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I mainly play war machine and hordes but have always had 40k models because I like them. As of late it has really grown in my area and I want to give it a whirl. I've dabbled here and there but never really committed. I'm thinking of tau or orks and have a couple pros and cons but would love some advice. I try to make lists that have a chance so I want to compete but I don't have to be number one on the ranking scale. Which army do you guys think takes or has more room to grow into tactics wise? Tau seem like they can be that scalpel and you can constantly keep getting better and better. That's what I am looking for in a faction, one that I can keep learning and get better with. Easy to play hard to master sort of thing.

Tau pros
Love the anime look
Lower model count
Looks like they may have more finesse and tactical room to grow into

Tau cons
Everyone plays them ATM
Fluff is meh
Only shoot

Ork pros
Unique
Lots of character and options
Fun to play by what I hear

Ork cons
Lots of models to assemble and paint
Viewed as funsies faction
I've kept up on 40k for a while and they haven't seemed too competitive

ORKS!

They are more fun, and if 8th Ed does go as much AoS as people are thinking they will be in a good place

But really Tau are Top Tier, and Orks are bottom Tier in the Current tourney scene, but that can change in the next rules release

Yeah, this isn't with just the present in mind. It's more of an army to weather the storm of a few new editions. Orks are appealing but I think the only time I remember them having a lot of success was 5th ed bike spam. Tau on the other hand have been up and down.

LegendaryEgo05 wrote:
Yeah, this isn't with just the present in mind. It's more of an army to weather the storm of a few new editions. Orks are appealing but I think the only time I remember them having a lot of success was 5th ed bike spam. Tau on the other hand have been up and down.

Rocket buggies were pretty great still..

I think it wouldn't do too bad still against Eldar or Tau, but would feel the hurt against Drop pod spam

Seems obvious you don't want to play Orkz.. just sayin.

And while Tau have a nice skill floor to walk onto, you may be disappointed to find out their ceiling is pretty low in hyper competitive environments that will actually challenge you poor psychic phase and laugh at your quantity of shots with ridiculous saves.

For the most part though, I think you have sold yourself on Tau already, you like low model counts and the 'anime' look, you don't want to paint lots of orkz, you seem to want to win and it sounds like you want to develop into a tactical genius. Well it sounds like Markerlights and JSJ are just for you then.

Orkz are fun, expensive, and have almost always been really weak as an army.

Tau have been very weak, are rather good now, you only need to play 5 models.

Either way, if you want an army that is not weak, you should wait for 8th to drop, maybe they'll put Tau back into 4th edition mode.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rismonite wrote:
For the most part though, I think you have sold yourself on Tau already, you like low model counts and the 'anime' look, you don't want to paint lots of orkz, you seem to want to win and it sounds like you want to develop into a tactical genius.

Like Creed, but with a Ta'unar ?

You got to win with low-tier stuff to eventually develop into a tactical genius. There's no progress when your forces are always better than the opponent's.

 koooaei wrote:
You got to win with low-tier stuff to eventually develop into a tactical genius. There's no progress when your forces are always better than the opponent's.

It's more like: you should always go for maximum challenge.
When playing against good players with top-tier stuff, playing top-tier stuff will just buy you the right to play, so you need to do it.
Otherwise, you're not going to develop anything except amazing skills at being tabled in 2.3 turns instead of 2.1 turns.
When playing against less good players with top-tier stuff or other, you need to lower your lists' power-level (or take points handicaps) to keep some challenge.

Tau are extremely boring to play and only have one tactic, furthemore all their models look the same. You can have 6000 point of orks without two identical models or two vehicles that look too similar, and several ways to play them.

If you're interested in tournaments and hardcore games I wouldn't suggest collecting orks, but IMHO that environment is not even 40k.

In any meta that is not composed by only power players orks can be mid tiers, which means you can defeat everyone.

It's not that I don't want to play Orks I was just stating what I have observed over the years. (This view very well could be skewed as it was my observation not play experience) The biggest thing I want is an army to grow with, the easy to play hard to master variety. I get tau are one dimensional I just thought since they are they would fall into that category. I guess I should open it up then, which armies fall under this category?

Orks for the fun
Tau for the win

sounds like dark eldar might be your speed.

nothin scalpel about orks...
tau are just not interesting, that is the trouble for me.

LegendaryEgo05 wrote:
The biggest thing I want is an army to grow with, the easy to play hard to master variety. I get tau are one dimensional I just thought since they are they would fall into that category. I guess I should open it up then, which armies fall under this category?

I've been playing Tau since just before they got their big update in 6th edition. I've played only in fairly relaxed non-competitive environments but I think you're asking the wrong question here. Warhammer 40k isn't really a great game to gain a great amount of satisfaction in "mastering" an army and feeling like a strategic genius. The game is just way too unbalanced and random. Most of the skill in the game is focused around list building, target priority and movement/deployment. There have been a multitude of games where I've deployed my army and then my opponent deployed their army. Based on their army list and where they placed their models I could already tell that they'd already lost the game before the first turn was even taken. This is not the sign of a well designed rule-set. For my intense competitive fix, I just play magic the gathering at grand prix and what not.

That isn't to say warhammer 40k is a bad game, I enjoy it immensely. What warhammer 40k excels at is incredibly cool models and a cool storytelling aspect. The game is greatly improved when getting less emotionally invested in winning or losing and more invested in cool and interesting in game situations. I've named all my HQ choices and most of my elite characters, written up short backstories for them and I record all their confirmed kills. It just gets me more invested in having my models do cool stuff as opposed to winning or losing. In fact most of my skill in list building recently has gone towards building an army list that is roughly equal to my opponent's skill level so that we have as close game a game as possible because that allows for more interesting story moments for my characters. This is greatly different from magic the gathering where I win as quickly as possible with as minimal remorse as possible, because those games are over in 15-30min. In warhammer the game is going to take 2+ hours, so it is my belief that you should be doing as much as you can to allow your opponent to have a good time with you. So it is very satisfying for me when I manage to create a list that results in a nail biter of a game even when I'm not tactically pulling any punches in game. If I table someone or even if they end up conceding before turn 5, I consider the game to have been a person failure. In fact, I've enjoyed games that I lost significantly more than most games that I've won. Not because I don't enjoy winning but because its much more enjoyable to be playing with someone for 2+ hours who is happy not unhappy.


I personally got into tau because I thought the models were cool, I liked that they were "good guys" in an otherwise terrible universe (to the extent that my current detachment's fluff has distanced themselves from the more recent grimdark take on tau backstory), and the models I got to start my army were 50% off. I tend to play a much more mobile style Tau army with lots of deepstriking, outflanking and general mobility as opposed to a gunline (since those result in boring games). My armies tend to be extremely strong at punishing enemy mistakes and picking off weak links in the enemy army while kiting the main enemy threats. It also tends to be extremely reactive to my opponent's decisions as opposed to forcing my opponent to react to mine. I let my opponent control whatever parts of the board they want but make taking that ground cost them, while hitting their undefended flanks. Standing your ground basically gets you killed by anything. This is going to be a fairly different play style than orks who'll basically decide they want to own part of the board and fill it with buckets of angry orks while getting shot to pieces and not caring.

One other thing to consider is people will generally more open to playing against an ork army than a tau army. Tau are considered to be "cheesy", even if your list isn't. Kind of like how some people hate playing against Blue in magic the gathering. Games against people can be pretty one-sided if you're not careful. Simply blowing people off the board before they do any noticeable damage to you, isn't a particularly fun experience. I don't think anyone dislikes playing against orks. Partly because they're viewed as "bad" (even if your list isn't), and partly because they get to kill a lot of your models and people like killing models.

I really enjoy playing Tau because I like their aesthetics, play style and fluff. I strongly recommend you pick primarily on those things, because they'll keep you interested in Warhammer 40k more than the strategic aspect.

This is why it's so tough to decide lol. I don't want my opponent to have a bad experience but if I go for Orks now 8th comes they're op as all get out then I'm the bad guy and people don't want to play you. I know tau get that now but when I had them a long time ago they were tough to win with and people had to be very skilled to use them effectively. (Never played just bought some models)

On the topic of Orks I have seen some say if you get good with them they are in fact a force to reckoned with. The big thing that's draws me into Orks are the bikes, and the trucks/wagons.

I personally find tau to be a bit boring. They shoot. They don't move. They don't psychic. They don't assault. They shoot.

And they can shoot pretty damned good. But an army that basically ignores 3/4 of the game's phases sounds a bit dull to me.

But I play orks, so perhaps I'm biased.

For finesse and tactical growth, I'd probably say orks are a lot more rewarding in that regard, honestly. There's a lot of ways to play them - green tide, speed freeks, load up on guns, walker spam (not effective, but fun), load up on stompas and the like. There's a lot more versatility in the ork codex than you'd guess.

Maybe not top-tier versatility, but still.

Tau.....pretty much just shoot. And they have a fair amount of unit versatility, but it's always going to boil down to "just shoot".

When I think of tau I think of the crisis suits. The Jsj thing is why I thought they would have a high skill cap/be interesting. I remember reading about all of the variations. I get most people use riptides but I would be more in the farsight camp hero bunch of crisis maybe one riptide because he model is amazing. I know Orks have variation but what is usually their bread and butter these days. Are people taking shoota boys or sluggas. I would start with about 9 bikes and build around that for Orks because they're my favorite.

Why not collect both?

LegendaryEgo05 wrote:
When I think of tau I think of the crisis suits. The Jsj thing is why I thought they would have a high skill cap/be interesting. I remember reading about all of the variations. I get most people use riptides but I would be more in the farsight camp hero bunch of crisis maybe one riptide because he model is amazing. I know Orks have variation but what is usually their bread and butter these days. Are people taking shoota boys or sluggas. I would start with about 9 bikes and build around that for Orks because they're my favorite.

Never use shoota boyz, keep your units as cheap as possible, orks work better with multiple small units.

Warbikes are awesome