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.

I don't really know where to talk about this or what to title, but I figured I couldn't go wrong with Dakka Discussions and a slightly troll title....

I've played 40k for 13 years, with Tau as my only army that entire time. They've had upturns and downturns, and the 6th edition codex has been a major power boost. So much of a power boost that I've only lost 2 games with my Tau since new new codex.
I'm not a particularly good player. I take competitive lists, but I'm not great at the tactical play. But I'm finding that so many of my opponents just play so badly against me that winning is very very easy. It is making me not really enjoy the game very much.

What do you do in such a situation? If your opponent - players with a few years under their belts, not just newbies - sets up and plays directly to your strengths? How do you make the game fun for both people, make them want to have another game with you and not leave with a 'broken codex' feeling? And when it's not just one opponent but the majority of people you play against?
Am I playing harder than I think I am? Is my codex really that unbalanced? Or should I just keep beating my opponents down until they smarten up?

I've sometimes run into this in the past, and it says good things about you that you're asking this question rather than just continuing to stomp your opponents.

If the problem is the calibre of your opponents rather than your army list, then the best way to change this is to improve your opponents. Treat your games as ultra-friendly, and masterclass them on their tactical play. Ask them why they're doing what they're doing, and point out areas where they could make different choices. Note it's important not to just tell them to do something different because then you're playing their army for them - pointing out options and letting them figure it out for themselves is how they will learn.

If the problem is your force (Tau gunlines are pretty much top of the pile at the moment) then change your own playstyle. Pick a new theme and build an army around it. Pick a signature unit that's not simply sitting back and shooting, and try it out just for something different to do. It will probably be less effective - in a highly competitive environment this would not be fun, but in your local group this might handicap you a little so everyone has a better time.

There's a third option but this is expensive - start a second army. If your tau are your general take-all-comers force, then pick a specialist army built around a certain theme as a challenge. I've kind of done this myself - Chaos are my primary army and I can field almost every unit in their codex. My White Scars are secondary - although I use C:SM, I'm deliberately limiting the units I use to those fitting the feel of my force, partly as a tactical challenge, and partly just because I just like the idea and background.

Trasvi wrote:

Spoiler:

As an example, my game last night was against Chaos Space Marines. I took a fairly standard gunline tau force, he had plague marines in rhinos, a forgefiend, typhus with some zombies, a helldrake. I deployed first with guns bristling outwards... and he deployed directly opposite 24" away with only his forgefiend hidden by cover (there was plenty of cover on the board, we generally play about 33% terrain). After my first shooting phase I'd killed a squad of zombies, destroyed 3 out of 4 rhinos and immobilised another, blocking his forgefiend; and the rest of the game was similarly one sided. By the time I'd tabled him, I'd lost 4 fire warriors, 3 sniper drones and 2 crisis suits. His strategy was to line up directly across from a gunline, spend at least 2 of my shooting phases on foot, walking forward, and then assault facing a Tau overlapping overwatch. Not a winning strategy; yet he's not the first or even the tenth player to try essentially the same thing.

I don't know one way or the other, but for some reason I imagine the majority of people who play this game play exactly the same way. "Let's deploy our armies directly across from each other and then do a slow march towards the center of the board with the only shooting being potshots on the way into the giant assault orgy in the center where we will do nothing but roll dice pointlessly until the game's eventual end! FUN!"

Help him out if you can do it without appearing to be a smart arse. After the games tell him where you think you went wrong, tell him his mistakes and see if he can figure out how to counter you next time.
It will make for better games in the long run.

Using the game as a teaching opportunity is a good idea. Another option would be to play your Tau in the first game and then switch armies with him to see if you can do better against your own Tau army. If you lose badly, then the odds are it your army that is the problem....

All good ideas. Doing a quick after action with your opponent to discuss what went well and what didn't (disguised way of providing advice) generally can't hurt. You might change up your lists a bit to try out new units or tactics too.

13 years of playing Tau says something in itself. You may be a very humble 40K player stating that you aren't as good as you actually may be, but the reality is you are probably very good especially with the new codex providing a "boost" as you say. Now that you know your current strategy is solid you can start to experiment with different loadouts and strategy that may increase the fun factor a little bit and when needed resort back to your current solid strategy.

I would suggest a couple of things, some of which have already been mentioned.

Gentle tactical advice (already mentioned, but worth offering).

New units. You've been playing for 13 years and probably have a pretty broad collection. You know what works really well with your play style and strategies. Change it up! Buy some new units which aren't more of the same. Use some of your 'less favored' units. Try some different strategies. If you are winning with your 'tried and true' list, vary it up. Even if you keep winning it will be a fun and different experience.

Scenarios. I can't emphasize this enough. Play scenarios with different victory conditions. Use Altar of War scenarios, or just make up your own. It sounds like, at least in the last batrep you posted, that you could win without seizing objectives, just through attrition (though I could be wrong). If you have more scenarios where you have to take and hold ground, or seize objectives and retrieve them, or something that doesn't reward a static gun line, then maybe it will be better.

For instance, it sounds like he had a relatively balanced force (with aircraft, transported units, slow units, and a big beastie), but you had a standard Tau gunline. If the scenario lets you win through simple attrition, I would expect you to win. You don't have to advance, you don't have to seize objectives, you don't have to do anything that isn't advantageous to your army.

Terrain: I know you said that you guys used 33% terrain, but what type of terrain. I used to lose horribly in WFB to one of my friend's Empire Armies, with both Orcs and Chaos Warriors. I couldn't figure out how to beat him. We were playing at his house, and he made a lot of awesome, characterful terrain (fully detailed interiors, etc). Finally, it hit me: his terrain was all favorable for a defensive, shooting army. He didn't do that to be a douche or anything. It was the type of terrain that he liked to make. Fences, walls, buildings. Anything that blocked line of sight could be used as a shooting platform. Lots of terrain to slow you down or funnel you without blocking line of sight (tilled fields, rivers, lakes). His terrain was immensely favorable to an army which preferred to stand back and shoot.

Look over the terrain that you are using, and see if there's enough that blocks line of sight, but doesn't also provide an awesome shooting platform. If all the terrain is stuff that your Tau love to have on the board, maybe it's providing a secret advantage.

^ Yep, terrain can be a big factor. You generally want a good mix of terrain. You want terrain that provides cover. You want terrain that can slow down your opponent. And you also want terrain that can block LOS. A 1' tall hill is basically worthless for anything other than looking pretty.

Also, as others suggested, try switching things up within your army. Also, try switching armies with your friends (you play their army, they play your army). You can also slowly start a second army, starting it off as an allied force for your Tau (lots of cheap Space Marines to be found on Ebay).

You couldn't come to my home and bring your friend could you ? I play Nids. And I think if your pal sees me Smash you he would learn and do better. Let me know.

You are playing a relatively new codex, and there will always be a period of adjustment while people learn how to adjust to the new tactics. Until then, the accusations of your codex being 'overpowered' will fly, and you will continue to enjoy the benefit of the unknown. Once people adjust to the changes, you'll find yourself back in a more familiar win-loss paradigm. I'd enjoy it while it lasts. Eventually the wheel will turn, and everyone will know your tricks, and you'll have nothing they haven't seen before.

I keep suggesting this, but no one will do it:

Every time you play someone, write down your win:loss ratio. The next time you play them, take 10% less points against them per win you have over your total losses. So if you have 5 wins and 2 losses against an opponent, you get 30% less points.

The end result is that you'll have a handicap that will balance out the game individually against each opponent.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I keep suggesting this, but no one will do it:

Every time you play someone, write down your win:loss ratio. The next time you play them, take 10% less points against them per win you have over your total losses. So if you have 5 wins and 2 losses against an opponent, you get 30% less points.

The end result is that you'll have a handicap that will balance out the game individually against each opponent.

Doing this.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I keep suggesting this, but no one will do it:

Every time you play someone, write down your win:loss ratio. The next time you play them, take 10% less points against them per win you have over your total losses. So if you have 5 wins and 2 losses against an opponent, you get 30% less points.

The end result is that you'll have a handicap that will balance out the game individually against each opponent.

No, not without some sort of upper cap. 800 points vs 1000 points is a huge difference. That is only two wins away as well. Also, forcing someone to play a smaller army because he is better at playing than you seems like a cheap cop-out where one player eventually gets an auto-win, and the other player gets tabled. The good player is being penalized with victory, and the bad player is learning very little. Also, who wants to win a game wherein your opponent was forced to lose?

 Jimsolo wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
I keep suggesting this, but no one will do it:

Every time you play someone, write down your win:loss ratio. The next time you play them, take 10% less points against them per win you have over your total losses. So if you have 5 wins and 2 losses against an opponent, you get 30% less points.

The end result is that you'll have a handicap that will balance out the game individually against each opponent.

Doing this.

That's awesome! Whenever I suggest it locally people are like "sure!" and then they play one game and the winner then doesn't want to take their first 10% points hit because "I barely won last time, so it's not fair" or something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cardboardcrackhead wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
I keep suggesting this, but no one will do it:

Every time you play someone, write down your win:loss ratio. The next time you play them, take 10% less points against them per win you have over your total losses. So if you have 5 wins and 2 losses against an opponent, you get 30% less points.

The end result is that you'll have a handicap that will balance out the game individually against each opponent.

No, not without some sort of upper cap. 800 points vs 1000 points is a huge difference. That is only two wins away as well. Also, forcing someone to play a smaller army because he is better at playing than you seems like a cheap cop-out where one player eventually gets an auto-win, and the other player gets tabled. The good player is being penalized with victory, and the bad player is learning very little. Also, who wants to win a game wherein your opponent was forced to lose?

If you can't handle 10%, do 5%.

It'll also balance out, so it's not a cheap cop out. If you beat someone 10 times in a row without losing, either you are awesome, or something is seriously, seriously wrong with the balance of the game. A points handicap fixes this issue and makes it a close run thing for everyone.

Also the traditional military doctrine is that you don't attack unless you bring two or three times the force to bear that a defender has. So the idea of balanced games of equal points is already silly.

Then add in the fact that 40k isn't balanced and you already have an unfair starting point.

As for being penalized for winning, that's a mind set problem. If you're playing a video game and the next level is harder, is that penalizing you for winning? No. It's just the next, greater challenge. Stop whining and meet the challenge head on!

OP, I gotta ask, what else could the guy have done with the list he had?

Say he attempted to attack on the flank. He'd simply end up with a pile of burnt out Rhinos on one side of the board instead of in the centre. Then what?

Your opponent 'sucked' because Gunline Tau is crazy powerful.

 cardboardcrackhead wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
I keep suggesting this, but no one will do it:

Every time you play someone, write down your win:loss ratio. The next time you play them, take 10% less points against them per win you have over your total losses. So if you have 5 wins and 2 losses against an opponent, you get 30% less points.

The end result is that you'll have a handicap that will balance out the game individually against each opponent.

No, not without some sort of upper cap. 800 points vs 1000 points is a huge difference. That is only two wins away as well. Also, forcing someone to play a smaller army because he is better at playing than you seems like a cheap cop-out where one player eventually gets an auto-win, and the other player gets tabled. The good player is being penalized with victory, and the bad player is learning very little. Also, who wants to win a game wherein your opponent was forced to lose?

If you can't handle 10%, do 5%.

It'll also balance out, so it's not a cheap cop out. If you beat someone 10 times in a row without losing, either you are awesome, or something is seriously, seriously wrong with the balance of the game. A points handicap fixes this issue and makes it a close run thing for everyone.

Also the traditional military doctrine is that you don't attack unless you bring two or three times the force to bear that a defender has. So the idea of balanced games of equal points is already silly.

Then add in the fact that 40k isn't balanced and you already have an unfair starting point.

As for being penalized for winning, that's a mind set problem. If you're playing a video game and the next level is harder, is that penalizing you for winning? No. It's just the next, greater challenge. Stop whining and meet the challenge head on!

If you force a points disparagement between players, eventually you will run into the issue where one throws games in order to either a) give himself an advantage or b) be allowed to play with the army he has purchased at the points he purchased his army to play at. And to counter your point about video games getting harder, you frequently unlock MORE things that assist you or get stronger as you win, not the other way around. The challenges are scaled up because you get stronger, not because you were forced to become weaker. If one has to play a game wherein they had to beat the game with less resources but against the same foe, it would be grating. Help the losers but do not stifle the winners, otherwise there is no reason to compete.

There are some players I handicap myself against already. Having a formula for it makes it a lot more manageable, I think. In addition, training myself to operate with fewer points on the table makes me more accustomed to being outmatched, which forces me to improve my tactical thinking to compensate. Kind of like training at 1000x normal gravity...

 cardboardcrackhead wrote:

If you force a points disparagement between players, eventually you will run into the issue where one throws games in order to either a) give himself an advantage or b) be allowed to play with the army he has purchased at the points he purchased his army to play at. And to counter your point about video games getting harder, you frequently unlock MORE things that assist you or get stronger as you win, not the other way around. The challenges are scaled up because you get stronger, not because you were forced to become weaker. If one has to play a game wherein they had to beat the game with less resources but against the same foe, it would be grating. Help the losers but do not stifle the winners, otherwise there is no reason to compete.

So all your points are dependent on a particular mindset, or the local meta.

The suggestion is basically a 'handicap' system, similar to that in golf - a vastly more competitive and professional game. It works fine there, so the idea of a handicap system itself is not corrupt.

I want to play close fought games. I don't care how 'skilled' I am at 40k compared to all other players. I have no desire to be 'the best' at 40k. Outside tournaments, I don't see 40k as a competition - I see it as a fun game. Anything that makes that particular game even and close fought is good. If that means that, because I've been playing for longer, I get less points, fine - I don't care as long as the game I'm playing is even. I've never purchased an army at a particular points value, and don't know many people who do. I've never recorded a win/loss ratio with an army before, and don't really care what it is.

I'm fine with the idea of a points - based handicap. It's all about your mindset really.

In game design, it doesn't matter if, when you 'level up' you get more weapons, or less time, or stronger enemies or whatever. It's irrelevant if the perception is that your character has 'got stronger' or 'got weaker' - the only important thing is that, as you level up, the game gets more difficult. Winning the same game with less points is a perfectly acceptable way of controlling difficulty levels.

I think I might make one alteration to the handicap system. I'm also going to keep track of my opponent's army. I've got one guy who plays both Orks and Grey Knights against me. I've never beaten his Grey Knights, but never lost to his Orks, so if he wound up playing the Grey Knights against an army calculated with the handicap earned by his Orks, it would kind of skew the intent of the system. Still, great idea.

 Dakkamite wrote:
OP, I gotta ask, what else could the guy have done with the list he had?

Say he attempted to attack on the flank. He'd simply end up with a pile of burnt out Rhinos on one side of the board instead of in the centre. Then what?

Your opponent 'sucked' because Gunline Tau is crazy powerful.

I don't believe that gunline tau is so powerful that any game against them is inherently unwinnable. For some armies maybe, but not for most.

If I were my opponent?
1) I would have deployed on the other side of the board, and/or 2-3 inches further away. As it was, he set up 4 rhinos in range of a missileside squad + missile commander - a squad which can easily take out 2 AV11 or 12 vehicles per turn. An extra 2" would have put his rhinos out of first turn shooting range.

2) There was a LOS-blocking ruin in the centre of no-mans-land. If his vehicles had deployed on the east side of the board, they could have avoided the missilesides on the west flank for possibly the entire game.

3) Using S8 weapons on my crisis/broadside rather than riptide/hammerhead/piranha. Its a common thing I see from many opponents - a squad of crisis suits costs more than a hammerhead, but the hammerhead is actually much more durable to anti-tank hits.

4) Deploying vehicles in a parking lot meant that immobilising one of the vehicles effectively neutralised 4 squads. If they were spread out enough, there would have been room to maneuver.

5) His reserves (helldrake + typhus+terminators) came on in bad positions. The helldrake chose to move 36" on the west flank, where the missilesides intercepted and promptly shot it down. If it had come in on the east flank, it would have been out of range of my most dangerous unit. Typhus came on in line of sight of essentially my entire army; the Riptide which attempted to put a S8AP2 blast there (but it scattered away :( ), and then the termies were in LOS for 20 sniper drone + 70 pulse rifle shots. If Typhus had chosen to arrive next to to Missilesides, he would have been in substantially less danger while also being much more threatening.

6) The mission we rolled was The Emperor's Will. He didn't defend his objective well enough: it was only guarded by a single squad of plague zombies while everything else just came straight at me. The helldrake could have also come on from reserves to defend the objective in his table half and flamered some crisis suits to death.

7) Assaulting the riptide when the chance was presented. Plague Marines with poison knives would probably have won combat against the riptide, and potentially made it flee considering its lack of Fearless.

I think that if I were my opponent, I could have achieved a draw, with very slight chance at a win. I would have defended the objective better: I would have kept the rhinos and helldrake away from the Broadsides as much as possible: and brought Typhus in to play in a much less exposed place. I would have conceded all secondary objectives (hopefully but probably not keeping Typhus alive), but hopefully been able to achieve line-breaker, slay the warlord, +1 for ethereal and deny the Tau player the objective. If Typhus got locked into combat with the squad holding the objective, Chaos would have won the game.


But this isn't just about this particular game. I've had similar experiences against Dark Eldar, Orks, Space Marines, Dark Angels, Grey Knights, Chaos Daemons, Imperial Guard. I struggle against the new Mech Eldar, but this isn't a one-off occurrence against a single new player.

Thanks to to people who suggested the handicap idea - I'll try that next time, while I assemble a massive Kroot horde of unbelievably fun outflanking shenanigans for something different to try.

I'm curious if the OP (Trasvi) has taken any of our tips or ideas and put them to the test?

you could just take weaker lists? I used to avoid leafblower guard in fifth because i knew my opponents would struggle against it.

 Chris_P wrote:
I'm curious if the OP (Trasvi) has taken any of our tips or ideas and put them to the test?

Unfortunately I only get to play 1-2 games a week so it may be a while before I really get to try them out.
Also, I'm lucky enough to be part of a very active wargames club with 15 regular 40k players, so the time between playing against a particular opponent for the second time can be quite long. The handicap idea would be great if I had a smaller group of players, but I think it might not work given the time between games.

I think my best bet may be to try a second style of list - a farsight bomb, farsight enclaves, a ridiculous outflanking kroot +stealthsuit mob. I think my experience with Warmachine as a second game leads me to building highly synergistic/optimized lists - but if I restrict myself intentionally to a particular build style then I might be able to play that list well without it being the pinnacle of Tau badassness.

If you don't play people regularly enough to track your wins/losses per army matchup with them, might I suggest just attempting a blanket handicap. Don't even tell your opponent. Just take a few hundred points less and try it out.

Jimsolo wrote:I think I might make one alteration to the handicap system. I'm also going to keep track of my opponent's army. I've got one guy who plays both Orks and Grey Knights against me. I've never beaten his Grey Knights, but never lost to his Orks, so if he wound up playing the Grey Knights against an army calculated with the handicap earned by his Orks, it would kind of skew the intent of the system. Still, great idea.

That's a good idea. If the point is to fix balance problems between armies as well as skill levels between opponents than tracking by army is probably a good idea as well.

The forced handicap idea really doesn't mesh with me. As a rather competitive CSM player who has more Ls than Ws, if my opponent decided that the only way I could beat him was by giving me an inherent advantage, I would feel terrible. And the fact that it increases only really adds salt. The people who would accept the handicap are the ones who care more about playing than winning most of the time. But for the people with a more competitive slant, the handicap would be crushing. Every time they won with their opponents handicap, it would just be another reminder that they aren't good enough to win on the same level as anyone else. And could you imagine the feeling of losing to someone with 20% less points than you. The army would be on e-bay that night. The idea sounds great on paper, which is commendable, but it is gak in practice because most of the people playing either like to win or don't like to be treated like a lesser opponent.

I would never play someone with a handicap. If I won it would feel hollow and pointless because the game wasn't truly "even", and if I still lost I would feel even worse than I did losing in the first place. Also, I think it's pretty telling that people who are suggesting the handicap are telling the OP to keep it a secret, because more likely than not it would end up insulting the other player if they found out.

Some people are fragile.

The simple fact is that 40k isn't balanced. So your choices are to do nothing about it and have one sided games like the original poster or actually do something about it. People who are action oriented will want something that makes it work whereas people who are emotionally oriented won't like that because of how it makes them feel once they tell a story to themselves about what winning or losing under those conditions says about them.

if you want to do something about the problem, do it. If you want to feel bad instead, feel bad instead and leave the central issue of the thread unresolved in order to spare the feelings of yourself or others.

Stop playing with tau for a bit play with a different army wait for the enevitable power creep of the other codex then go back to the tau. It happened to me with my orks when the last codex came out for them my list which wasnt the harshest by any meens was beating almost everyone in my local store even some very good torniment players. Even to the point where people were tayloring there lists to beat mine and still it wasnt working but eventually the power creep stopped that and then 6th happened and killed the list and that was that.

Welsh_Furey wrote:
Stop playing with tau for a bit play with a different army wait for the enevitable power creep of the other codex then go back to the tau. It happened to me with my orks when the last codex came out for them my list which wasnt the harshest by any meens was beating almost everyone in my local store even some very good torniment players. Even to the point where people were tayloring there lists to beat mine and still it wasnt working but eventually the power creep stopped that and then 6th happened and killed the list and that was that.

Unfortunately I don't have the free time or income to start a new army from scratch so I need to rely on whatever is available second-hand. One of the players in my area has put up 2 ready-completed lists for sale - however, they are tournament-optimised Grey Knights and Necrons lists.... not really jumping down the power ladder.