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.

My friend keeps baballing on about guard being better than tau at shooting I am just looking for your opinions

Well, it is close.
Guard can get tons of las-shots and pie-plates cheap, but Tau have (generally) better range and strength.
Guard do have more CC units though, so I'd vote Tau.

Depends what you mean by better.
Tau are good at shooting due to accuracy and IG are good at shooting because they can just throw huge numbers of shots out per tern.
I'd say Tau as well though as their entire army and strategy is based around blowing their enemy to oblivion from afar.

tau is more flexible . If it was possible to cripple an opposing army in one shoting turn then IG would be better. But that almost never happens unless the opponent is realy bad or the dice go wild.

Tau work better as an army that stays mobile and shoots at a distance that way. They've got hovertanks and JSJ suits to do that sort of thing. IG work better either as a static force or as a mobile force that shoves veterans down the enemy's throat. They're both great shooting armies, they just work a little differently. I think Tau might have more potential as a finesse army than IG do, since the Guard are appropriately referred to as "the Hammer of the Emperor" and I can't think of many subtle ways to use the army. That said, IG have the best flyer for the points in the game with the Vendetta which is super mobile and a hell of an anti-tank unit, but I'd feel dirty just using one.

My brother plays guard. He's a better player than I but I envy that first rank fire second rank fire rule. But I think it's close because both have different strengths. Guard is all about quantity over quality and visversa.

I would base my decision on if you like Gundam or Gritty Tech

I always saw Tau as an army that uses synergy to win the day while Imperial Guard is an army that uses numbers and resilient units to destroy their enemies. One army could easily blow the ever loving crap out of another if used wisely.

Though guard does seem to be fighting an uphill battle outside of flyer spam these days.

I said that and got yelled at..Imp guard have Hydras...which take a valuable heavy spot for something that can only kill air units...and Vendettas...making the other Fast Attack stuff useless as you need anti-air.

I've always thought of Guard as like batman. They have all the tools you could possibly need, and with the knowledge of what you are going up against before hand can win.

Tau are also fairly versatile, but I would say they are better in all comers lists, while guard are better when you can tailor your army.

They're both 100% shooty armies, the crappy excuses for melee units in the gaurd codex don't change that just as the riptide doesn't make tau a melee army.

 xole wrote:
I've always thought of Guard as like batman. They have all the tools you could possibly need, and with the knowledge of what you are going up against before hand can win.

Tau are also fairly versatile, but I would say they are better in all comers lists, while guard are better when you can tailor your army.

They're both 100% shooty armies, the crappy excuses for melee units in the gaurd codex don't change that just as the riptide doesn't make tau a melee army.

So for tournament play you recommend Tau...since you can't tailor in tournaments.

The guard are capable of putting out much more low str fire power and a great number of high str blast templates.

Tau can put out much more high str non-template shots though.

Tau are about putting the right gun at the right place with the right support.

IG are about putting an obscene number of shots downrange.

In terms of raw firepower, there's really nothing that will match a well built IG army. If you just line something up against an IG army and start a shooting war, the IG will generally win. A Tau army will be better able to utilize their firepower (through maneuver, markerlights, etc) and evade enemy return fire.

gossipmeng wrote:

Tau can put out much more high str non-template shots though.

Hrm, if IG really want to they can put more shots than the Tau can hope to match, an IG army can put out 30 autocannons or 30 lascannons much cheaper than the Tau can put out equivalent weapons, they're just much more static and generally easier to kill.

IG can win a war of attrition, which Tau frankly don't have the numbers for.

Also; tanks.

The Leman Russ is probably the killiest armoured platform you can get. The Hammerhead is the only one that's even close, and that's only against other tanks, and the Tau can't field anywhere near the same number of tanks.

Especially if you're a git like me with an armoured company. Vehicles may generally be weaker in 6th ed, but AV14 I find is actually more useful. I see a lot less melta units out there these days, and even a hammerhead's railgun only has 50% odds to glance, 33% to pen.

I would say whichever army rolls for first turn is the best shooting army in a Tau vs. Imperial Guard Contest.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Also; tanks.

The Leman Russ is probably the killiest armoured platform you can get. The Hammerhead is the only one that's even close, and that's only against other tanks, and the Tau can't field anywhere near the same number of tanks.

all tau do run a longsrike hammerhead and 1-2 units of jump melta units a non FW list wont run more then 2-3 Av14 and if it is more then there is a good chance the list has no or fewer support units of different kind . The argument that IG runs more tanks and there for is better seems odd. Tau doesn't need to run tanks to work well .IG on the other hand run without vehicles doesn't work at all.

IG without vehicles can work fine, you just need to buff up on orders and an Aegis line and HWS's. It's not ultra amazing, but will work as a decent TAC list for most games. If you don't have any issues with FW usage, then packing in things like Heavy Mortars and Rapiers can make them very sharp indeed.

I'm not claiming guard are patently better at shooting, merely that they do armoured warfare better. Even a standard codex list can bring a lot of armour. Tau are one of th few factions well equipped to deal with it; great melta guns on highly mobile, survivable units, most of which can deep strike, but more generally, a lot of armies these days don't pack much anti-AV14.

 gossipmeng wrote:
The guard are capable of putting out much more low str fire power and a great number of high str blast templates.

Tau can put out much more high str non-template shots though.

I disagree, Tau can put out quite a bit more of templtes then we used to. All Ion weapons can over charge now for str8 ap4-2 large blast. We are probably one of the few armies that can put out 72 inche pie plate. Maybe not as good as guard, but we rival it

well, as someone who plays both armies, I'm going to say that if Tau want to get in a pieplate war with IG, they're going to regret it

Well I see tau as a Barret 50. Cal sniper rifle, it picks its targets one at a time and eliminates with ease.

I see Imperial Guard as a 50. Cal Light Machine Gun. When it starts spraying, the enemy starts praying.

In this metaphorical world, LMGs equal to out-range sniper rifles as well

Tau are way better shooters than guard. Part of that is because they have a new codex, and part of it is because guard aren't as good as shooting as they used to be, relatively speaking.

Pie plates have been bad since the beginning of 5th edition (or, let's be honest, even earlier than that), as basic displacement skills can severely reduce the amount of damage they do, much less hiding in good transports, spread out across multiple levels of ruins, or, now, being a flier. There has been a slow (well, recently rapid) increase in monstrous creatures, which pie plates have never been good against.

What you really need is a very large volume of mid-strength firepower (scatter lasers, splinter cannons, tesla destructors, lootas, etc.) or a mere regular large volume of high-strength shots. Guard have always failed in this category, and now they have heavy russes, but that's still a very expensive way of throwing lots of high-strength shots out at range. Well, and they have HWSs, but those are a joke. And they have vendettas, but that comes with its own world of problems (and isn't really doing more than a couple of lascannon hits anyways).

That's not to say that guard shooting is comprehensively bad, of course, but the advantage is in a relatively narrow band of 18"-12". Mechvets are still a stellar defensive weapon, and you can also do some potential damage with FRFing lasguns en masse along with a melta hedge. The problem is that once they get out of that sweet spot, they're either in close combat (where they no longer want to be in any form), or their firepower starts getting pretty thin. It starts becoming a few lascannon hits, or some single-shot pie, or some expensive russes. They're not going to compete in the 18"-30" range very well at all (run up against splinter spam, or now shuriken spam, or psycannon spam, or missile spam, and you'll see what I'm talking about). Things get a little bit better out past 42" because other armies begin to taper off and guard do have apocalypse-ranged guns.

... except for tau, where the guard will likely still loose at that range, because of the multi-shot nature of tau shooting. And they'll definitely lose against tau at medium range (especially foot guard against ignores-cover pulse weapons), which means that the only chance you have is at close ranges, but you've firstly got to get there, and even if you do, you'll find that tau also have access to things like plasma and meltaguns.

With the exception of extreme ranges (over 72"), tau weapons outclass guard weapons at pretty much every range.

Which is why they're better shooters.

 Ailaros wrote:
Tau are way better shooters than guard. Part of that is because they have a new codex, and part of it is because guard aren't as good as shooting as they used to be, relatively speaking.


What you really need is a very large volume of mid-strength firepower (scatter lasers, splinter cannons, tesla destructors, lootas, etc.) or a mere regular large volume of high-strength shots. Guard have always failed in this category,

I don't think we're looking at the same army or historical category here, because this doesn't make much sense to me. The amount of heavy bolter, multilaser, and autocannon fire mech IG can put out is tremendous, and certainly was last edition. My last 2000pt 5E Tournament list could put out 39 S6, 27 S5 and 24 S7 shots in a single turn, not counting the lascannons and meltaguns.

IG Still can put out that kind of firepower, it's just that HP's make tanks hilariously easy to kill now and HWS's are very easy to remove. Hell, that's generally how most IG armies work, lots of stuff like autocannons going about.

With the exception of extreme ranges (over 72"), tau weapons outclass guard weapons at pretty much every range.

One will notice they generally don't have as many guns. What puts Tau where they are isn't the power or quantity of their guns, it's their "synergy" abilities, things like farsight bombs, markerlights, and ethereal/HQ abilities, along with mobility. Without them, IG will very handily outshoot Tau. If a Tau army can't isolate a flank of an IG army, it will generally be up against half again the raw firepower they can produce and it will suffer greatly.

Vaktathi wrote: My last 2000pt 5E Tournament list could put out 39 S6, 27 S5 and 24 S7 shots in a single turn

Which can be achieved with a couple of loota squads, or a few splinterborne in venoms, or wave serpents/warp spiders, or missilesides at a tiny fraction of the price.

The imperial guard can't out-autocannon people to victory.

i'd say tau because their less shots are more accurate, tend to ignore cover, and majority of the time strip armor saves too since we usually are sporting riptides with IA, fusions, or plasmas.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: My last 2000pt 5E Tournament list could put out 39 S6, 27 S5 and 24 S7 shots in a single turn

Which can be achieved with a couple of loota squads, or a few splinterborne in venoms, or wave serpents/warp spiders, or missilesides at a tiny fraction of the price.

The imperial guard can't out-autocannon people to victory.

That's 90 mid-strength shots. Sure the lootas can match that on average, but they're also going to overkill many targets and are easier to isolate and destroy. If you're talking about DE, the only time such firepower is really going to match the IG shooting is against MC's, otherwise it's wounding on 4's against infantry instead of mostly 2's, and isn't doing squat to vehicles. To get the effective output from Eldar and Wave Serpents, it's not going to be cheaper than the IG are going to get it (you're gonna need 6 wave serpents and the infantry to go with them). Missile-sides will get you similar firepower, but not the range (with half their firepower limited to 24" and nothing beyond 36", unlike the IG shots which are all 36-48").

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Also; tanks.

The Leman Russ is probably the killiest armoured platform you can get. The Hammerhead is the only one that's even close, and that's only against other tanks, and the Tau can't field anywhere near the same number of tanks.

Especially if you're a git like me with an armoured company. Vehicles may generally be weaker in 6th ed, but AV14 I find is actually more useful. I see a lot less melta units out there these days, and even a hammerhead's railgun only has 50% odds to glance, 33% to pen.

tau have meltas cheap and are 18 inch range and battle suits can carry three each as well as all of the other systems and weapons you cant go wrong and when you can field 17 of them max

Depends on the player and their use of the army.

The new eldar for example, are exceptionally mobile and shooty;
* fast tanks, are amazing at getting into position to fire more
* the new wave serpent puts out a ton of shots...a ton
* the ability to run then shoot (or move, shoot, then run back) is great
* rending weapons, even if shorter range (see run and shoot above) is like having more shots, because those are automatically failed armor saves
* can you say "scatter laser"

Tau are very shooty, as are guard, but it all depends on what kind of shots at what strengths and ranges.
Neither are very mobile (the new tau are much less mobile) however when they want to maximize their shots.

Also, as the question (and answers) are quite subjective, a real answer might be very elusive...