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Now that we've had our week of official previews from GW and that the entirety of the rule changes have leaked, where do you expect the T'au codex will fall in terms of power level/tournament showing?

Personally, I'm expecting somewhere around Tyranid/Space Marine power levels, but sans the soup of the latter.

Well, I voted for upper tier, based on a information from community web site. I collect viorla sept, that finally gets good, and perhaps best doctrine. Fire and movement are the key. Still, the outcome may change alot, because of the points values etc.

I'm hoping for much better than marines who need soup and/or FW to be mildly competitive.
They aren't top dog but they're certainly competitive moving to top tier with FW.

I just hope comp play doesn't see the nerf bat take a double swing and things end up like IG comissar.

Voted top tier.

Their stratagems are fantastic, and their army wide buffs are very, very good.

Riptides are back in a big way. For just a few CP, they'll be...

1. Targeting a unit with 5 marker lights on it.
2. Shooting twice
3. Rerolling all wounds
4. With 2x nova charged options

And they take assault out of the game with an army wide overwatch on 5s with greater good.

They have the range, and can ignore cover, with a volume of shots, to take out Dark Reapers. Well anything really. This codex is going to be fantastic.

Edit - in case it wasn't clear, I am not complaining, just saying they're going to be great. Good for them. Every army should do something well.

 Marmatag wrote:
Voted top tier.

Their stratagems are fantastic, and their army wide buffs are very, very good.

Riptides are back in a big way. For just a few CP, they'll be...

1. Targeting a unit with 5 marker lights on it.
2. Shooting twice
3. Rerolling all wounds
4. With 2x nova charged options

And they take assault out of the game with an army wide overwatch on 5s with greater good.

They have the range, and can ignore cover, with a volume of shots, to take out Dark Reapers. Well anything really. This codex is going to be fantastic.

Edit - in case it wasn't clear, I am not complaining, just saying they're going to be great. Good for them. Every army should do something well.

I didn't go that far as I am not as familiar with them, but definitely upper 75%, great stratagems, they fit really well into the existing gunline meta, can manipulate wounding well and combine it with volume of fire. They are full of win.

When the Eldar Codex was out people where crying out loud how bad they where and how horrible they where.

I'll wait minimun one month before making judgement of how powerfull are Tau.

Except the Eldar book is really bad. It's got two units that are absurdly powerful right now, but the rest of the book is in need of some serious reworking.

This is super premature.

I personally think they might hit that Tyranid sweet spot. Lots of viable options in the right list, a few duds, you have to work to make the synergies line up to be really powerful, no clear IWIN buttons.

But we need a couple weeks of people putting together lists with the full point values and seeing how they actually perform before that is shown to be true or not.


Also... I would never compare the SM codex and the Nid codex as being similar. The Nid codex is the benchmark by which all other codexes are judged for internal and external balance. The SM codex has very poor internal balance and it's external balance can range from stupid good (Rowboat) to near unplayable without outside help (Imperial Fists and Black Templar).

I voted top 75%.

Like Marmatag on first glance their strats are fantastic, reductions to the big guns seem helpful and fire-warriors give them cheap battalions so they have lots of CP.

Looking at hypothetical lists and how I would try to handle them with the SM builds I've been running I'm having a hard time fighting them and nids (for example).

It also looks like they will be more than just a one trick pony (maybe 2) and having good deepstrikers and backline fire-power with some cheap units in-between seems to be really powerful.

I don't think we can put them as "top" until we see how they interact with the current meta and that meta hopefully will be shaken up so I'm not sure where they will land. But good strats, board control, volume of shooting, big shooting, good deepstrike/alpha/beta all looks pretty powerful from my side of the board.

Man this topic would make so much more sense after the full codex is released lol.

I have no idea, it all depends on the stratagems we've yet to see.

http://www.3plusplus.net/2018/03/tau-leak-stratagems-warlord-traits-signature-systems-point-values/

Read it and weep.

They almost ALL cost 1cp and either provide covers to your weaknesses like anti assault boosts or boost your strengths.

Tau strats are pretty great IMO.

I don't see how Orks will beat Tau, post codex. Can someone give me the deets on how you'd do that?

If Tau have a real incentive now to bring Crisis Suits, Pathfinders, etc, they're going to really shred Orks badly. Or am i wrong?

 Marmatag wrote:
I don't see how Orks will beat Tau, post codex. Can someone give me the deets on how you'd do that?

If Tau have a real incentive now to bring Crisis Suits, Pathfinders, etc, they're going to really shred Orks badly. Or am i wrong?

Orks would not be an army I would be overly concerned with dealing with Tau. Our vehicles rather than relying on quality of saves have quantity of wounds, and (at least in my experience) tau stuff tends to be high AP but low damage owing to the lower rate of fire/number of shots. On the flip side, our infantry is definitely in the sweet spot for their basic infantry guns (so the build I'd be most worried with would be the fire warrior spam) but the usually heavy focus on high quality firepower (commanders with quadfusion, now Ionheads, Riptides, Ghostkeels with all the fusion, etc) means that the matchup typically gives the orks an inherent skew-advantage.

If you have ork typical super-skew list (just nothing but bodies delivered right at the enemy) vs a particular anti-horde type of tau skew (flamer suits, fire warrior spam) then yeah, I don't see the matchup ever going to the orks favor. But if you're playing typical ork skew against typical tau TAC style list with commanders and hammerheads etc, then I think you've got an advantage with the orks.

Basically if the number of fire warriors+support for them hits a critical mass where you CANT alpha strike and murder/tie them up you're pretty much hosed.

Why are you affraid if crisis suits they are BS4 no invuln unit costing way to many points. No one in the tau threads is looking at taking them. Orks still have green tide and da jump. Untill orks get there dex they are being left behind but power creep has happened in 8th so you may be top tier or maybe GW realise they goofed with the eldar dex and everyone else's codec is going to be more balanced.

Ice_can wrote:
Why are you affraid if crisis suits they are BS4 no invuln unit costing way to many points. No one in the tau threads is looking at taking them. Orks still have green tide and da jump. Untill orks get there dex they are being left behind but power creep has happened in 8th so you may be top tier or maybe GW realise they goofed with the eldar dex and everyone else's codec is going to be more balanced.

He's specifically calling out flamer suits.

Flamer suits don't care about "being BS4".

I was actually replying to marmatag, but got ninja'd by the scotsman

I don't eee how it's possible to rank the codex when we've just in the last 24 hours received the final leaks. Who here has a dozen practice games under the new codex?

 Galas wrote:
When the Eldar Codex was out people where crying out loud how bad they where and how horrible they where.

I'll wait minimun one month before making judgement of how powerfull are Tau.

Probably always best to wait and see rahter than jumping the gun


gonna say above average though.

Yes remember when it was released the general concensus was the WK didh't have enough survivability and warlock council began as a joke.

The first theorycrafting can be of spectacularly.

The premise of this thread is built on jumping the gun. It's asking for a knee-jerk reaction opinion. It's not like we're writing our answers in blood, and the devil will come and claim everyone who was incorrect, lol.

At first glance, it looks to be super strong.

Of course we'll need to wait and see in regards to intelligent opinions / factual data.

Bottom 25% (though really more 25%-50%);

Their Codex is still largely overpriced, doesn't solve fundamental issues with BS4+//markerlight table, they have no melee; their traits are largely bunk (they have a 1cp stratagem to re-roll a d6 hits attack; meanwhile Catachan IG get that as a base trait), and so many other things.

Tau got nothing really new in their codex - some points drops here and there, but the problem units and issues are still problems/issues.

Kroot aren't good, Crisis Suits are overpriced, Commanders aren't fixed (just limited), weapons are unbalanced (plasma/melta/other style comparisons (CIB)), and other things that are escaping my mind at the moment.

The only cool part about them is that their codex is new, and they're a little better; but that's honestly all just because the points got dropped (and some weapons got slightly buffed), things that really could have just been in CA.

All I know is that I look forward to screens being tanks and crisis suits with infantry being the soft nougaty center.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
All I know is that I look forward to screens being tanks and crisis suits with infantry being the soft nougaty center.

You're not very likely to see that, though. You're much more likely to see piles of fire warriors buffed by fireblades with some coldstar commanders as their antitank.

Middling, a few stand out units and stratagems, but without soup they will continue to be one dimensional. With what's been revealed/leaked so far they don't have the gimmicks to take on top flight armies like dark reaper spam and imperial/chaos soup.

fe40k wrote:
Their Codex is still largely overpriced, doesn't solve fundamental issues with BS4+//markerlight table

This is what stopped me from ranking them higher, too. I know the idea of "quantity has a quality of its own" with regards to shots fired, but it doesn't feel quite sufficient to make up for BS4+ and heavy penalties/shooting penalties across the board.

I don’t know yet.

 Marmatag wrote:
Voted top tier.

Their stratagems are fantastic, and their army wide buffs are very, very good.

Riptides are back in a big way. For just a few CP, they'll be...

1. Targeting a unit with 5 marker lights on it.
2. Shooting twice
3. Rerolling all wounds
4. With 2x nova charged options

And they take assault out of the game with an army wide overwatch on 5s with greater good.

They have the range, and can ignore cover, with a volume of shots, to take out Dark Reapers. Well anything really. This codex is going to be fantastic.

Edit - in case it wasn't clear, I am not complaining, just saying they're going to be great. Good for them. Every army should do something well.

Eeer, the shoot twice stratagem is only for Vior'la infantry who are shooting at the closest enemy.
And even if it wasn't, its 4CPs, enough markerlights to deploy 5 hits and a commander who isn't shooting (in addition to the riptide itself) to pull this combo off.







As for the power level of the codex itself.
Upper tier for sure. maybe even top dog.
Because of the sheer stupidity that is the coldstar who can pick any 4 guns. even with just any 2 guns it would be incredible.

 BoomWolf wrote:

Because of the sheer stupidity that is the coldstar who can pick any 4 guns. even with just any 2 guns it would be incredible.

I mean it's 176 points on 6 T5 wounds with no invuln, so...ymmv.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

Because of the sheer stupidity that is the coldstar who can pick any 4 guns. even with just any 2 guns it would be incredible.

I mean it's 176 points on 6 T5 wounds with no invuln, so...ymmv.

Sounds like an easy round of shooting for hellblasters.