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Perhaps the biggest inherent problem of the Tau codex is the FoC and unit selection, which makes the army building very inflexible (for a race which is supposed to be superbly flexible).

Nearly all Tau units are one-trick ponies, good at doing just one thing. Fluff-wise, they're supposed to improvise around this, but this is pretty poorly reflected in the rules. Tau FoC is the most rigid of all armies, even moreso than Eldar. For example, Fire Warriors don't carry special or heavy weapons with them; they don't have to, those weapons are mounted on Crisis suit, much more effective platform than some poor sod humping around bloody heavy cannon. But in game terms, it means that Tau need to use two FoC slots to perform a task other armies can do with one.

This means that effective FoC slots (ie. Elites and Heavy Support) have to be minmaxed for the absolute most effective configuration. Which is why nobody uses things like Sky Rays or Sniper Drones. There is no room. This is made worse by very weak Fast Attack units. Piranhas are good, but mostly as blockers or contesters. They're not cost-effective at killing things. Pathfinders are great, but only effective in support of other units which kill things. Gun Drones or Vespids never kill anything.

I don't think Tau need silly stuff like BS4 base, Fire Warriors carrying power weapons and Rail pistols or huge cost reductions. Relatively modest update would make the book competive. Some point reductions (but not really huge), upgrade of previously crappy units, some special rule for Fire Warriors so they would not be a liability, more flexible FoC like with Orks or other more modern books, better working Seeker Missiles.

What wrong is that the game has moved on and and as GW tends to do leave other factions behind.

The Taus book was centered on abusing old line of sight rules and skimmer rules, wich are now dust.
combine the fact that nearly all updated armies scince the new rule set have gotten cheaper its what has hurt the Tau rules the most.

To combat that Tau need to be cheaper something that a white dwarf article could fix a simple chart should the point reduction could help untill the new book is released.

I stress this cause when the dice are rolling straight averages or better winning is easy no matter what i face but when dice are below average not complete crap but 30-40% its over and thats typicly decided by turn 2. where in lies the biggest problem for any old book in the face of cheaper new codexs you cant put the DMG output with more of them less of us still generally on a BS3.

Im not saying Tau can win but against older dexs Ive been able to table guys that do know what there doing against new books with balanced builds its rough and if the dice average dips the best one can pull is a draw.

as far as fixing things price cuts a few unit value changes a few new features some battle orders maybe like imps or (savage scars ) kroot psykers - I laughed my ass off when i read this in the book.

and maybe a new xeno allie

I think the Tau would do good to have some "Greater Good" enhancements. Like drones never count as KPs. They should be willingly sacrificed to serve the greater good. That gets rid of the big downside of Tau vehicles and perhaps even gives Drone units a reason to be played.
Allow them to contest objectives but never to count as KPs. I have also thought it would be good to make them fearless. The Tau programmers should be considering drones as expendable. No flight risk just a fact that drones could be overrun. (Extra attacks suffered if beat in HTH.)

AustonT wrote:Lack of BS4...did someone actually say that?
Shooty armies don't get BS4, hell SNIPERS fire at BS3 now(mostly)

So are we just ignoring the fact that half of 40k armies are BS4 as standard and can be pretty damn shooty to boot? Space Wolves can be a very shooty army and get BS4, vanilla Marines can be shooty and get BS4, GKs can be shooty-ish (especially with psyrifleman dreads) and get BS4, BA can be pretty shooty and get BS4, Eldar, whilst not completely shooty, have a good amount of BS4 shooting with Fire Prisms, Dark Reapers, Wraithlords, Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, Rangers, Warp Spiders, Swooping Hawks... And a good amount of BS3 shooting is twin-linked (Wave Serpent) or just puts out large amounts of shots to make up for it (War Walkers), Necrons are all BS4, Sisters of Battle I believe are also BS4, hell even Tyranids get BS4 shooting in the form of Hive Guard and Zoanthropes.

BS3 armies like Imperial Guard and the rest of the Tyranids have large amounts of weapons to counter it, and the fact that most snipers are BS3 is because they're wounding any model with a toughness value 50% of the time no matter what, and are also rending and pinning to boot; there has to be at least one downside.

I'm not saying we should make Tau BS4, only that your statement is very inaccurate.

Avatar 720 wrote:

AustonT wrote:Lack of BS4...did someone actually say that?
Shooty armies don't get BS4, hell SNIPERS fire at BS3 now(mostly)

So are we just ignoring the fact that half of 40k armies are BS4 as standard and can be pretty damn shooty to boot? Space Wolves can be a very shooty army and get BS4, vanilla Marines can be shooty and get BS4, GKs can be shooty-ish (especially with psyrifleman dreads) and get BS4, BA can be pretty shooty and get BS4, Eldar, whilst not completely shooty, have a good amount of BS4 shooting with Fire Prisms, Dark Reapers, Wraithlords, Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, Rangers, Warp Spiders, Swooping Hawks... And a good amount of BS3 shooting is twin-linked (Wave Serpent) or just puts out large amounts of shots to make up for it (War Walkers), Necrons are all BS4, Sisters of Battle I believe are also BS4, hell even Tyranids get BS4 shooting in the form of Hive Guard and Zoanthropes.

BS3 armies like Imperial Guard and the rest of the Tyranids have large amounts of weapons to counter it, and the fact that most snipers are BS3 is because they're wounding any model with a toughness value 50% of the time no matter what, and are also rending and pinning to boot; there has to be at least one downside.

I'm not saying we should make Tau BS4, only that your statement is very inaccurate.

Tau should not be BS4 but make markerlight tech cheaper than 20+ pts to field and they have a built-in answer. Pathfinders can do it (20+ pts) or marker drones can do it (30 pts). To me, just get drone costs down to 10 pts each and suddenly the BS problem and the Tau non-shootiness problem gets fixed.

Really? You are going to try to compare 15 point space marines, 12 point dire avengers, etc to 10 point fire warriors that outrange every single other basic troop and have a higher strength weapon than any other basic troop.
Considering you can lay down 1.5:1 models against space marines. You hit 16% lower and wound 16% higher at longer ranges. Tau have a distinct advantage over "shooty marines" hitting is the easy part, wounding has the most variables. My statement is quite accurate Eldar non aspect warriors are BS3, ig basic infantry is BS 3.
If you want to compare apples to apples tau are a bargain.
A hammerhead with railgun and burst cannons is 150 points
A fire prism is 115 points
Both are BS4, the Fire Prism is outranged by 12inches has less S and AP on its main gun, outranged by 6 inches, 4 shots and 1 S on it's secondary weapons. It also blows up on immobilized results.
35 points buys an awful lot of pain.
So in summary: shooty armies basic BS is 3
MEQ armies are not shooty armies
My argument makes plenty of sense. Yours is akin to "IG are no good because Terminators are better at everything they do."

AustonT wrote:Really? You are going to try to compare 15 point space marines, 12 point dire avengers, etc to 10 point fire warriors that outrange every single other basic troop and have a higher strength weapon than any other basic troop.

No, you're trying to apply my post to something it wasn't meant for.

Considering you can lay down 1.5:1 models against space marines. You hit 16% lower and wound 16% higher at longer ranges. Tau have a distinct advantage over "shooty marines" hitting is the easy part, wounding has the most variables. My statement is quite accurate Eldar non aspect warriors are BS3, ig basic infantry is BS 3.

Considering Aspect warriors make up the majority of choices in the Eldar book, you're basing this off 3 non-vehicle units (Guardians, Guardian Jetbikes, and Support Weapons) in a book containing a total of 15; 4/5ths have BS4 and you're trying to base an argument off the 1/5 that does not... I have also stated why IG have BS3, it's because there's lots of them. IG are considered a very good codex despite what you see as a huge disadvantage, because they can field enough units to negate it. Your statement remains very inaccurate, seeing as though you're ignoring the fact that every single Space Marine codex has basic units with BS4.

If you want to compare apples to apples tau are a bargain.
A hammerhead with railgun and burst cannons is 150 points
A fire prism is 115 points
Both are BS4, the Fire Prism is outranged by 12inches has less S and AP on its main gun, outranged by 6 inches, 4 shots and 1 S on it's secondary weapons. It also blows up on immobilized results.
35 points buys an awful lot of pain.
So in summary: shooty armies basic BS is 3
MEQ armies are not shooty armies
My argument makes plenty of sense. Yours is akin to "IG are no good because Terminators are better at everything they do."

So a Fire Prism is worse than a Hammerhead, so it proves that all shooty armies are BS3 and marines can never be shooty? Your 'argument' is making less and less sense the more you try to explain it. I also never said IG are no good, and I never even mentioned Terminators; right now, you're just trolling.

Avatar 720 wrote:
So are we just ignoring the fact that half of 40k armies are BS4 as standard and can be pretty damn shooty to boot?

Both armies which have been designed to pretty exclusively win through shooting (Tau & IG) have generally been BS3. In their prime (mid-lat 4E for Tau, now for IG) they didn't really suffer for it.

Space Wolves can be a very shooty army and get BS4

All marines are BS4. SW's shootyness is the result of poor codex design resulting in a Space Berzerker army with more long range heavy weapons fire than just about any other army but IG.

vanilla Marines can be shooty and get BS4

Yes, again, all marines are BS4, but they don't win soley through shooting either generally. Throw a BS4 C:SM army against a BS3 IG army and ask the Marine army to win a shooting war and it will lose, as it should. Throw any 4E marine army aganst 4E tau with 4E rules and ask the marine army to win just through shooting and you'd get the same result.

GKs can be shooty-ish (especially with psyrifleman dreads) and get BS4

Again, as with other marines, they don't win purely by shooting and can't win shooting wars with BS3 shooty armies without getting assaults into action.

BA can be pretty shooty and get BS4

Once again, marines, they're pretty much all the same thing as the above.

, Eldar, whilst not completely shooty, have a good amount of BS4 shooting with Fire Prisms, Dark Reapers, Wraithlords, Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, Rangers, Warp Spiders, Swooping Hawks...

And almost all of their vehicles are BS3, as are their heavy weapons units. It's only their elite aspects and sniper specialists that get BS4.

Necrons are all BS4

And will lose a shooting war with BS3 Tau every time, they also have a number of CC units and more CC ability that Tau don't have.

Sisters of Battle I believe are also BS4

Yup, and are on average much more highly trained, experienced, and expensive troops.

hell even Tyranids get BS4 shooting in the form of Hive Guard and Zoanthropes.

On a small number of specialized hyper evolved lifeforms, sure. Tau can do the same thing with suits and tanks.

BS3 armies like Imperial Guard and the rest of the Tyranids have large amounts of weapons to counter it

And Tau have lots of TL abilities or longer range or higher strength weapons or they can move and shoot with weapons others could not. They can also get BS4 on tanks and suits with equipment upgrades.

and the fact that most snipers are BS3 is because they're wounding any model with a toughness value 50% of the time no matter what, and are also rending and pinning to boot; there has to be at least one downside.

Sniper rifles are awful, BS3 was never designed to be a drawback for them, rather a fluff decision based on what the units are supposed to portray.

I'm not saying we should make Tau BS4, only that your statement is very inaccurate.

The armies which have historically been designed to defeat their opponents primarily through shooting (Tau, IG, and to a lesser extent Eldar) have primarily been BS3. The BS4 armies generally have been those with lower model counts and some CC ability, even if they can be very shooty, they're generally designed as generalist armies.

Avatar 720 wrote:

AustonT wrote:Really? You are going to try to compare 15 point space marines, 12 point dire avengers, etc to 10 point fire warriors that outrange every single other basic troop and have a higher strength weapon than any other basic troop.

No, you're trying to apply my post to something it wasn't meant for.

Considering you can lay down 1.5:1 models against space marines. You hit 16% lower and wound 16% higher at longer ranges. Tau have a distinct advantage over "shooty marines" hitting is the easy part, wounding has the most variables. My statement is quite accurate Eldar non aspect warriors are BS3, ig basic infantry is BS 3.

Considering Aspect warriors make up the majority of choices in the Eldar book, you're basing this off 3 non-vehicle units (Guardians, Guardian Jetbikes, and Support Weapons) in a book containing a total of 15; 4/5ths have BS4 and you're trying to base an argument off the 1/5 that does not... I have also stated why IG have BS3, it's because there's lots of them. IG are considered a very good codex despite what you see as a huge disadvantage, because they can field enough units to negate it. Your statement remains very inaccurate, seeing as though you're ignoring the fact that every single Space Marine codex has basic units with BS4.

If you want to compare apples to apples tau are a bargain.
A hammerhead with railgun and burst cannons is 150 points
A fire prism is 115 points
Both are BS4, the Fire Prism is outranged by 12inches has less S and AP on its main gun, outranged by 6 inches, 4 shots and 1 S on it's secondary weapons. It also blows up on immobilized results.
35 points buys an awful lot of pain.
So in summary: shooty armies basic BS is 3
MEQ armies are not shooty armies
My argument makes plenty of sense. Yours is akin to "IG are no good because Terminators are better at everything they do."

So a Fire Prism is worse than a Hammerhead, so it proves that all shooty armies are BS3 and marines can never be shooty? Your 'argument' is making less and less sense the more you try to explain it. I also never said IG are no good, and I never even mentioned Terminators; right now, you're just trolling.

So a SW player fields 3 units of long fangs with heavy bolters... that is 30 hits each and every turn. To match that with Tau you need to field 60 firewarriors to average the same hit percentage. Now look at the cost 345 for the long fangs 600 for the tau. To add to that you suck at HTH and only get a 4+ AC instead of 3+ and your initiative sucks and you don't have counter attack. Now admittedly this is looking at a small element but having 255 points free to field something else in an army seems like a big advantage whether you call

MEQ armies are not shooty armies

MEQ shooty or not.

Vaktathi wrote:Large Quote

You're missing my point; Auston said "Shooty armies don't get BS4" and I proved that there are shooty armies, or armies with plenty of shooting capacity, that do indeed have BS4. Whether they're good at it or not is not my point, nor was it his. I openly admit that BS4 shooting isn't always 'good', but I never said that it was, I only said that there's enough of it to disprove what Auston said.

Both armies which have been designed to pretty exclusively win through shooting (Tau & IG) have generally been BS3. In their prime (mid-lat 4E for Tau, now for IG) they didn't really suffer for it.

This sums up rather well what I expressed when I said "shooty armies don't get bs4"

now, you're just trolling.

Really I wrote a total of two sentences to which you responded with two paragraphs extolling the virtues of units that cost 2-3 x what fire warriors cost. When I redone with things like "numbers" and "unit costs" now I'm trolling. I can get you a ladder if you'd like down from your horse. Your argument is roughly akin to the overzealous 12 yr old BA kid who points out his 30 man DC can roll your 10 man term squad but ignores the fact that he paid 2x as many points.
Apples to Apples. Unit type to unit type. Points cost and statline.
Longfangs aren't troops, so no I wouldn't expect my basic troops to out shoot them. I can't even really say I would expect my Broadsides or Hammer heads to out shoot them, but that is the comparison worthy of noting.
It's not unfair to say that a full unit of Tactical marines: 170 points ML/Flamer
Will lose against equal points of tau two units of 8 fire warriors. Oh look, bs 3 and numbers, no heavy weapons but 4+ to hit 3+ to wound and They must be a shooting army, however will I defeat them with my Tactical marines? I know I should close with and assault them. No tau or IG player in his right mind thinks man it looks like ima get outshot by these here MEQ, I should assault.
If you would like you and I can play a game without assault turns using only the Troops entries of a MEQ army and after were done we can discuss the "shootiness" of MeQ. I've done it before, it's not pretty for the emperors finest.

It's not unfair to say that a full unit of Tactical marines: 170 points ML/Flamer
Will lose against equal points of tau two units of 8 fire warriors.

Oh look, a vacuum comparison. ABC > XYZ so ABC is better... until you factor in the other ~1300/1700pts worth of models also on the field + the terrain + the fact that you have to spend 2 turns getting into range whilst I sit at 48" with my missile launcher aimed at your crisis suits or vehicles.

Bearing in mind that an average game is 5-6 turns, you've just spent 1/3 of the game getting two fire warrior squads into position. That's assuming i'm not behind LoS blocking cover, in a vehicle, on the other side of the board...

Both armies which have been designed to pretty exclusively win through shooting (Tau & IG) have generally been BS3. In their prime (mid-lat 4E for Tau, now for IG) they didn't really suffer for it.

This sums up rather well what I expressed when I said "shooty armies don't get bs4"

now, you're just trolling.

So what you actually meant was "IG and Tau don't get BS4"? Because "shooty armies don't get BS4" means any army that relies on shooting, and nearly every race in the game can have a list that does just that, which was my point. Don't blame me for your inability to word your comments.

Also, the way you said 'now you're just trolling' smacks of "I have no way of replying to your comments, so i'll just repeat what you said and spew a load of BS".

I'd suggest that you spend a little time learning how to word your comments to represent what you actually mean, since "shooty armies don't get bs4" and "IG and Tau don't get bs4" are two completely different statements.

I begin my post with a simple message: Bananas

Since the crux of your argument seems to be what a "shooty" army is I choose to address this first. In your roughly 5 years of playing 40k you have managed to either remain ignorant or willfully dismiss that there are 3 basic army types arranged in a standard hierarchy based primarily on their basic troop choices
Shooty: An army composed of a relatively large number of infantry models with poor ballistic skill, low armor saves, and little or no assault ability.
Assault: An army composed of a relatively large number of infantry models with average weapons skill, assault ability and little or no ranged threat.
Generalist: An army composed of a relatively small number of models capable of posing a reasonable threat in both ranged and close combat.

These armies since at least 2001(to include Tau since that's what this thread is actually about) have been represented by:

Shooty: IG,Tau, and Elder ( although they have managed to transcend into a more generalist army with their latest codex)
Assault: Orks,Dark Eldar, and Tyranids
Generalist: Space Marines (loyal, traitors; red,blue,grey, or green)

More exotic armies have livened up 40k to keep it from becoming a game of rock, paper, scissors played with toy soldiers and dice.

Avatar 720 wrote:
Don't blame me for your inability to word your comments.

Also, the way you said 'now you're just trolling' smacks of "I have no way of replying to your comments, so i'll just repeat what you said and spew a load of BS".

I'd suggest that you spend a little time learning how to word your comments to represent what you actually mean, since "shooty armies don't get bs4" and "IG and Tau don't get bs4" are two completely different statements.

I'll word my argument in the deliberately inflammatory tone that you have taken.
Your argument is a load of BS. You are being deliberately obtuse and ignoring basic facts like points cost, the FOC, and codex design. Your contribution to debate is a narrow minded view of 40k shaped only by your need to be right. Don't blame me for your lack of understanding of what I, and many other 40k players who have experienced more than one rules edition, see as the basic hierarchy of army composition.

I'll word my argument in the deliberately inflammatory tone that you have taken.

I took no inflammatory tone with you, you are simply percieving it to be inflammatory.

Anyway, flaming another user is against the rules, and also demonstrates a lack of willingness to debate matters in a civillised way.

Hence why i'm not going to reply to the rest of your post (you can believe it's because i've got nothing else to say, but I have my reasons for doing so (and have stated them) and therefore I don't really care) and am instead going to report it for being intentionally inflammatory.

Good day.

Avatar720 wrote:Also, the way you said 'now you're just trolling' smacks of "I have no way of replying to your comments, so i'll just repeat what you said and spew a load of BS".

AustonT wrote:I'll word my argument in the deliberately inflammatory tone that you have taken.

<broadcast mode active: you will both calm down, or you won't like the consequences>

Please tone it down, folks. There is no need to be rude to one another.

There are a lot of different ways to fix the tau codex.

However, as a general rule, an army that solely relies on shooting to win having BS 3 is nonsense. You can't argue otherwise. Even guard can do melee.

juraigamer wrote:There are a lot of different ways to fix the tau codex.

However, as a general rule, an army that solely relies on shooting to win having BS 3 is nonsense. You can't argue otherwise. Even guard can do melee.

That's where markerlights come in. Unfortunately they're unreliable, but expanding on the concept (or even giving the Shas'ui who use them +1 BS) would go a long way to helping Tau out. Every GEQ infantry has some cool gimmick to make them more effective - Gaunts have the psychic abilities from a Tervigon, Eldar Guardians/Dire Avengers have psychic support powers from warlocks and farseers, the Guard have orders, and Tau have markerlights. It's just a matter of making markerlights as effective as the previously mentioned options. They can stay BS3 base as long as they can boost it more reliably with markerlights.

The biggest problem with Tau is that they are bad at CC. It's just sort of a thing.
You hit one of their units with virtually anything and it falls apart. A lot of high-strength shooting is your counter. Which is alright against things like Howling Banshees, but stare down a horde of Ork Boyz and suddenly that really isn't an option.
Weight of fire is really a problem they have as well. Even the much gushed-over Crisis Suits are loaded out typically with Plasma/fusion/missile pods. Which is alright, if you enjoy your SUPER UBER MEGA XBAWKS HUEG main unit putting out 12~ shots a turn, at BS3, relying on markerlights.
Pricing is just a flaw of having a 3rd ed. Codex in 5th, but it's pretty glaring. The points of a WS2, BS3 unit with S5 AP4 Rapid Fire gets you a WS4 BS4 Kaballite Warrior that can hurt every unit in the game, has I5 and can milk Pain Tokens out of things.
Not to say the army is really fundamentally bad, but it has a bunch of major glaring problems that prevent it from being even mid-tier.

Tau were my first army. I recently sold them to feed me titanic CSM addiction, as they were just gathering dust.

Firstly, the Tau codex is by all accounts, okay-ish. No codex is completely balanced. If any of them were we'd all be running the same armies all of the time. The problem is the tau codex is severely lacking assault clout. Even the kroot will wither under fire.

I came up with a pretty solid list, but couldn't fund it. It is basically a crisis suit heavy list, slap-ass full of firewarriors, with a broadside and 2 hammerheads. Give everybody markerlights and watch the magic happen. The problem with the Tau (and EVERY army for that matter) is the battleforce. The firewarriors, devilfish, drones, and suit are cool, but honestly the kroot should have been canned in favor of a sniper team, or more firewarriors. For what it's worth the best battleforce imho is the Necron one. Not much in it, but all solid choices.

If you wanna run Tau you need to love to shoot, love to avoid cc like the plague, and preferably run farsight. Also be prepared to build it from the ground up and pay out the nose for a solid force.

Brother SRM wrote:
That's where markerlights come in.

Markerlights firing on BS 3 hitting half the time, against armies using MSU meaning the tau ability to focus fire does jack all in the end. The eldar are the only other army that have a lynchpin, aka the farseer, for army support. However if your telling me I need to spend 200-400 points in my army list for a support unit (8 markerlights) or two (8 more markerlights) that can get killed easily and fail their meager leadership and run merrily meaning the HEAVY laserpointers can't be fired next turn? You meant to say that's where markerlights get shot at and the actual parts of that tau army that do damage firing at BS 3.

Lots of issues here!

Personally I have fought against two people's Tau armies. The simple observation I would make is that they, like any army, have strengths and weaknesses. Obviously they are rubbish in CC but can be highly effective if used correctly. For my money they are effective when they utilise terrain to keep the range open and use their manoueverable vehicles carefully to act as firefighters or spearheads. I would humbly suggest to Tau players to deploy as far back as possible, especially if facing an army high on very fast moving units, such as hormagaunts. Deep strike may negate this to some extent but again terrain comes into play, a good Tau player will position his troops so that terrain is likely to cause mishaps.

I felt that Tau, like Necrons, suffer from a slim choice of units. They are pretty much forced to operate in one way, so that would be my main problem with them: lack of options.

For what it's worth, as an old player returning to the hobby after 20 years or so, I was distinctly underwhelmed with the Tau and felt they were not in line with the feel and ethos if the game. I think I am echoing someone else there, call me old-fshioned but they just don't feel 'right' to me, sorry!

The problem with Tau is that their supposed to be an army that excels at shooting to make up for their horrible close combat ability, but really aren't that great at shooting compared to other 5th ED armies.

They're slow, they have barely above average shooting, and they're extremely fragile. The marker light is supposed to assist their shooting capabilities, by in all but the highest point values, taking them ends up handicapping your army so much that your already stretched then army is torn apart.

Their battlesuits are absolutely ripped, and give them the ability to keep themselves out of close combat longer. Also, they have a huge number of high strength, low AP weapons. Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

Jimsolo wrote: Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

You're right, one Tau army made it to 'Ard Boyz finals last year; they're totally competitive.

I can win the occasional friendly game but never in a tournament. I'm not an awesome player but I'm not terrible. I also win consistently with my UltraSmurfs...go fig.

Jimsolo wrote:Their battlesuits are absolutely ripped, and give them the ability to keep themselves out of close combat longer. Also, they have a huge number of high strength, low AP weapons. Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

I agree but their troop choices are so much crap. Like a swiss army knife the suits have to do all the heavy lifting for the Tau. Not that that is bad but I find it boring to play armies with the philosophy of "well you can play anything you want but if you want to have a snowball's chance of winning you will play X." A key to that is making tau firewarriors more effective now you could make them stand up better in HTH by giving them stubborn or an effect that adds stubborn (space pope nearby) or you could make it where their fire is that much more effective. (Pulse rifle Hvy 30" ROF2 Rapid Fire, or Pulse Carbine 18" Ass 2.) or you could make markerlights more effective and cheaper ( persistent - they are not expended per shot but exist throughout the turn. All drones cost 10 pts. All markerlights affect any shots during the turn.) To this you can add subsidiary changes. (Seeker Missiles are not one-shot and done - particularly on skyrays - and make them expend a markerlight to shoot one off but make it BS 5 and ignores cover save.

Now we can also talk about small changes like lowering the cost of kroot. (Orks with a rapidfire gun and T3 for more than an orc.) Burst cannon rate of fire increased to 4 to make stealth suits viable choice as well as make burstcannons a viable choice for vehicles. Drones not yielding KPs or count against casualties.

English Assassin wrote:They attract much ire from older players since they were added to the game's background a decade or so ago and, in the minds of many of us, don't really fit with the general style of Warhammer 40,000's background, and were added solely to sell the game to anime geeks and kids who were otherwise put off by the game's gothic, brutalist aesthetics.

I'm glad somebody mentioned this, which pretty much sums up my first impression when I saw their original release. I'm not sure how many older veterans still feel this way, but I'll admit it took me well over half a decade to get over that initial outlook.

DAaddict wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:Their battlesuits are absolutely ripped, and give them the ability to keep themselves out of close combat longer. Also, they have a huge number of high strength, low AP weapons. Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

I agree but their troop choices are so much crap. Like a swiss army knife the suits have to do all the heavy lifting for the Tau. Not that that is bad but I find it boring to play armies with the philosophy of "well you can play anything you want but if you want to have a snowball's chance of winning you will play X." A key to that is making tau firewarriors more effective now you could make them stand up better in HTH by giving them stubborn or an effect that adds stubborn (space pope nearby) or you could make it where their fire is that much more effective. (Pulse rifle Hvy 30" ROF2 Rapid Fire, or Pulse Carbine 18" Ass 2.) or you could make markerlights more effective and cheaper ( persistent - they are not expended per shot but exist throughout the turn. All drones cost 10 pts. All markerlights affect any shots during the turn.) To this you can add subsidiary changes. (Seeker Missiles are not one-shot and done - particularly on skyrays - and make them expend a markerlight to shoot one off but make it BS 5 and ignores cover save.

Now we can also talk about small changes like lowering the cost of kroot. (Orks with a rapidfire gun and T3 for more than an orc.) Burst cannon rate of fire increased to 4 to make stealth suits viable choice as well as make burstcannons a viable choice for vehicles. Drones not yielding KPs or count against casualties.

All these are good ideas for changes in the new book. I would add that being bad in CC is by design, keeping firewarriors stubborn would be a bad change - if you get charged you don't want to stay locked, you'd rather sacrifice a squad and get swept so you can return fire during the next shooting phase. Tarpitting is not a tau strategy encompassed in the mont'ka or the kay'on.

For the kroot, i suggest a system like tyranids where they can pay for upgrades to their organs (fits the fluff since they have chameleonic DNA). - 5 points/model for wings, 1 point a model/fleet, etc etc (playtesting obviously required here).

The battlesuits are honestly one of tau's coolest units, I would like to see them T5 with 3 wounds, personally, for about the same cost they are now (so krak missiles don't ruin our day quite as bad as they do now). I'm hoping for a codex update within the next six months but who knows anymore with GW.

agnosto wrote:

Jimsolo wrote: Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

You're right, one Tau army made it to 'Ard Boyz finals last year; they're totally competitive.

I can win the occasional friendly game but never in a tournament. I'm not an awesome player but I'm not terrible. I also win consistently with my UltraSmurfs...go fig.

Agreed! My friend plays Tau against my SM and it is always a competitive game. Marker lights, Shield Drones + Broadsides, and Piranha x3 are common in my buddy's force and it always gives me a run for my money. STR 10 AP1 twin linked shots are hard to combat if I have to take 2 or more turns to get to you.

tetrisphreak wrote:
The battlesuits are honestly one of tau's coolest units, I would like to see them T5 with 3 wounds, personally, for about the same cost they are now (so krak missiles don't ruin our day quite as bad as they do now).

For the 35 points or so they cost now? Are you nuts? T5 with 2 wounds, sure. T4 with 3 wounds, okay. Both is entirely too much. Maybe give the Shas'el (I think that's the crisis sergeant equivalent?) 3 wounds if need be, but for basic suits that's too much.