infantry?

What were you expecting? Tau players to defend how our faction is the best so you could mock us for our weak codex? People who hate Tau to jump on the bandwagon so you could all agree on how lame the Tau and their players are?

Really? What were you looking for here?

+1 Excellent post.

Jade.Longinus wrote:To defend him, me and him have been at work for like 16 hours... so he started this thread to mess with me... a pretty newbie Tau player that's smacked him around a every time I play him. He was just trying to have fun xD Go easy! And why does it seem like everyone on dakka has a Tau Army?

So he's messing with all of dakka, and using us as a punch line for a joke? I'm actually a little offended now. Maybe going easy isn't the emotion that we're feeling when people post silly background questions in the wrong place to yank our chains for their own amusement (sometimes called trolling).

And yes, its does seem like a lot of people run a Tau army too (present company included). I really like the Tau as is, just a little too pricey in points and need markerlights to have a smoother mechanic (and not be heavy weapons). I'd be thrilled if kroot got fleshed out a little better, but really, with a 10-20% discount, Tau would work great... and really aren't that bad now.

lost_soul wrote:Well I take a razorwing also, so which is more of a threat to you? choose wisely cause the wrong choice could be very bad for you. And my 6 man squad of reavers can do a number on almost any unit on the field.

You act as though he only has one squad of firewarriors and no heavy weaps whatsoever...

Anyway to answer the question why you're not impressed, its because everything in that book is overpriced. If everything were cheaper, you would see more of it on the table, and you would therefore fear it more... Imagine if Tau were spamming railguns like Orks spam rokkit launchas/power klaws or Space Wolves spam missile launchers, or guard spam autocannons, or Dark Eldar spam Blasters/Lances... yeah. Now you're impressed.

My personal opinion on the tau is that they aren't really that "high tech". Sure they produce a really good gun for their basic infantry. But that means a lot less when they have to "mass produce" a few million guns and their entire species is equiped.

If the imperiums army was as tiny as the tau then every guardsman could have a meltagun or a plasma gun too. But when you have untold billions of soldiers that just isn't possible.

Yeah the tau have some cool tech. Mini plasma rifles and such. But is that tech any further developed than the imperiums? no. The imperium just developed it differently. For example both races have the same plasma technology. It is just that the imperium lets it be more destructive while the tau limit it for safety reasons.

Not to mention that if the tau keep advancing their drone technology their entire civilization as a whole is going to collapse. There is a reason why the imperium of man puts animal spirits inside of titans. Because true AI is basically a giant beckon to daemons saying "come possess me". The tau are dangerously close to having the exact same discovery the imperium did over 16000 years ago.

The tau match the imperium in some areas, are thousands of years behind in other areas and the only reason they look advanced is because they have a higher "tech per person" ratio. Which the imperium simply can't match due to it unaccountably high population. Keep in mind a single hivecity has more people living in it than an entire tau sphere.

IcedAnimals wrote:
Not to mention that if the tau keep advancing their drone technology their entire civilization as a whole is going to collapse. There is a reason why the imperium of man puts animal spirits inside of titans. Because true AI is basically a giant beckon to daemons saying "come possess me". The tau are dangerously close to having the exact same discovery the imperium did over 16000 years ago.
.

if a daemon can posess a sword.... then its got nothing to do with having an AI.


regarding the AIs, read into the imperium a bit more. their mentality is one of the dark ages in space. they distrust AI. they distrust technology. cleaning your boltgun appeases the machine spirit. the machine spirit rewards you by firing true, straight and not jamming. its got *nothing* to do with the crud that will clog up the barrel. the ammo counter on your gun is the machine spirit communicating with you. that is how the average imperial's mind works. machines are dangerous. humans distrust them, because apparently, in the pre-imperial times humans were hugely advanced, and then they fell from grace. So now, instead of vastly intelligent AIs, you get their degenerate descendents plugged into human brains and other tissue, with all those weird pipes and tubes sticking out. its their way of putting a human in charge. thats what controls a titan, not an animal spirit.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Worse than SoB?

Actually yes, SoB's just got horrible flexibility and has possibly the least amount of options in the game, but it's options are at least solid enough to stand on its own two feet. Especially thanks to the fact they are the only army who's SC's far outclass their generic templates to the point where they always take them.

regarding the AIs, read into the imperium a bit more. their mentality is one of the dark ages in space. they distrust AI. they distrust technology. cleaning your boltgun appeases the machine spirit. the machine spirit rewards you by firing true, straight and not jamming. its got *nothing* to do with the crud that will clog up the barrel. the ammo counter on your gun is the machine spirit communicating with you. that is how the average imperial's mind works. machines are dangerous. humans distrust them, because apparently, in the pre-imperial times humans were hugely advanced, and then they fell from grace. So now, instead of vastly intelligent AIs, you get their degenerate descendents plugged into human brains and other tissue, with all those weird pipes and tubes sticking out. its their way of putting a human in charge. thats what controls a titan, not an animal spirit.

Okay wow, no.

Ugh, I hate this opinion because it's only half true, people know that dirt and other things need cleaning! Even the Imperium manual for the guardsmen tell them how to properly care for and fix up their las-guns on the field. Hell there's been plenty of field repairs by guardsmen who have figured out how to fix their own chimera's! There's even stronger variants of hellhounds because the drivers modify them (THEMSELVES) though it does piss off the tech priests heavily when they find this out. I mean seriously, people KNOW WHAT AN AMMO COUNTER IS. There's been plenty of references to it both in the fluff to the point that this is an old joke on the thoughts of the average imperial mindset. The main thing about the average imperial mindset is to Not try to understand what is not taught and what is truly unknown (chaos), and one of those few things is how to use a gun and work it properly.

The reason for the AI's was because of the iron Men who became more sentient and revolted, so thus the imperium has a ban on AI technology, but the Adeptas Mechancius found the loophole when they figured out how to make living computers out of people.

As for the clean it with oil and the machine spirit does it's work? Typically only works for a tech-priest, who for some odd connection with machine spirits can unjam a gun just by one smack to the side and a prayer than have to take time to unjam, they also know how to properly care for things, though as said before, there's been odd fluff references where they've managed to get things working even when they are nearly half destroyed because of that prayer and machine oil. So somehow it works for them (Long live the Omnissiah!)

There's a big difference between being ignorant and complete idiotic: "The common man not knowing how a Valkyrie works or how to ever fix it, but it not being his problem so he chalks it up to machine spirits" to the functionally stupid "Those who shoot the guns every day and yet does not even know how to properly clean it, but just chalks it up to the machine spirits"

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Okay wow, no.

Ugh, I hate this opinion because it's only half true, people know that dirt and other things need cleaning! Even the Imperium manual for the guardsmen tell them how to properly care for and fix up their las-guns on the field. Hell there's been plenty of field repairs by guardsmen who have figured out how to fix their own chimera's! There's even stronger variants of hellhounds because the drivers modify them (THEMSELVES) though it does piss off the tech priests heavily when they find this out. I mean seriously, people KNOW WHAT AN AMMO COUNTER IS. There's been plenty of references to it both in the fluff to the point that this is an old joke on the thoughts of the average imperial mindset. The main thing about the average imperial mindset is to Not try to understand what is not taught and what is truly unknown (chaos), and one of those few things is how to use a gun and work it properly.

The reason for the AI's was because of the iron Men who became more sentient and revolted, so thus the imperium has a ban on AI technology, but the Adeptas Mechancius found the loophole when they figured out how to make living computers out of people.

As for the clean it with oil and the machine spirit does it's work? Typically only works for a tech-priest, who for some odd connection with machine spirits can unjam a gun just by one smack to the side and a prayer than have to take time to unjam, they also know how to properly care for things, though as said before, there's been odd fluff references where they've managed to get things working even when they are nearly half destroyed because of that prayer and machine oil. So somehow it works for them (Long live the Omnissiah!)

There's a big difference between being ignorant and complete idiotic: "The common man not knowing how a Valkyrie works or how to ever fix it, but it not being his problem so he chalks it up to machine spirits" to the functionally stupid "Those who shoot the guns every day and yet does not even know how to properly clean it, but just chalks it up to the machine spirits"

its all part of the lunacy of the imperium. i like the non sensical nature of it, to be honest. i remember a story regarding the necrons where the techpriest, in order to quell a fire with an extinguisher had to go through all the rites, blessings, and ritual annointings with holy oils and unguents before pressing the "on" button. and yes, people will clean their guns everyday. they know its needed to make the gun shoot straight, proper and not explode in their face. but as they're cleaning it, i can guarantee you they're mumbling rites to appease the machine god, and to bless it in order to deliver swift, accurate and lobotomising death to their enemies. because that is the attitude of the imperium, pretty much as a whole.
people know that an ammo counter is how many shots they have left. but you're ignoring the technoignorance, and the quasi-religious fear/ignorance/veneration/awe mystique in which technology is held in. i've seen too many references to it through the fluff. you cant think about the 40kiverse using a sensible rational mindset of the 21st. otherwise things like chainswords et al get rather ridiculous, rather quickly. and thats all part of the fun.

regarding those techprist comments, that "hit it, and get it to work with the power of belief" is also pretty much an ork thing. heh, i love orks!

Adeptas Mechancius is basically an ork mindset, but they make it shinier! They are the big meks of the modern world.

As for the pseudo-religious nature of the prayer. Of course, but I was just saying they don't leave it all up to the tech priests to clean out the dirt of a gun when it jams up. They pray for everything, there's even a prayer of silence (Which there is none, it means shut up idiot! ) Read the Imperial primer book sometimes, it's hilarious.

But yeah, prayer for death, life, health. The Emperor does everything but scrub the toilet. (That's when a curse to Horus is said )