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I'm honestly not sure whether I actually have to start agreeing that Tau codex is overpowered, or that the opponents I've been playing just don't have great army lists to use against me.

Everybody in my meta loves to keep as much stuff off the table as possible and deep strike it all in. I just love those Dark Eldar sheets of tissue paper they call vehicles raining from the sky in front of my missile broadsides.

That said, I don't actually win that many games. The Tau army is great at killing the opponent, but they can't claim objectives if their life depended on it.

The popularity of Imperial Guard as allies suggests that in most cases you'd gain more by just taking Imperial Guard.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'm honestly not sure whether I actually have to start agreeing that Tau codex is overpowered, or that the opponents I've been playing just don't have great army lists to use against me.

Everybody in my meta loves to keep as much stuff off the table as possible and deep strike it all in. I just love those Dark Eldar sheets of tissue paper they call vehicles raining from the sky in front of my missile broadsides.

That said, I don't actually win that many games. The Tau army is great at killing the opponent, but they can't claim objectives if their life depended on it.

That is why you push them off objectives.

The last game i ended up losing 3-0. it was the Relic. Proud to say that nothing remained alive in a 2 ft circle around the objective at the end of the game, and if it would have gone on for another turn or two i would have tabled him.

He got first blood (I failed 4 armor saves in a row on my drones, and the i had no idea if the 2 remaining were the 2 my commander bought personally or still a part of the squad, so I gave it to him). He killed my commander (the deep striking terminators rolled an 11 for their charge distance and two made it into combat. That explains that.), and he got linebreaker (his warlord was the chaplain of the death company. The sole surviving model to make it through interceptor and shooting. He ended the game locked in combat with my riptide).

I would have gotten linebreaker with my kroot (they got to kill a dreadnought with krootox guns into the rear armor. That made me proud!), and been in a place to seize the objective, but his assault squad came in and hit them with the flamethrower.

In response to the OP:

As someone who plays both Tau and DA, I feel the tau needed the bigger lift - the army was much more outdated.

So, in a way...no, I don't feel there was a power creep.
The eldar as well needed quite an update.

Overall I feel the new books are very well balanced.

Tau have a lot of great new builds and a lot of toys - but they did a great job on the book - they retain a lot of their classical weaknesses - the key is are most players smart enough to take advantage of them.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'm honestly not sure whether I actually have to start agreeing that Tau codex is overpowered, or that the opponents I've been playing just don't have great army lists to use against me.

Tau are competitive at any amount of points. It is easy to get a working list at e.g. 1000 or 1500 points that can take anything.

That said, I don't actually win that many games. The Tau army is great at killing the opponent, but they can't claim objectives if their life depended on it.

You are doing it wrong. Deny the objectives and hold the ones near you. Tau are very mobile when they need it. I think Tau players in general are just too happy to just sit back and shoot, when they could be controlling the game.

Tau in our club plays them quite offensively and tries to control enemy movement with both the Kroot and Firewarriors.

I'd like to see a points reduction in troops for sure. I feel the vehicles are priced well enough. Obviously as a Raven Guard player I'd love to somehow be able to get assault marines as troop choices but they for sure need some ranged weapons. Plasma and melta as well as boltguns. The freindly group I play in allowed me to make a house rule for such improvements in the codex as long as the points were in line with the other units (plasma costs, jump pack costs for command squads, etc). IC's adding some specialization would be the best thing overall for the codex in my opinion. For people fielding fully painted armies based off of an IC, that army should have something special about it that other armies shouldn't have. Lysander making termies troop choices, Kantor making sternguard troops. I'd even be ok with them doing something as drastic as making some slots on the FOC nulled based on who you chose as an IC. Using Shrike as an example...in Raven Guard fluff they don't field much in the way of armor. They instead choose to use infiltration and speed as its main weapon. Take away the HS FOC slots and add them to the FA slots for a total of 6. Make the FOC change and something else kind of minor like he can grant D3 units infiltrate. For Lysander based armies, take away that FA slot and move it to HS. Kantor loses FA and gains elite slots. If that's not what you want then field a generic captain and field an equal amount. I did like the idea of specialist companies as well. Make that available to the Ultramarine IC's.

Right, wrong, or indifferent, those are some of my thoughts.

I think the SM Tacticals are just fine relative to the troops of non-Marine armies, it's more that the SM variants were given too much more in term of troops without paying enough extra cost.

I don't think the Tau are too overwhelming just really annoying in that they are gonna start killing people from turn one. I think if you are playing SM then you can just orbital bombardment on them cause the usual huddle together for over-watch rule. Then use assault land raiders to get into assault., with the nerffing of rail cannons you can slide right in there. once you got them in assault they paper, except for some crisis suits.
As an Ork user I plan to try out a super horde army maxing out troop choices with Mad Dok for fearless.

 Melissia wrote:
I think the SM Tacticals are just fine relative to the troops of non-Marine armies, it's more that the SM variants were given too much more in term of troops without paying enough extra cost.

15pt Grey Hunters.

I think it's fair if Tactical Marines are atleast that, seeing as Dark Angels are 14pts a shot, and don't get any discounts on their guns.

Naw wrote:

You are doing it wrong. Deny the objectives and hold the ones near you. Tau are very mobile when they need it. I think Tau players in general are just too happy to just sit back and shoot, when they could be controlling the game.

Tau in our club plays them quite offensively and tries to control enemy movement with both the Kroot and Firewarriors.

There is no "enemy movement". My most common opponents use drop pod blood angels (only thing on the board is a dreadnought and a unit of imperial guard hiding in his deployment zone), dark eldar who deep strike all their transports (only thing on the board is a talos pain engine and a unit or two of tank killing warriors in a venom), and infiltrating genestealer swarm tyranids (who are already on all the objectives from the start of the game).

In my case I pretty much have to huddle my entire army up in one big clump because everything in my opponent's army will be raining down on either the objective or my head. I can only start advancing and taking objectives once their reserves have actually arrived already.

I'm sure there's a better way to deal with it, but I'm already putting interceptor on everything.

TL;DR I have a very unusual meta and am still trying to get it figured out.

Crazyterran wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I think the SM Tacticals are just fine relative to the troops of non-Marine armies, it's more that the SM variants were given too much more in term of troops without paying enough extra cost.

15pt Grey Hunters.

I think it's fair if Tactical Marines are atleast that, seeing as Dark Angels are 14pts a shot, and don't get any discounts on their guns.

Grey Hunters are significantly better than Tactical Marines, on a 1 for 1 basis.

Tau are not overpowered. They are under-understood. As in, not only did not too many people play the 4th edition book, its actually quite a bit different from that anyway. So in a sense, for those who play against the new tau, it's pretty much a new army to them.

Once people start to figure out what each bit of the tau army does, they will get more effective at countering them. Tau will still be powerfull, but they won't be overpowered, like grey knights were when they released in 5th and such, or how helldrakes still are.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Crazyterran wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I think the SM Tacticals are just fine relative to the troops of non-Marine armies, it's more that the SM variants were given too much more in term of troops without paying enough extra cost.

15pt Grey Hunters.

I think it's fair if Tactical Marines are atleast that, seeing as Dark Angels are 14pts a shot, and don't get any discounts on their guns.

Grey Hunters are significantly better than Tactical Marines, on a 1 for 1 basis.

Indeed. Grey Hunters should have been several points more expensive than vanilla tacticals.

Necrons, Grey Knights, Space Wolves & Imperial Guard
> Tau, Eldar & Chaos Space Marines
> Chaos Daemons & Dark Angels
~ Blood Angels, Space Marines, Tyranids & Dark Eldar
> Sisters of Battle, Black Templars & Orks.

Conclusion:
5th Ed had some of the most and least powerful codecies of the current meta.
4th Ed codecies are underpowered.
6th Ed codecies are either on par with mid-tier 5th Ed or a touch above them. They are all less powerful than the leading 5th Ed codecies.

Overall, I'll start listening to talk of Codex Creep when any codecies of the current edition can match the top three codecies of the previous (let alone be the strongest).

As regards the new Tau codex, first, they received a significant power boost because their previous book was a weak 4th edition codex and was completely out of date. That in itself does not prove codex creep since you can only measure creep relative to other codexes of the same edition of rules.

Whether Tau are now overpowered, I would argue about it. The army got some nice toys but a lot of units still look quite high priced compared with various equivalents in other armies. It is an army that takes skill to play well and doesn't have any auto-win units.

What may show power creep is when a new codex quickly becomes flavour of the month at tournaments. Usually with a specific build. Eldar seer council biker spam, Space Wolves missile spam and IG leaf-blower are all examples from earlier codexes, which in their time were very popular.

Let's see if Tau start to dominate tournaments.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

What may show power creep is when a new codex quickly becomes flavour of the month at tournaments. Usually with a specific build. Eldar seer council biker spam, Space Wolves missile spam and IG leaf-blower are all examples from earlier codexes, which in their time were very popular.

Like Nurgle+Baledrakes (nuff'' said)? Or Riptide Spam? Or the Flying Circus?

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Crazyterran wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I think the SM Tacticals are just fine relative to the troops of non-Marine armies, it's more that the SM variants were given too much more in term of troops without paying enough extra cost.

15pt Grey Hunters.

I think it's fair if Tactical Marines are atleast that, seeing as Dark Angels are 14pts a shot, and don't get any discounts on their guns.

Grey Hunters are significantly better than Tactical Marines, on a 1 for 1 basis.

That's what I'm saying. Tactical Marines should either be 15pts or 14pts, depending on how much you value Combat Tactics compared to Grim Resolve.

I would love it if we got 14pts, but i'd be kind of sad if we lost how our pricing works. Even if it is cheaper overall.

At the end of the day, the average Tactical Marine loses to Guardsmen Blobs now that we can take those on the competitive scene. :(

 Aun Tier wrote:
Necrons, Grey Knights, Space Wolves & Imperial Guard
> Tau, Eldar & Chaos Space Marines
> Chaos Daemons & Dark Angels
~ Blood Angels, Space Marines, Tyranids & Dark Eldar
> Sisters of Battle, Black Templars & Orks.

Conclusion:
5th Ed had some of the most and least powerful codecies of the current meta.
4th Ed codecies are underpowered.
6th Ed codecies are either on par with mid-tier 5th Ed or a touch above them. They are all less powerful than the leading 5th Ed codecies.

Overall, I'll start listening to talk of Codex Creep when any codecies of the current edition can match the top three codecies of the previous (let alone be the strongest).

I dunno about GK and SW nowadays.

They are powerful codexes, but they have fallen in potency.

SW have one build now - Thunderwolves and Long Fang Spam. I've not seen a single SW list that is any different.

As for GK, they have a number of builds that are mid to just under top tier. While just about everything in the book is good, from what I've seen in recent months is a slew of GK players losing badly. Mostly against Tau. The one huge advantage the GK have over CSM Drake Spam is the 2+ save. I play DA Deathwing on foot and haven't lost against it. If a GK player has a top tier build, please let me know, because atm, I see GK suffering badly when using massed Terminator squads.

Puscifer wrote:


SW have one build now - Thunderwolves and Long Fang Spam. I've not seen a single SW list that is any different.

Lets please not forget the rune priest shenanigans that cropped up when Deny the witch became a thing, and armies started having more dedicated psyker units.

I also saw Njall stormcaller used to good effect yesterday in a 2v2 with an allied IG blob.