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My brother and I recently looked into getting Tau for him as his second army (he ran GKs before but fell out of love with them, sold them and buying a new army scratch). As we look into them more and more, we find that people are considering them low tier competitively. I'm not really seeing any reason they aren't competitive, seeing the tricks they have at their disposal IE BS5 across the board for the army almost theoretically, S5 weapons on those BS5 troops, not to mention if you sacrifice a 50 point ethereal you get furious charge (meh) and preferred enemy; meaning you hit on 2+, wound 2+ the majority of the game, and re roll the few 1s you might roll to hit ALL at 30" range for a generally cheap troop choice. They're essentially the same as necrons in close combat minus the good weapons they have (warcythe, dispersion shield, etc) but they get even better shooting to compensate. While crons are considered top tier.....show me another army throwing out 3 TL 10S ap1 shots at potentially BS5 with PE for less than 200 points a squad before extras...The only argument I can see is some stuff feels a little overpriced such as the rail-gun for the hammerhead clocking in at 50 points, which is still better even with upgrades than say, the crons Doomsday Ark. My only complaint on the army is the battle suits looks kinda dopey and blocky, but meh thats my opinion and that can EASILY be converted/changed to look better.

Whilst I'm certainly not qualified to say whether Tau are competitive or not, most Tau are BS3 not BS5, so unless you're planning on splurging on Markerlights half of those (lovely 30" S5) shots are going to miss.

Skimming tanks with Disruption pods (3+ jink when over 12" away? yes please!) are fun, bouncy suits are fun, but if your brother used to play GK's he's going to notice the power drop (if, for no other reason than the age differences for the codex).

Tau are no longer low tier. they were in 5th, but the recent shift of power to shooting armies plus the FAQ on disruption pods has made Tau pretty darn good. Mid tier definitly.

Vehicles with Disruption Pods basically get a 3+ cover save for moving any amount. 5+ jink plus Shrouding.

All in all, not a Super-Spankey army.... A good penance for playing 50 shades of grey knights.

Tau are a low-tier army. They have a single decent army build which can certainly win games (especially with the vehicle FAQ) in 6th, but outside of the few obvious "best in their FOC slot" units the rest of the codex is garbage. Brought a Sky Ray instead of Broadsides? Don't even bother unpacking your army. Took Vespids for anything other than painting? I guess you hate winning. Etc. The end result is that the Tau are a clear bottom-tier army in desperate need of a new codex.

 Peregrine wrote:
Tau are a low-tier army. They have a single decent army build which can certainly win games (especially with the vehicle FAQ) in 6th, but outside of the few obvious "best in their FOC slot" units the rest of the codex is garbage. Brought a Sky Ray instead of Broadsides? Don't even bother unpacking your army. Took Vespids for anything other than painting? I guess you hate winning. Etc. The end result is that the Tau are a clear bottom-tier army in desperate need of a new codex.

Dont know why you always bag on the tau bro, they really arent nearlly as bad as you try to paint them up to be. If they where so horrible then no one would play them, and well lots of people play,and win with more than just "one army build".

 Guilldog wrote:
Dont know why you always bag on the tau bro, they really arent nearlly as bad as you try to paint them up to be.

Because Tau were my first army and, along with DKoK IG, my favorite for fluff and model reasons, but I'm sick of GW's refusal to fix the current obsolete codex. Like it or not most of the codex is garbage.

If they where so horrible then no one would play them, and well lots of people play,and win with more than just "one army build".

Except nobody wins with Tau in competitive games, outside of the single moderately successful tournament list. The people winning with the garbage units are only winning because they're playing against weak opponents with poorly optimized lists.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Guilldog wrote:
Dont know why you always bag on the tau bro, they really arent nearlly as bad as you try to paint them up to be.

Because Tau were my first army and, along with DKoK IG, my favorite for fluff and model reasons, but I'm sick of GW's refusal to fix the current obsolete codex. Like it or not most of the codex is garbage.

If they where so horrible then no one would play them, and well lots of people play,and win with more than just "one army build".

Except nobody wins with Tau in competitive games, outside of the single moderately successful tournament list. The people winning with the garbage units are only winning because they're playing against weak opponents with poorly optimized lists.

I beg your pardon. I play Tau. I've played against EVERYONE in my LGS, and never lost once. And there is no "one successful army build." If you used the sam one every time, you wuld never win

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:
I beg your pardon. I play Tau. I've played against EVERYONE in my LGS, and never lost once. And there is no "one successful army build." If you used the sam one every time, you wuld never win

Then you're either playing against people who are much lower in skill than you, or playing against people who have terrible lists. Even good players don't win 100% of the time against equal competition.

And once you go up against equal competition you'll quickly discover that your "options" for army lists disappear quickly. You can win with your heavy support slots full of Sky Rays against a 12 year old with a space marine battleforce, but they're going to cost you the game against a skilled opponent with flyerspam Necrons/mech IG/etc.

 Peregrine wrote:
Tau are a low-tier army. They have a single decent army build which can certainly win games (especially with the vehicle FAQ) in 6th, but outside of the few obvious "best in their FOC slot" units the rest of the codex is garbage. Brought a Sky Ray instead of Broadsides? Don't even bother unpacking your army. Took Vespids for anything other than painting? I guess you hate winning. Etc. The end result is that the Tau are a clear bottom-tier army in desperate need of a new codex.

This sums it up nicely. They have a few effective options, but Tau lists are 1-dimensional and not open to much variation. As with most of the older codecies, you can still win games with them if you really work for it, but from a competitive standpoint, they're not relevant.

On a positive note, they make for great allies.

 Peregrine wrote:

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:
I beg your pardon. I play Tau. I've played against EVERYONE in my LGS, and never lost once. And there is no "one successful army build." If you used the sam one every time, you wuld never win

Then you're either playing against people who are much lower in skill than you, or playing against people who have terrible lists. Even good players don't win 100% of the time against equal competition.

And once you go up against equal competition you'll quickly discover that your "options" for army lists disappear quickly. You can win with your heavy support slots full of Sky Rays against a 12 year old with a space marine battleforce, but they're going to cost you the game against a skilled opponent with flyerspam Necrons/mech IG/etc.

Really? Then please explain how I managed to win against 1500 pts of GK with only 500 pts of Tau?

The GK player was stupid as hell.

Unless you played a board with a bottle neck, ran an all broadside list, and he was footslogging paladins (1,500 worth) I don't really see this.

I love Tau and think they are good. But not 3:1 against a high-top tier army. Not with equal players.

If you gave some more details, like list composition or even a battle report so we can see the details, then just saying "I won therefore Tau are great" doesn't have any weight to it.

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:
I beg your pardon. I play Tau. I've played against EVERYONE in my LGS, and never lost once. And there is no "one successful army build." If you used the sam one every time, you wuld never win

Then you're either playing against people who are much lower in skill than you, or playing against people who have terrible lists. Even good players don't win 100% of the time against equal competition.

And once you go up against equal competition you'll quickly discover that your "options" for army lists disappear quickly. You can win with your heavy support slots full of Sky Rays against a 12 year old with a space marine battleforce, but they're going to cost you the game against a skilled opponent with flyerspam Necrons/mech IG/etc.

Really? Then please explain how I managed to win against 1500 pts of GK with only 500 pts of Tau?

Haha that was funny.
Let me try, I'm the Incredible Hulk aarrrrghhhh. Oh look my nose grew.

I'm assuming you didn't use a FOC or something of the sort.
There is nothing short of loaded dice and an opponent being stupid that could let tau win that game.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
While Tau can be a fun army, and make a decent gunline. They are one of the weakest armies in 40k, very 1Dimensional.

Winning against 3-1 odds is a pretty clear sign of player skill disparity. HUGE disparity. I'd be really surprised if it was possible to make a 1500-point army so bad that the player couldn't beat a super-optimal 500-point army, assuming even player skill. (Discounting a setup where one side is mathematically incapable of hurting the other, or something silly like that)

It's probably possible with Tau. There is a suit load out that has no weapons, meets all requirements and is still pricey.

So take a commander, body guard, and all the elites you can. Take an ethereal to force more of your units off the board.

one unit of firewarriors with grenades so they end up 14 ppm.

Maybe a lot of kroot cause they die easy.

and then the rest with Vespid.

I'm sure many armies could take that out with 500 points.

It was the other way around supposedly.

1500 of GKs vs 500 of Tau.

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:
I beg your pardon. I play Tau. I've played against EVERYONE in my LGS, and never lost once. And there is no "one successful army build." If you used the sam one every time, you wuld never win

Then you're either playing against people who are much lower in skill than you, or playing against people who have terrible lists. Even good players don't win 100% of the time against equal competition.

And once you go up against equal competition you'll quickly discover that your "options" for army lists disappear quickly. You can win with your heavy support slots full of Sky Rays against a 12 year old with a space marine battleforce, but they're going to cost you the game against a skilled opponent with flyerspam Necrons/mech IG/etc.

Really? Then please explain how I managed to win against 1500 pts of GK with only 500 pts of Tau?

The GK player was new to the game, had little grasp of the rules, you played a full Broadside Army, or he didn't use very good tactics.....etc.

By any chance where you allied with anyone?

I've been playing Tau since they came out and I must say that it is a challenging army to play with. I do not win very often, but still enjoy using them and building the models.The codex badly needs to be updated for 6th ed, and basically the stats never matched the fluff from the beginning. Their BS is low for a high-tech army. The trade off for being so poor in CC should have always been better BS stats and perhaps higher mobility. I would rate them now as mid-tier at best if played right against an equally skilled opponent. I still play them simply because I like the Tau, but at this point they are not a good tourny choice.

Tau are just a tremendously difficult army to use beyond the local scene. I use vespids, stealth suits, sniper drones, and lots of fire warriors quite often (though never sky rays). Theoretically, you have a lot of powerful shooting, with potential to make it quite accurate.

But you have to compare what you're getting for the points it costs and it's real-world lifespan.

My usual opponent is a Space Wolf tourney guy, and it's always an uphill battle. Anything more capable in combat than a grot will make most tau models cry, and we suffer from a few very hard counters, like Codex: Space Wolves. That said, I've lost more suits simply to bolter+plasma MEQ squads than anything else - they're really not that tough, so you have to play risky to get your yields early before you get shot up.

All that out of the way, Tau aren't necessarily a *weak* army, not by any stretch of the imagination (6th ed helped quite a bit), but the codex has a lot of glaring weaknesses besides just being poor at assault - cost, utility, and options being the top 3 complaints. You have to really understand the army in order to play a pure tau list well. Out of our 3 local tau players, one has GK allies, one has SW allies, and the other is me, and I've beaten most current competitive lists at some point or another, even with silly builds like 33 vespids.

The switch is really massive from an army like GK to Tau, and I'd say he ought to proxy before buying models (unless he likes the models anyways). T3 4+ infantry is far weaker, and s5 at bs3 is pretty much the same as bolters at bs4 unless you start buying markerlights. t4 suits will die rapidly until he learns LOS blocking and positioning, and objectives will often be next to impossible to take without proper timing and shooting. Ethereals sound nice, but then you'll realize that tau are LD7/8 almost across the board, and making the units that typically stand near the board edge take tests on such a low LD is not really a smart idea. Too many times have I lost a squad of broadsides because one shield drone died, you don't want that happening to half your army on turn 1.

Tau have access to a lot of plasma shots and 36" assault 2 str 7 shots. Take as many crisis suits as possible. Everything counts in large amounts.

Shield drones are your friend. They help keep your Killy things alive

Good luck and take care

 Peregrine wrote:
Tau are a low-tier army. They have a single decent army build which can certainly win games (especially with the vehicle FAQ) in 6th, but outside of the few obvious "best in their FOC slot" units the rest of the codex is garbage. Brought a Sky Ray instead of Broadsides? Don't even bother unpacking your army. Took Vespids for anything other than painting? I guess you hate winning. Etc. The end result is that the Tau are a clear bottom-tier army in desperate need of a new codex.

While I hate to gak on my most favoured army, I sadly have to agree.

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:
I beg your pardon. I play Tau. I've played against EVERYONE in my LGS, and never lost once. And there is no "one successful army build." If you used the sam one every time, you wuld never win

Then you're either playing against people who are much lower in skill than you, or playing against people who have terrible lists. Even good players don't win 100% of the time against equal competition.

And once you go up against equal competition you'll quickly discover that your "options" for army lists disappear quickly. You can win with your heavy support slots full of Sky Rays against a 12 year old with a space marine battleforce, but they're going to cost you the game against a skilled opponent with flyerspam Necrons/mech IG/etc.

Really? Then please explain how I managed to win against 1500 pts of GK with only 500 pts of Tau?

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-anecdotal-evidence.htm

I'd just like to interject with a quick remark: Playing a top-tier competitive list against a mid-tier list does not mean the competitive list wins every single time. Inserting one slight alteration to the situation (making the board larger) puts most Grey Knight armies at a significant disadvantage against Tau.

Now the 1,500pts of Grey Knights losing to 500pts of Tau is implausible. What were the force compositions?

Yeah, I doubt we are getting an answer any time soon so I'll continue with the discussion.

I think the Tau work well right now. It is limited to one build with small variations. The biggest problem being that Tau weapons are really limited to the Railgun, PlasmaRifle, and Missile pod. So that limits the suit load outs.

One thing the Tau really suffer from is the one build vs. best build concept. I actually had to argue with a CSM player who kept trying to say that they were extremely limited (CSM that is) because in the FA slot the Raptors are obviously the best choice. This HQ is best because he also unlocks these elites as troops and they are the best for that.

It was actually driving me nuts. Most people will say that their books have obviously good choice which "limit" what you can bring. It's not limiting at all, people just want to run what the believe is better. More power to them, but it's not the same as Tau's limitations. Tau SC actually limit/endanger the army and provide no to little purpose. Out of the 14 units in the codex, only 6 of them are still good (7 if you count the Forgeworld Tetra, which I do)

In Tau's case there are units that you just can't bring. Many units and weapons are overpriced, in order to keep up you have to save points wherever you can. Vespid, Ethereals, Devilfish, Skyrays, Stealthsuits, and Sniper drones are good examples of units that simply cost too much without providing anything vital to the army. I haven't even tried using pathfinders lately because the Tetra is just much more cost effective. It's at the point where people are telling me it's too cheesey and I shouldn't use it (SW, CSM, and GK players) but really it's not. It's just that the rest of the codex is so out dated, that when something new comes up it seems like it's insane when held in contrast to the old.

Face it, the Tau were never designed to be a competitive army. If they were, they wouldn't have such terrible Fire Warrior stats (low just about everything) for the price and such low count of possible units (Sure, you can make a dozen units with Battle Suits but still).

Heck, 40k was NEVER meant to be a competitive game. They didn't design it with tournys and things in mind, they designed it for drinking with your friends laughing about terrible rolls type of game.

Anyway, that rant over, the Tau do need an update. They aren't meant to be "top-tier", but their so low-tier at this point it's not even fun to play sometimes. You either stop your enemy or they steam-roll you.

But again, the Tau shouldn't be made really competitive like, per say, the Grey Knights. They should be a mid-tier army, that should be fun to play but you may not win all your games. Most of the Tau choices are just fun choices, not good choices *Cough* Vespids *cough*.

If you play Tau, even after an update, don't look to win because you just won't be getting it all the time. This just isn't the army for any WAAC players. All those WAAC builds, if any even exist, are so 1-dimensional that it's just not fun. And that's the point. Fun.

Tl;dr - Tau aren't mean to be uber-competitive at all, but they could use an update with pricing and stats to return them to a fun army to play.

Vehicle-heavy Tau definitely belong in mid tier. High firepower while having a 3++ is nothing to laugh at.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 thefarseerofnorthryde wrote:
I beg your pardon. I play Tau. I've played against EVERYONE in my LGS, and never lost once. And there is no "one successful army build." If you used the sam one every time, you wuld never win

Then you're either playing against people who are much lower in skill than you, or playing against people who have terrible lists. Even good players don't win 100% of the time against equal competition.

And once you go up against equal competition you'll quickly discover that your "options" for army lists disappear quickly. You can win with your heavy support slots full of Sky Rays against a 12 year old with a space marine battleforce, but they're going to cost you the game against a skilled opponent with flyerspam Necrons/mech IG/etc.

Really? Then please explain how I managed to win against 1500 pts of GK with only 500 pts of Tau?

Cool story bro.

Reminds me of the last game where my 500 pts Necron Warriors won vs. a combined army of 2k GK and 2k BA. Man, that was hilarious! The ladies were all around me, asking for babies while the guys were praying me to share my infinite wisdom.

God I really hate the "there's only one good Tau build" BS that runs around on the net so often.

I went 3-3 at NOVA with straight Tau, no Fireknives, no Railguns at all - and took Kroot and 3 teams of Sniper Drones. Went on to the semis with that list in my bracket, tyvm.

Yes, there's a lot of units that are horribly overpriced for what they give you in terms of capability. Yes, our basic troops are very poor for their cost. Yes, you'll rarely get your points back from several units in the codex.

No, there is no One Tau Build To Rule Them All.

As I've said in other threads, IMHO the key to running Tau well is to specialize the snot out of them, rather than trying to make them generalists. Pick a role for each unit, and make it the most efficient you can at that role. PR/BC suits combined with FB/MP suits are more efficient than just spamming PR/MP suits all the time, for instance. Hell, if you use some of the Forgeworld turrets for your anti-MEQ needs, you don't even really need the PR/BC suits - just run FB/MP for your anti-armor needs.

Also, if you don't think 3+ cover saves on an AV12 transport are amazing, you're nuts. Try full mech Tau, you'll be amazed at how survivable our vehicles are with the new disruption pods. Sure, I hate spending 85pts for a transport with crap firepower, but they don't die often.

 washout77 wrote:
Face it, the Tau were never designed to be a competitive army. If they were, they wouldn't have such terrible Fire Warrior stats (low just about everything) for the price and such low count of possible units (Sure, you can make a dozen units with Battle Suits but still).

Heck, 40k was NEVER meant to be a competitive game. They didn't design it with tournys and things in mind, they designed it for drinking with your friends laughing about terrible rolls type of game.

Firewarrior stats were pretty decent back in 4th, they were one of the basis behind FISH OF FURY back then, as well as the fact that back then the glancing chart (which S5 could do well on transports) was the equivalent of the penetrating chart in 5th. They just didn't age well, like most of kelly's books from edition to edition.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Unless you played a board with a bottle neck, ran an all broadside list, and he was footslogging paladins (1,500 worth) I don't really see this.

I love Tau and think they are good. But not 3:1 against a high-top tier army. Not with equal players.

If you gave some more details, like list composition or even a battle report so we can see the details, then just saying "I won therefore Tau are great" doesn't have any weight to it.

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

Well quoted... well quoted. For further details, see my avatar. xD