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So now that Tau appear, at a glance, to be less over the top, I'm interested in possibly putting together a Tau force composed largely of units that you don't see spammed left and right. More specifically, I'd like to avoid the monster mash style of army and field things like...

* Kroot
* Vespid
* Drone units
* Hammerheads

I want to play an army that people actually enjoy facing, but I also don't want to make something ineffectual that gets steam-rolled every game. I know the new rules are still... er... new, but does this seem viable this edition? Kroot seem to have gotten some pros and some cons (losing outflank, gaining kroot hound units, buffs from shapers), and the krootox riders seem like they might be a half-decent source of anti-vehicle shooting if you can keep them alive.
Vespid seem like a decent, reasonably cheap sucker punch unit with a gun that can be moderately threatening to a variety of targets, and the new wound allocation mechanics mean I should always be using the sergeant's leadership. Drones seem pretty much unchanged. Hammerheads seem... expensive for the amount of anti-tank firepower you get, but it's firepower on a pretty durable platform.

What do you think? Is there a way to make Tau armies featuring multiple species, vehicles, and not a lot of suits work?

Tau are one of the weakest armies in 8th now if not the weakest by a large margin. This idea that they are super powerful and scary needs to die asap so GW can get to some balancing and NOT the frontline gaming guys. Thankfully your army just so happens to have drones and vespids which are basically the only great units int he codex. It's still going to be an uphill battle to win most times, but if any list can do it it's a heavy drone and vespid list. Throw in a coldstar and Y'vaharah if you feel your list is not working out well and honestly it most likely won't since Tau.

Keeping track of all the bat reps of Tau I've found they had an 86% loss rate last week. As of today they are up to 87%. I suspect this will rise a bit more before stabilising. I've read/watched over 50 batreps. The few Tau wins that there are often tend ot have a lot of rules errors in their favor. A few of the Tau players to have won legit and their opponents typically say it came down to some really grat luck. I would say off the top of my head.. about 33% of the Tau wins had errors in their favour. I wish I had collected all of this in some nice charts, but alas. The picture is pretty grim. There are a few players winning here and there and even a few who report Tau is doing well in their meta, but these are rare individuals.

Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and Necrons are your toughest opponents for sure so watch out.

Tau need some buffs asap and I hope new GW is sincere about listening to community feedback and balancing units that are already out.

 Gamgee wrote:
Tau are one of the weakest armies in 8th now if not the weakest by a large margin. This idea that they are super powerful and scary needs to die asap so GW can get to some balancing and NOT the frontline gaming guys. Thankfully your army just so happens to have drones and vespids which are basically the only great units int he codex. It's still going to be an uphill battle to win most times, but if any list can do it it's a heavy drone and vespid list. Throw in a coldstar and Y'vaharah if you feel your list is not working out well and honestly it most likely won't since Tau.

Keeping track of all the bat reps of Tau I've found they had an 86% loss rate last week. As of today they are up to 87%. I suspect this will rise a bit more before stabilising. I've read/watched over 50 batreps. The few Tau wins that there are often tend ot have a lot of rules errors in their favor. A few of the Tau players to have won legit and their opponents typically say it came down to some really grat luck. I would say off the top of my head.. about 33% of the Tau wins had errors in their favour. I wish I had collected all of this in some nice charts, but alas. The picture is pretty grim. There are a few players winning here and there and even a few who report Tau is doing well in their meta, but these are rare individuals.

Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and Necrons are your toughest opponents for sure so watch out.

Tau need some buffs asap and I hope new GW is sincere about listening to community feedback and balancing units that are already out.

I'm personally still shocked that BS+3 Dreadnoughts with Quad Autocannons cost 130 points while BS+4 HYMP Broadsides costs 160.

Worse everything for more expensive... BRILLIANT!

Weakest by a large margin? What?!

I just saw the most of an orc army getting removed off the table from Tau rapid fire and Shadowsun Kayoon reroll to hits and marker lights.

And with their ability to just put all D3/D6 dmg shots on gakky drones at will makes them one of the strongest armies.

 Brutallica wrote:
Weakest by a large margin? What?!

I just saw the most of an orc army getting removed off the table from Tau rapid fire and Shadowsun Kayoon reroll to hits and marker lights.

And with their ability to just put all D3/D6 dmg shots on gakky drones at will makes them one of the strongest armies.

Ah funny you should mention orks. They are one of the other weakest codices of 8th. Ouch man. They need some love too.

Some of the only wins I've seen of Tau are orks. Sucks man.

Don't make this appear as if the imbalance of 8th was as big as 7th.

Tau can put their weight agains't anyone apart from the 2-3 broken combos that have surfaced (Scions spam), just like Orks.

They aren't as good as in the past, and I'm glad as a Tau player.
My horde of footsloging Firewarriors love this edition.

Death for then thousand cuts. The third way from Master Puretide!

 Galas wrote:
Don't make this appear as if the imbalance of 8th was as big as 7th.

Tau can put their weight agains't anyone apart from the 2-3 broken combos that have surfaced (Scions spam), just like Orks.

They aren't as good as in the past, and I'm glad as a Tau player.
My horde of footsloging Firewarriors love this edition.

Go read the batreps. They're out there it's not some mystical knowledge. I just don't bother linking them because even when I do no one wants to believe what I say. I'm just putting my opinion out there. I've seen quite a few Tau players shelving their armies in 8th though which is what is going to make it hard to get data. I implore everyone to share as much batrreps of Tau as they can find. Link them to me here if you want in a private message. I'm always interested in seeing more.

At my local 8th launch day I know the Tau didn't do to hot and it's only going to get worse since it's hyper competitive.

 Talamare wrote:

I'm personally still shocked that BS+3 Dreadnoughts with Quad Autocannons cost 130 points while BS+4 HYMP Broadsides costs 160.

Worse everything for more expensive... BRILLIANT!

Predators vs. Hammerheads, Revenants and Acastus Knights vs the Ta'unar, any vehicle with a large gun vs. Riptides, the list goes on and on. We've got some good tools to play with, but there are a lot of units in our index that just kind of suck compared to the competition. Fortunately for you, OP, drones and Vespids are pretty damn good units now. You could use Longstrike and spam Hammerheads, if you like. It's not going to be an overly strong army, but that volume of T7 wounds will be a pain for your opponent to chew through. They might eventually kill some stuff, too!

I've seen games where two heavy rail rifle broadsides have hammered away at a landraider and two of them cost more than a single one and all game they struggled to get it down to a third of its health and it ended up being invincible.

The only other worthwhile weapon of choice is fusion spam is decent to try take down heavy stuff, but it's far from reliable.

Yeah... My experience with Tau to date are anything but the weakest. I got tabled by them at a tournament last week. They are the only non-knight army that has managed to do that to me this edition.

That player only missed a perfect score that tournament because I got first blood in our game. So I'm going to definitely say they're anything but weakest.

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah... My experience with Tau to date are anything but the weakest. I got tabled by them at a tournament last week. They are the only non-knight army that has managed to do that to me this edition.

That player only missed a perfect score that tournament because I got first blood in our game. So I'm going to definitely say they're anything but weakest.

Batrep? Details?

 Gamgee wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah... My experience with Tau to date are anything but the weakest. I got tabled by them at a tournament last week. They are the only non-knight army that has managed to do that to me this edition.

That player only missed a perfect score that tournament because I got first blood in our game. So I'm going to definitely say they're anything but weakest.

Batrep? Details?

Happened two weekends ago, details are hazy.

It was a crisis suit heavy army, a lot of cyclic ion blasters and flamers.

 djones520 wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah... My experience with Tau to date are anything but the weakest. I got tabled by them at a tournament last week. They are the only non-knight army that has managed to do that to me this edition.

That player only missed a perfect score that tournament because I got first blood in our game. So I'm going to definitely say they're anything but weakest.

Batrep? Details?

Happened two weekends ago, details are hazy.

It was a crisis suit heavy army, a lot of cyclic ion blasters and flamers.

Ah I might have heard of this one. I think one individual Tau player I know reported winning a tournament. Could have been him, but if so he is one of two individuals or possibly the same one and only one of at least 50. Still thanks for sharing. If you remember any more details let me know. Flamethrowers heavy lists form any army suffer from melee who can charge from outside of it and not trigger it's over watch. Fusion and Cyclic are both good crisis choices. Perhaps the only ones to take. So yeah I'm not surprised he did well with it. I still think as people get used to the shock of our best stuff they will adapt to it and overtake them, but obviously time and data will be needed for me to prove or disprove that point. What army did you play? I've seen far more reports of Tau being tabled quite handily. Typically within turn 2-3.

So stoked that Tau are now looking like one of the weakest armies....I like playing the underdog!
I would actually like winning though, my plan is to take a couple units of crisis suits with fuisons on one and cyclic ion on the other then go with 2 firewarrior units and a unit of Kroot, dual commanders one coldstar kitted out with fuisons (or maybe just a regular commander) then another commander with missile pods stacked up to help the firewarriors against hordes of guys and then longstrike, a unit of stealth suits with burst cannons and then possibly a Riptide (I know they aren't great this edition) with the heavy burst cannon most likely. Mix in some marker light drones in some units and then gun drones on all the crisis suits I should do okay i.e hopefully I don't get tabled haha

I do have some vespids so I will try that out as well just working on getting a game in this week or next.

Wyldhunt wrote:

* Kroot
* Vespid
* Drone units
* Hammerheads

Vespid, drones (with a DC nearby) and hammerheads (around Longstrike) are good. kroot... eh. the hounds are nice, but the normal ones have only 2 purposes: speed bumps and deep strike denial

Gamgee wrote:Tau are one of the weakest armies in 8th now if not the weakest by a large margin. This idea that they are super powerful and scary needs to die asap so GW can get to some balancing and NOT the frontline gaming guys. Thankfully your army just so happens to have drones and vespids which are basically the only great units int he codex. It's still going to be an uphill battle to win most times, but if any list can do it it's a heavy drone and vespid list. Throw in a coldstar and Y'vaharah if you feel your list is not working out well and honestly it most likely won't since Tau.

Keeping track of all the bat reps of Tau I've found they had an 86% loss rate last week. As of today they are up to 87%. I suspect this will rise a bit more before stabilising. I've read/watched over 50 batreps. The few Tau wins that there are often tend ot have a lot of rules errors in their favor. A few of the Tau players to have won legit and their opponents typically say it came down to some really grat luck. I would say off the top of my head.. about 33% of the Tau wins had errors in their favour. I wish I had collected all of this in some nice charts, but alas. The picture is pretty grim. There are a few players winning here and there and even a few who report Tau is doing well in their meta, but these are rare individuals.

Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and Necrons are your toughest opponents for sure so watch out.

Tau need some buffs asap and I hope new GW is sincere about listening to community feedback and balancing units that are already out.

Somebody's just salty that their army just had a skill floor increase with the new edition, and apparently STILL hasn't gotten over the fact that FLG nerfed Tau so that people would actually play against them in tournaments instead of the Hunter Contingent being an instant I WIN button vs any unit in the game. Also, I happen to remember a certain thread you made about Eldar and the people who play Eldar and tournaments shortly after the 7the Edition Eldar Codex. Suffice it to say that you are officially not allowed to complain about relative army balance ever again.

8th edition has been out what, a week and some change? People are still adjusting. In particular, Tau players are having to adjust to the fact that if you line up in the old 6th or 7th edition gunline you might as well concede turn 1 vs. any horde or aggressively deployed army. You either outmaneuver the horde, or get swamped by it.

You either adapt your tactics and strategy to the new edition, or be rendered obsolete.

Talamare wrote:
I'm personally still shocked that BS+3 Dreadnoughts with Quad Autocannons cost 130 points while BS+4 HYMP Broadsides costs 160.

Worse everything for more expensive... BRILLIANT!

That extra 30 points comes from Broadsides being able to engage more targets and having a higher expected damage output with Markerlight support.

Wyldhunt wrote:
So now that Tau appear, at a glance, to be less over the top, I'm interested in possibly putting together a Tau force composed largely of units that you don't see spammed left and right. More specifically, I'd like to avoid the monster mash style of army and field things like...

* Kroot
* Vespid
* Drone units
* Hammerheads

I want to play an army that people actually enjoy facing, but I also don't want to make something ineffectual that gets steam-rolled every game. I know the new rules are still... er... new, but does this seem viable this edition? Kroot seem to have gotten some pros and some cons (losing outflank, gaining kroot hound units, buffs from shapers), and the krootox riders seem like they might be a half-decent source of anti-vehicle shooting if you can keep them alive.
Vespid seem like a decent, reasonably cheap sucker punch unit with a gun that can be moderately threatening to a variety of targets, and the new wound allocation mechanics mean I should always be using the sergeant's leadership. Drones seem pretty much unchanged. Hammerheads seem... expensive for the amount of anti-tank firepower you get, but it's firepower on a pretty durable platform.

What do you think? Is there a way to make Tau armies featuring multiple species, vehicles, and not a lot of suits work?

I annihilated every Tau army that fielded those choices with my Necrons. I wished my opponents the best of luck knowing that they were going to get brutally slaughtered. I had three games where I took no losses even after being charged by multiple max squads of kroot. These were from 5th ed up to 7th, judging by the datasheets an 8th ed battle will have similar results with the kroot. The Vespid seem more tailored to a harassment roll now. The Hammerhead is still a decent heavy support choice, I would skip the seeker missiles and swap out the gun drones for the smart missiles. I would use drones as a "meat" shield for some of your more valuable units.

Another Tau player has given me some details. 10 games and he only won 3 due to luck. Has been gaming since the Tau first came out and has the entire range. One of those was due to a Tyranid player not knowing he could charge outside flamer range. The luck in the other two was his crazy alpha strikes on suits.

Yeap this tips the win loss ratio to 88% loss rate when looking at overall games. His name is Raikoh067 on ATT.

With Monado's testimony of destroying Tau in 8th likely a 89% loss rate.

Right now many of these reports are not going into detail on loses so I can't definitely say for sure this 100% thing needs to be buffed or not.

In general points need to come down a lot for the most expensive things to even be worth considering taking.

Also if I was to be GW I would slowly buff the Tau. If they are afraid of the Tau becoming too powerful too fast they should buff them slowly over time and work them into a good spot.

@TheNewBlood
The Tau player at my FLG said that his army was mopped up by half of the necron players army alone and had nothing to answer it. Necorn player was throwing him pitty points.

I've been watching games played since the full 8th rules were leaked. So it's been a good few weeks of time. There is no secret combo we're missing. The Tau rules are so gutted we may as well be playing generic 40k army 1.0 due a lack of anything stand out. I forgot to factor in my friends few games with them where he lost (predictably). This nearly brings the loss rate almost to 90% need a few more losses tallied and boom.


Enemy armies are cheaper, faster, have more men, can shoot as much as us, have psychic powers, powerful melee, can pile on multiple charges ect, and are basically as strong as us in ranged attacks. Against Dark Eldar out much vaunted and nearly useless ability to flee combat and shoot is completely worthless.

I have played a tank heavy tau list twice now in 8th. 2-3 hamme heads with rail and 2 devilfish transporting a bunch of breachers. I used a commander, longstrike, and a ethereal each time.

I tried 3 crisis suits. First tme as vs chaos marines. Second agaisnt ad mech. I crushed both times.

10 to 2 victory points in the first game with a near board wipe vs the chaos marines. and cut the second game short cause store was closing. ended in a tie but admech was on it's way out.

I don't think tau are bad. I think players are having trouble adapting to new strategies and tactics.

 Lance845 wrote:
I have played a tank heavy tau list twice now in 8th. 2-3 hamme heads with rail and 2 devilfish transporting a bunch of breachers. I used a commander, longstrike, and a ethereal each time.

I tried 3 crisis suits. First tme as vs chaos marines. Second agaisnt ad mech. I crushed both times.

10 to 2 victory points in the first game with a near board wipe vs the chaos marines. and cut the second game short cause store was closing. ended in a tie but admech was on it's way out.

I don't think tau are bad. I think players are having trouble adapting to new strategies and tactics.

Congrats on being quite the unusual player. Many batreps have had lists similar to yours and have not done well at all. Nearly down to 88% loss rate across the board with your two wins. Thanks for contributing.

drones are super cheap ablative wounds for the entire army. It's very easy to get good ap on everything and with a single markerlight you can reroll 1s to hit.

I don't see the issues.

That sounds a bit like hyperbole.

Basic win/loss ratios themselves are useless. To actually have tangible grasp on if Tau a markedly weaker conpared to others what lists they were playing, what the opposition was playing and traltive skill level need to be taken into account.

My brother played either space marines or IG for nearly two years before he won a game back in 5th-6th. His experience speaks nothing for thel armies, and much much morento his relative skill and list building techniques.

 Lance845 wrote:
drones are super cheap ablative wounds for the entire army. It's very easy to get good ap on everything and with a single markerlight you can reroll 1s to hit.

I don't see the issues.

Yes drones do seem good, but the question is if they can hold the whole army up. I've also seen bat reps with players taking drones and not winning, but of all the list types heavy drone ones seem to have a better shot. Considering they are the best unit in our dex I'm not surprised.

Edit
I do realise that carlovon, but this is the best we can get fro now until we start seeing tournament results. It is currently not painting a good picture though. Anyways I can hope to be wrong. Nothing would shut me up more than Tau winning a big tournament a few times. I just think that's really unlikely since a lot of the opponents would also be of comparable skill levels.

I have seen a lot of complaint that crisis suits are crap now. I had a unit of 3 each equiped with 2 cyclic ion blasters and a smart targetting system.

Thats 18 str 7 ap-2 1 dmg shots at bs 4+ that (again) with a SINGLE Marker light wound reroll 1s t hit. They deepstriked with the commander (2 CIB Drone Commander and STS) and 6 gun drones and 4 Marker Drones. They devourered the enemies infantry and vehicles.

Their deepstrike allowed them to be surgically inserted in turn 2 to hit the units causing my tanks trouble.

The hammerheads ended the game without suffering a single wound on them. I did loose the 2 devilfish. But I was mostly usng them for cover and charging enemy units near my breachers at the end of my turn. It prevented the breachers from being charged. But on my turn the devilfish backs up, shoots all its guns, and let the breachers finish them off.

Not a lot of armies can get army wide reroll 1s. Nobody can get as cheap ablative wounds and as far as i know and nobody else can use those wounds on the entire army and without needing to do a roll. And very few armies have such easy access to ap in general let alone mass ap-2 to -4.

These things need to be taken into consideration.

 Lance845 wrote:
I have seen a lot of complaint that crisis suits are crap now. I had a unit of 3 each equiped with 2 cyclic ion blasters and a smart targetting system.

Thats 18 str 7 ap-2 1 dmg shots at bs 4+ that (again) with a SINGLE Marker light wound reroll 1s t hit. They deepstriked with the commander (2 CIB Drone Commander and STS) and 6 gun drones and 4 Marker Drones. They devourered the enemies infantry and vehicles.

Their deepstrike allowed them to be surgically inserted in turn 2 to hit the units causing my tanks trouble.

The hammerheads ended the game without suffering a single wound on them. I did loose the 2 devilfish. But I was mostly usng them for cover and charging enemy units near my breachers at the end of my turn. It prevented the breachers from being charged. But on my turn the devilfish backs up, shoots all its guns, and let the breachers finish them off.

Not a lot of armies can get army wide reroll 1s. Nobody can get as cheap ablative wounds and as far as i know and nobody else can use those wounds on the entire army and without needing to do a roll. And very few armies have such easy access to ap in general let alone mass ap-2 to -4.

These things need to be taken into consideration.

A great army that gives me hope we will see this Tau situation turned around and that I was worrying for nothing. I would love to be wrong. I just so rarely am these days. Even if your winning there is still the issue that huge swathes of choices are terrible and need small adjustments to make them more viable, but that is another topic if I'm wrong here.

Yeah the Tau playstyle has definitely changed a bit. The two Tau players from the local club have both been having a good time and last I checked have won more often than not.

Back in 7th only one of them ever used more than a single Riptide often, and both seem to have already adjusted to 8th by taking more markerlights and drones, along with ATS suits. (Which is basically how one of them built their Tau army anyway - a couple units of pathfinders supporting Crisis Suits, Breachers & Strike Teams in Devilfish, and his heavier hitters [either Riptide or Ghostkeel usually]).

Of course, everyone else is also getting used to 8th too, so it'll probably be a few months yet until everyone is in the swing of things and figuring out what they want to use in the armies, so we'll see how (if) their W/L/D ratios significantly change.

Yeah my lists I used to run were fairly similar to the new meta. I used more Kroot than Vespids though and didn't take much big suits. I did love bringing a lot of crisis though on occasion for a different list and now I feel like my FSE army is really hit hard.

Worst of all. My beloved Skyray's I had two of and were game winners are now the worst in the dex. I am so mad.

I will be very surprised if when the codexes come out the various <sept> <hivefleet> <etc etc...> things don't have some kind of effect like allowing units to be taken in different FOC slots.

Farsight Enclaves will probably allow crisis suits as troops again.

Some tau units are absurdly overcosted, especially broadsides and riptides.

Tau lack of psykers, so they can't even try to deny critical enemy spells and just have to face it.

But they have a cheap drones and cheap infantry, so I guess tau power builds will be around dron and fw spam with 1-2 fusion crisis units to deal with a big target.

We have couple games with them and so far it was horrible for tau (but the tau players is pretty bad one). The worst one was the tau vs ynnari 2k points, and tau was tabled 1st turn.

Interesting about the Tau I have fought a Tau army with some kroot screen, fire warriors a flamer battle suit squad a few tanks and a rip tide. He had enough blob killer to knock out my conscripts and deal with my tanks pretty fast. Long strike is crazy good. on that note Almost all the youtube battle reps with tau are victories. I will have to watch at my local store and ask my friend who goes to local tournaments back home (I moved to a new state..sadly not alot of warhammer players around where I live :/)