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 GoliothOnline wrote:


The big difference between now and then, is the fact these little mighty fire warriors can now En Mass, over watch. You don't quite know the dread of playing Tau and watching things disappear before they can even get to you, non tactically speaking, while sitting in the open, on an objective, and feeling like a complete piece of crap because of it being so easy... I hate my new Tau. The fact they are so cheap, means in comparison I could field nearly double the amount of Fire Warriors, with a suppressive range to fire from, which benefits far too easily from the rest of my army.

Yeah, if you're assaulting a solid bastion of fire warriors with a single unit then it's suicide as it should be.

Even if you had 6 units of 12 Fire Warriors all within 6 inches of each other and through some weird geometry all within rapid fire range of a unit of space marines then the combined overwatch would only cause 5.33 casualties. 144 shots only killing 5 Space Marines is not overpowering.

The trick is to assault with multiple units at once and carrying out these assaults in a tactical order. Assaulting in an order which means the Tau player has to choose whether to:

1) overwatch a weak unit
or
2) hold off overwatch for when the dangerous scary unit assaults.

If they choose option 1 then that Fire Warrior unit may not get assaulted thanks to overwatch casualties but they won't be able to provide supporting fire against the big scary unit.
If they choose option 2 then they have to rely on the weak unit not making it into assault as if they get locked in combat they can't use supporting fire against the big scary unit.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 GoliothOnline wrote:

The big difference between now and then, is the fact these little mighty fire warriors can now En Mass, over watch

So then why not remove the overwatch ability? Why go straight to ruining what is good about Firewarriors?

You don't quite know the dread of playing Tau and watching things disappear before they can even get to you, non tactically speaking, while sitting in the open, on an objective, and feeling like a complete piece of crap because of it being so easy... I hate my new Tau.

I can't help but feel you're letting your own personal experience skew your opinion on balance.

The fact they are so cheap, means in comparison I could field nearly double the amount of Fire Warriors, with a suppressive range to fire from, which benefits far too easily from the rest of my army.

They always could benefit from markerlights and they are 1 point cheaper than last edition. I can not understand where you're coming from with this.

 GoliothOnline wrote:

That IS the point though. My personal Experience is exactly WHY I hate my Tau, my experiences with them, are exactly why I can say the things I do. How else could I? If I had 0 experience in playing the army, and didnt have the many hundreds of games under my belt, It would be entirely different... But I do, and the games are all the same. Same outcomes even with different match ups. 1 Point on a fire warrior makes all the difference, them losing an "Iconic" weapon? In who's eyes? The Pulse Rifle is still fantastic, even on paper with only str 4. The range is the problem, and that is what made it Iconic. If you want to keep the range, sacrifice the Strength. Hell, now that I say that, Id rather a Pulse Rifle with 2 stats, 1 for str 4 at 30" and the other at str 5 within 15".... but hell Ive already gotten myself into one of those downer moods just looking at my Tau again.... So Im not going to bother.

Why is an extra 6" range that problematic? It's only 6".

If my Fire Warriors can shoot a unit of Space Marines at 30" then that unit of Space Marines can move forwards 6" and return fire against me. An extra 6" hardly makes the Tau untouchable.

Now, if they had the Eldar shoot then run ability... then they would be broken with 30" guns.

 GoliothOnline wrote:

That IS the point though. My personal Experience is exactly WHY I hate my Tau, my experiences with them, are exactly why I can say the things I do. How else could I?

By realizing that just because YOU don't have fun with them doesn't meant that OTHER people CAN'T have fun with them. You have a bias and it's affecting your judgement on balance. You want to skew balance to satiate a bias and this is AGAINST the majority of other players.

1 Point on a fire warrior makes all the difference

So 10 point FW in early 6th is an uphill fight with Tau on the lower end of the army tiers.
9 points however and it's tearing apart every army on the table. Can you see that there is something wrong with this statement?

them losing an "Iconic" weapon? In who's eyes?

People that aren't you, so you apparently don't care about them.

The Pulse Rifle is still fantastic, even on paper with only str 4.

Then it's a bolter with a bit longer range. That's not fantastic at all.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 GoliothOnline wrote:

That IS the point though. My personal Experience is exactly WHY I hate my Tau, my experiences with them, are exactly why I can say the things I do. How else could I? If I had 0 experience in playing the army, and didnt have the many hundreds of games under my belt, It would be entirely different... But I do, and the games are all the same. Same outcomes even with different match ups. 1 Point on a fire warrior makes all the difference, them losing an "Iconic" weapon? In who's eyes? The Pulse Rifle is still fantastic, even on paper with only str 4. The range is the problem, and that is what made it Iconic. If you want to keep the range, sacrifice the Strength. Hell, now that I say that, Id rather a Pulse Rifle with 2 stats, 1 for str 4 at 30" and the other at str 5 within 15".... but hell Ive already gotten myself into one of those downer moods just looking at my Tau again.... So Im not going to bother.

Why is an extra 6" range that problematic? It's only 6".

If my Fire Warriors can shoot a unit of Space Marines at 30" then that unit of Space Marines can move forwards 6" and return fire against me. An extra 6" hardly makes the Tau untouchable.

Now, if they had the Eldar shoot then run ability... then they would be broken with 30" guns.

It also has to do with Rapid Fire, don't forget. at 30" range, Rapide Fire has an effective range of 15". 6" is still half a foot, and makes ALL the difference, especially with advancing armies of any sort.

 GoliothOnline wrote:


It also has to do with Rapid Fire, don't forget. at 30" range, Rapide Fire has an effective range of 15". 6" is still half a foot, and makes ALL the difference, especially with advancing armies of any sort.

Right, I can rapid fire from a whole 3" extra distance. Again, hardly game breaking.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 GoliothOnline wrote:

That IS the point though. My personal Experience is exactly WHY I hate my Tau, my experiences with them, are exactly why I can say the things I do. How else could I?

By realizing that just because YOU don't have fun with them doesn't meant that OTHER people CAN'T have fun with them. You have a bias and it's affecting your judgement on balance. You want to skew balance to satiate a bias and this is AGAINST the majority of other players.

1 Point on a fire warrior makes all the difference

So 10 point FW in early 6th is an uphill fight with Tau on the lower end of the army tiers.
9 points however and it's tearing apart every army on the table. Can you see that there is something wrong with this statement?

them losing an "Iconic" weapon? In who's eyes?

People that aren't you, so you apparently don't care about them.

The Pulse Rifle is still fantastic, even on paper with only str 4.

Then it's a bolter with a bit longer range. That's not fantastic at all.

Again, I'm done arguing. Ive put my statement in, I'm happy with my logic. You don't have to be, you have that right. If everyone DID enjoy playing against and playing Tau, there wouldn't have been 20 pages of this exact thread coming with hammer and nails.... Im leaving it at that.

 GoliothOnline wrote:

It also has to do with Rapid Fire, don't forget. at 30" range, Rapide Fire has an effective range of 15". 6" is still half a foot, and makes ALL the difference, especially with advancing armies of any sort.

So rapid fire increasing by 3" for FW is what gets to you? Are you forgetting those advancing armies will be closing distance with their weapons as well?

 GoliothOnline wrote:
If everyone DID enjoy playing against and playing Tau, there wouldn't have been 20 pages of this exact thread coming with hammer and nails.... Im leaving it at that.

Look at the last 20 pages and tell me how many posts are about FW being far too hard to kill and how they kill too much.
They have the same stat line and same gun as they did in the previous codex that was on the low end of the scale through 5th and pre-update 6th. The point cost changed by 1 while unit size remained the same. You want to fix something that isn't a problem. You want to take away the iconic gun and replace it with bolters. Those aren't fixes. Your win/loss record does not matter when it comes to ruining what are some of the iconic/staples to Tau and what MANY enjoy about the game.

rigeld2 wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
HBC is decent at AA. Still less than an annibarge even with skyfire though unless it passed a NOVA for it.
Ion isn't even a serious threat assuming he bought both skyfire and interceptor and these are conflicting upgrades that block out fnp if you want both.

Why isn't it a threat?

Because its 3 BS3 S7 shots. odds are nothing will happen even if you are AV10 and do not jink. on average it will hit 1.5 times, of them 0.25 will glance, 0.75 will pen and 0.5 will whiff. a single hullpoint and perhaps a damage result. not worth jinking over.
If you are AV11 or got some other defensive boost (save for example) its even less likely to harm you.
its therefor not a threat.

And you ignored the Fusion Blasters. And if losing 2/3 of your hull points and potentially dying isn't a threat... I'm not sure how to respond to that.

Because fusions got short range, if he someone intercepted with these its your fault. I am simplfiying things.
How 1 hull point is 2/3 of anything baffles me. you are losing 1 hull point from him if you are outside fusion range, and even inside it-odds are you won't die.
That is not a jink threat. a jink threat is something that is going to kill you unless you jink.

And before you go "BUT FNP", FnP calculations are silly and you are doing pointless work. just ignore them and think of the FnP ability as a 50% increase in base W count and it will save you a lot of work. (so a FnP riptide as 7.5 effective wounds, and no FnP for the same math results)

Um. No they're not? Why are they silly? And why are you giving a 50% W increase instead of 33% because that's what FNP is?

Calculate how many bolter shots it take to kill a marine, and how many it takes to kill a marine with FnP, than return to me.
The fact you argue about statistics and power level when you seem to have low familiarty with how the calculations even work troubles me.

Its still doing over a third of its own wounds to itself over a game. with the no-too-cheap FnP upgrade, and with firepower not as amazing as some would thing (basically 3 assault canons at BS3 whn nova works, and 2 non-rendeing ones when it doesnt)

Plus the other gun. I'm not sure how that's negligible.

He must you mix two things? negligible WITHOUT nova. not with it. with it its decent firepower-but not as durable.

Over a game its 48 S6AP4 rending shots and 16 S6AP4 shots, at BS 3 meaning half are going to miss, and not only you cannot control when the weaker profile shots up-you cannot predict it either.
Its not amazing firepower-and this is under the assumption that you leave it alone all game long and let it shoot-if you as much as come close to it with a semi-decent CC unit you WILL be disruption its shooting at least partly, and a shown it will hurt itself enough that its clearly within the killable range of ranged weaponry anyway, even if it did take FnP.

Wait - shots can miss? nowai.

Sarcasam gets you nowhere. sure evryone misses-but some miss more. BS3 vs the commonly used BS4 is a big difference when multi-shot units are involved.

The "negligble" was referring to not overcharging the HBC

Under the assumption the HBC never overcharges, its less destructive than a dev squad with heavy bolters even when you count the secondary gun too (probably SMS)
And HB devs are wildly considered worthless, and only worth even considering in IF armies. (bolter experts) where even there they are not very hot.

Partially because HB devs have to stand still to get any output at all. Maybe, just maybe, you should look at more than just damage output? Because 8 S6 shots isn't negligible. Carnifexes get 12 at the same BS (Yes, twin-linked) and are feared for it. And yours even has AP.

Said dev marines also cost less than 66% of base riptide. for every two base riptides-you could have gotten three HB dev squads, and have points left over.
Who outshoot the non-nova riptide each, and between the higher wound count and the spared are not far behind on durability, even though they are less mobile.
And yet, its a firepower comparison to a wildly considered worthless unit. and worthless DUE to its firepower. for that very same reason tank-mounted HB are always replaced with HF if its a free trade. nobody ever field HB, in any form, unless its attached to something else they want and there is no viable replacement. (aside pask, but named HQs are hardly the way to classify weapons worth)

As for dakkafex-first, they are not "feared" they are considered "passable", at best. second, they land far more shots that a non-NOVAed riptide, and equal when he does nova, the AP is rarely relevant, and the fex is cheaper, featuring superior CC stats, and is fearless. so it has his own perks.
While I wont say the riptide ISNT a better unit-its not very far. and the dakkafex isnt great to begin with.

The firepower of most Astartes lists doesn't become a thing until 18". As I said before, marines pretty much lose this firepower contest everytime. The straggling survivors can't generate enough HTH wounds to compete anymore.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Yeah, if you're assaulting a solid bastion of fire warriors with a single unit then it's suicide as it should be.

Sorry, but assaulting fire warriors with a melee unit certainly shouldn't be suicide.

Tau are supposed to be weak in combat. Being weak in combat with the ability to vaporise anything that tries to assault them is not being weak in combat.

If they're going to have that degree of melee defence, then they should be receiving no other bonuses as a result of being 'weak in melee'.

 vipoid wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Yeah, if you're assaulting a solid bastion of fire warriors with a single unit then it's suicide as it should be.

Sorry, but assaulting fire warriors with a melee unit certainly shouldn't be suicide.

Tau are supposed to be weak in combat. Being weak in combat with the ability to vaporise anything that tries to assault them is not being weak in combat.

If they're going to have that degree of melee defence, then they should be receiving no other bonuses as a result of being 'weak in melee'.

Except they don't have the ability to vaporise anything that tries to assault them unless you're feeding a bunker of several units of fire warriors individual assault units every turn.

If you use tactics to force them to split their fire, as I suggested above, then you can break their cohesion. For each unit that is locked in combat, even if it is a single model from a suicide distraction unit that makes it into base contact, then the overall overwatch power is reduced.

An individual assault unit is all that survives the trek across the board.

Im not taking things personally, I only pointed out the double standard Imperial players in particular (as most of the Riptide Comparisons are against Marine units on here) that is being used in regards to the Riptide, never said anyone specifically nor was it meant to be.

I'm a BA player. I don't have double standards. I have no standards. It's the only reason I still own this army.

Martel732 wrote:
I'm a BA player. I don't have double standards. I have no standards. It's the only reason I still own this army.

I thought blood angels were a good army ?

No, not at all. Even after their new codex, they are south of mediocre. No power builds. No exploitable combos. No truly powerful characters. No grav cents. No stormtalons. No TFCs.

They were outright unplayable before. Now they are just poor. The BA still stack up very unfavorably against Tau and Eldar.

Martel732 wrote:
No, not at all. Even after their new codex, they are south of mediocre. No power builds. No exploitable combos. No truly powerful characters. No grav cents. No stormtalons. No TFCs.

They were outright unplayable before. Now they are just poor.

GW design philosophy seems to be to try and combine all of the IoM into a single army but sell as many books for it as possible. I've seen some decent formations for them, but it's not really covering up for the problems with the codex from what I've seen.

The formations all have fatal flaws, imo. I'd take any of the on with my plain old Baal Strikeforce formatoin.

But what I can't take on is Eldar and Tau making me pick up 25+ marines every turn.

There is no reason to ever use the BA book over regular marines unless you already own them like I do.

Martel732 wrote:
No, not at all. Even after their new codex, they are south of mediocre. No power builds. No exploitable combos. No truly powerful characters. No grav cents. No stormtalons. No TFCs.

They were outright unplayable before. Now they are just poor. The BA still stack up very unfavorably against Tau and Eldar.

What about Chapter Master Dante and Gabriel Seth ? And for that matter Metaphiston. Also I was surprised they didn't get assault centurions at least.

I would not be quick to say they got no powerbuilds.
It took three months for the buffmander to appear, despite how obvious he looks now in retrospective.
Truly good combos are often the ones you don't see straight away, because they come from unintended inner works.

Bet you didn't know you can do a T1 dreadnaught charge from a drop pod if you say they got no explotiable combos.
(yep. charging, from DS, on turn 1. totally doable with the right formations)

The BA as solid as it gets now.
Their core units are solid, they got interesting options (HF in troops, fast tanks, etc) and can do some awesome things
They lack overpowered gak. and that's a good thing.
If all overpowered gak would be fixed (HYMP+IA, gravcents, serpents, flyrants, nightscythe/annibarge, etc) they will be fair game for top spots.

The standard marine book still would stomp a mudhole in the BA so far you'd never find the BA corpses. The Tiggystar will leave no BA surviving.

And, yes, I know about the dreadnought gimmick. The tax to be able to do that is crippling, imo.

That's the difference between BA and Tau. Tau have fearsome weapons that work in a general sense. BA have gimmicks that are marginally useful in a general sense.


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The Imperial Answer wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, not at all. Even after their new codex, they are south of mediocre. No power builds. No exploitable combos. No truly powerful characters. No grav cents. No stormtalons. No TFCs.

They were outright unplayable before. Now they are just poor. The BA still stack up very unfavorably against Tau and Eldar.

What about Chapter Master Dante and Gabriel Seth ? And for that matter Metaphiston. Also I was surprised they didn't get assault centurions at least.

Seth is a still a useless tool, just as he always was. Dante is finally where he needed to be 20 years ago, but is now a LoW. I like the new Mephiston better, actually, but it doesn't change the fact that Tau are going to shoot BA off the table with little effort.

Yes, codex marines are stronger.
But that's because grav centurions are one of the "overpowered gak" that needs to be fixed along with the IA riptide, HYMP broadsides, etc.

Plus, they got plenty of strong units like the DC and the golden boys.
I don't think we've seen the full glory of the new BA yet. I suspect they will be taking some names in upcoming turnies. they wont be able to beat the madness of WS spam and centurionstar on a constant basis-because these things are OP gak, but they will show presence.

So if we take all the best units out of the game, none of which are BA units, of course, BA become decent. In that case, they've been decent for 20 years. Isn't needing a handicap like that the definition of bad?

One such unit is the Riptide. Which has quite a few ardent defenders on here. I personally get sick of picking my models up with a squeegee after a Tau turn.

Martel732 wrote:
The standard marine book still would stomp a mudhole in the BA so far you'd never find the BA corpses. The Tiggystar will leave no BA surviving.

And, yes, I know about the dreadnought gimmick. The tax to be able to do that is crippling, imo.

That's the difference between BA and Tau. Tau have fearsome weapons that work in a general sense. BA have gimmicks that are marginally useful in a general sense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The Imperial Answer wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, not at all. Even after their new codex, they are south of mediocre. No power builds. No exploitable combos. No truly powerful characters. No grav cents. No stormtalons. No TFCs.

They were outright unplayable before. Now they are just poor. The BA still stack up very unfavorably against Tau and Eldar.

What about Chapter Master Dante and Gabriel Seth ? And for that matter Metaphiston. Also I was surprised they didn't get assault centurions at least.

Seth is a still a useless tool, just as he always was. Dante is finally where he needed to be 20 years ago, but is now a LoW. I like the new Mephiston better, actually, but it doesn't change the fact that Tau are going to shoot BA off the table with little effort.

You could always just allie in the things to fill any gaps you have in your force. Also is Seth bad because he's only got a melee weapon or is it something else ?

^ +1, you could easily take allies and keep it fluff to fill what your army needs.

No, because the "best units in the game" are the select few who are bad in the "positive" way-aka too strong.

Its not that BA needs a buff, but that a selecet few units/guns/options needs a nerf.
VS the majorety of the game, BA stands proudly as fine-just like the rest of the 7th/late 6th armies (and in a way, the earliest 6th)
BA works perfectly fine and in balance with everyone if your environment is GK, IG, SoB, nids, SW, orks, CSM, DE and minor factions (DA are behind that line unfortunatly)

The codex marines, eldar, IK, daemons, necrons, and tau are ABOVE the majority. some more than others, and even then-only specific units/build are the reason for them being over the center in most cases.
They are the ones that needs to be brought down. not the others brought up to their level-as this is the essence of power creep.

The issue is not in the BA, but in the top-lists being dominated by highly specific mistakes. so specific that I can point out the line in each codex that has one that creates the issue to begin with.


A common mistake people make when they say their stuff are too weak-you need to compare to the working majority, not the dominating minority.


The current problem of the game balance comes directly from a wave of power creep that began with daemons, and ended with space marines-each having a signature or two of units/weapons/relics who are absurdly good, and derailing the entire rest of the codex with them.

You say one such problem is the riptide, what most so-called defenders say is that you got it wrong and it issue is not really the riptide, but even more spesific-the ion accelerator. (the HYMP is a seperate problem), the ion accelerator can be fixed to be fair with as simple edit as removing the non-NOVA blast options. so it has to overcharge in order to blast, blocking off other NOVA options-and increasing risk when you want to blast (also occasional fail at blasting) reduced range on top of it will also be fair.

Seth's got a melee weapon, and isn't good in melee. Bad combo, there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
No, because the "best units in the game" are the select few who are bad in the "positive" way-aka too strong.

Its not that BA needs a buff, but that a selecet few units/guns/options needs a nerf.
VS the majorety of the game, BA stands proudly as fine-just like the rest of the 7th/late 6th armies (and in a way, the earliest 6th)
BA works perfectly fine and in balance with everyone if your environment is GK, IG, SoB, nids, SW, orks, CSM, DE and minor factions (DA are behind that line unfortunatly)

The codex marines, eldar, IK, daemons, necrons, and tau are ABOVE the majority. some more than others, and even then-only specific units/build are the reason for them being over the center in most cases.
They are the ones that needs to be brought down. not the others brought up to their level-as this is the essence of power creep.

The issue is not in the BA, but in the top-lists being dominated by highly specific mistakes. so specific that I can point out the line in each codex that has one that creates the issue to begin with.


A common mistake people make when they say their stuff are too weak-you need to compare to the working majority, not the dominating minority.


The current problem of the game balance comes directly from a wave of power creep that began with daemons, and ended with space marines-each having a signature or two of units/weapons/relics who are absurdly good, and derailing the entire rest of the codex with them.

Maybe, but the dominating minority IS the working majority in practice. Because people want to win.

In the turny scene maybe. but many people do not play like that when they play casual, or friendly.

I play tau. purely tau.
I do not use buffmanders, I field only HBC riptides, I field no broadsides (HYMP is OP, HRR is not viable), and I do field hammerheads who are just bad-but are cool.

The fact the dominating minority is a bad thing is never argued against-its a FACT.
But the method some want to take of buffing up the rest is what led us to this scenario to begin with. each new release kept buffing up stuff to keep up with the top, and every now and then it was too much and than everyone had to be further increased in power to match the NEW top-it was a neverending cycle.
Proper balance is achieved by only buffing what is really, REALLY behind. the things that are never viable, virtual non-existent choices-and NERFING the things that are too good. GW seems to have finally grasped this and are working in that direction.
It will take it a while to finish the cycle and fix the problem that we currently have (at least 7 codecies-the issue 5, CSM and DA, and than IK-but that can be done without a release) but doing it this way will result in the end in a better game than continuous creeping would have gotten us. and I'm willing to wait for getting that.

Not to mention creeping makes the game more expensive and less accessible. with power levels rising you need to keep pumping out bigger and stronger stuff, and dropping point costs of the lower end units. resulting in more numerous and expensive model count for the same army sizes.

 gmaleron wrote:
^ +1, you could easily take allies and keep it fluff to fill what your army needs.

Come to think of it, Darnath Lysander owes Tycho a favor according to the Sentinels of Terra. So imperial fists allies could be considered for lore purposes.