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Are some armies worse than others? As a result of my SM constantly beating his Orks, my brother is convinced that SM are a heinously overpowered army. He also swears that Tau are not OP at all. He also collects Tau. Is he right? Are my Ultramarines overpowered and just how bad are Tau or any other army?

He says the Current SM are OP? Bah! He dun play orkz ROIGHT! moar boyz inbefore toyz!

Nope, SM are not overpowered. I have orks and usually beat SM.

there may be some bad unit matchups out there but if we comparing one codex to another, then most are pretty level.

Except Black Templar, they are pretty behind. And maybe blood angels isn't doing so well this edition either.

But you should just tell him to try some new units and new tactics.

every army has his match in WH40K..

every army has his worst matchup like Dark eldar for Orks or Nids....

On the other hand i steamroll SM with my Orks...

Close combat armies have it a bit rough in 6th... Mainly due to overwatch IMO

Tau is ridiculous. Between the riptide, markerlights, better overwatch on combined overwatch, they are a painful army to play against.

Remember that overwatch is a weak attack.

Tau are kind of over the top good. Markerlights, riptides and sky rays that say "I get auto first blood"

As some people have said there are sometimes bad matchups, but you can still use better tactics to beat those armies and it really comes down to how you play.

Against Tau, most matchups are bad. Until we figure out how they can be defeated, WAACs, TFGs, and FotM cheese players will dominate every turn explaining all the special rules that Tau don't obey.

Eh, Tau are powerful, but I don't see them in that extreme of a light, Solo. They'll punish the hell out of you if you don't respect their firepower, that's for sure, but they have weak points that can be exploited.

But lets not go into a Taufest of how good they are, the OP is asking are some armies worse than others and I would say that there might be some but if a skilled tactician is facing a fresh new player you could try any armies against each other and I would still bet on the vet. But if the players are equal in skill then older codex's suffer and will not do as well as the newest ones.

 curran12 wrote:
Eh, Tau are powerful, but I don't see them in that extreme of a light, Solo. They'll punish the hell out of you if you don't respect their firepower, that's for sure, but they have weak points that can be exploited.

Tau can castle up really well, love to ruin any MEQ's day with plentiful ap3/2 shooting and tend to enjoy partying most when they can play on the Emperor's finest football pitches!

However, Daemons and their Beast/Cavbus rush can really ruin their day, as can simply playing with a decent amount of terrain so that those marker lights get spread a bit thin instead of being able to focus on the lone building a third or more of the enemy are trying to hide in.

Wow all this tau hate, it's like you noods can't even take out the pathfinders/tetras so tau become a sub-par guard army...

Currently, certain nercon, chaos daemon and nid setups are just bad to play against. Guard air spam still exists, and no MEQ player wants to play GK. Also ork loota spam is annoying.

Tau can castle up really well, love to ruin any MEQ's day with plentiful ap3/2 shooting and tend to enjoy partying most when they can play on the Emperor's finest football pitches!

Castling is exactly what you want the Tau to do against a gunline IG army, so that you can rain artillery templates on them until there are no more fish to fry.

Some armies are better at some aspects of gameplay than other armies are, and the overall ruleset of the current edition can exacerbate those variations, but there's not a single "this army is better in all things than all other armies" sort of deal going on.

Eldar are doing good now. They have some very nice shooting and rending on basic troops if I recall. Also those wave serpents, oh those beautiful serpents. Ignoring pens is a mighty fine thing to have.

I don't call them overpowered but I don't understand why Grey Knight SM get so many advantages for only 2 or 3 more points per model then what seems common looking at Blood Angels and Space Marine codex and a brief look at the Dark Angels codex. Had the guys in the DA codex been much cheaper or better equipped I would have thought GK codex was just written with 6th in mind. I don't understand it as it is.

 Goat wrote:
... sky rays that say "I get auto first blood"

Nah us Eldar with 60" range s7 ignores cover Serpent Shield shenanigans lay claim to that one.

To the OP, its hard to talk about what armies are and aren't overpowered because it makes large assumptions about builds and generalship. In expert hands, SM are *considered* relatively average to weak, while Tau are *considered* one of the strongest codecii out there.

Certainly even a decent Ork list should give a decent SM list a run for their money, Space Marines don't regularly field the right tools for taking out large numbers of Boyz and will easily get wipe in combat with them. Tau on the other hand should wipe out both quite easily.

Rumbleguts wrote:
I would have thought GK codex was just written with 6th in mind. I don't understand it as it is.

Dude, the GK aren't built for 6th edition. Their weapons got nerfed and a lot of the new armies can take advantage of their fragileness [compared to other marines].

I dunno bro, with 2 skyrays that's 12, 72" str8 ap3 shots and BS4. Granted there isn't ignore LOS or cover unless they are using a markerlight, but they do ignore night fighting bonuses.

2 skyray is fun, but a true missile command list packs 3. And 10-15 piranhas with each a pair.

Enjoy a hail of 30 or so turn 1 missiles. Not very effective due to low lasting power, but funny as hell.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
2 skyray is fun, but a true missile command list packs 3. And 10-15 piranhas with each a pair.

Enjoy a hail of 30 or so turn 1 missiles. Not very effective due to low lasting power, but funny as hell.

Don't turn this into a "are tau op?" Thread.
19 pages in the last one ended up with tau players getting really pissed off at anyone suggesting anything about them is OTT

I would say the stronger codexes right now are:
Necron
Tau
Eldar

And the weaker are:
Orks
C:SM
Possibly sisters, though I hear they do well competitively. Only one person plays them locally, and sometimes I think her victories are more because she's...distracting.
I notice i win more when I bring my gf along too

Akiasura wrote:
Don't turn this into a "are tau op?" Thread.
19 pages in the last one ended up with tau players getting really pissed off at anyone suggesting anything about them is OTT

I would say the stronger codexes right now are:
Necron
Tau
Eldar

And the weaker are:
Orks
C:SM
Possibly sisters, though I hear they do well competitively. Only one person plays them locally, and sometimes I think her victories are more because she's...distracting.
I notice i win more when I bring my gf along too

I'd rank the armies like this, from strongest to weakest:
Necrons
Tau
Grey Knights
Imperial Guard
Eldar
Space Wolves
[predicted] new SM book
Orks
Dark Angels
Chaos Daemons
Dark Eldar
Chaos Space marines
Blood Angels
Current Space Marine book
Black Templars [currently, therelly probaly be equal to SM soon]
Tyranids
Sisters of Battle

Note that my list onlt works if with average lists and tactics. If the armies have only their best units [like heldrake spam with CSM] it would be differant