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Well. I'm not sure about that. The price point of the Vendetta makes many of the Tau's AA options much less efficient. You now have multiple AV 12 fliers to engage with S7 weapons that the Tau pay a non-trivial sum to make skyfire.

This all goes back to the Vendetta having the cost of around a dreadnought or predator. It's insane. And it's so insane that I think that it can stress the AA of even the Tau. Because remember, the Vendettas and all the IG are shooting back!

Tau should not fear Aircraft as much. Lascannons hardly matter against Tau bcause a Heavy boloter may as well BE 3 lascannon!

So a lot of the aircraft options that are fear inducing, like the Heldrake, are less cool against Tau who tend to be (well...historically) much more an MSU and ablative army. My latest plan is to play with 115 models. So when the Heldrake kills 5, I am not sure Tau feel it as acutely. Hehehe.

I'm not saying be an idiot and disregard them in your planning. I am just saying that Tau have plenty of anti-air options and shouldn't really feel AS pressed as other armies when it comes to them.

What does Flyer spam list look like for IG? shouldn't they basically have nothing on the field?

We Should have a decent chance at removing most of whats on the field with our freaky range and infiltrating marker support. At the least we have the tools for it.

I don't think anyone has added yet but what do you guys think of the Death from the sky's add on for tau flyers? getting that d3 marker lights on everything within 12" is kinda cool.

Sorry, Desubot, no such luck. The Vendetta costs no more than a predator. And IG have lots of cheap units. I've seen IG air cav lists at 2K that still fill their deployment zone with 5 Vendettas in reserve!

I fought the 9 Vindetta list with 81 shots a round, filled with Demo vets. Barely tied it. It's just the mot ridiculous combo you can imagine. Painful. Real painful.

and yet... They could be quite vulnrable to Tau.

My question upcoming will be: Do pople still invest heavy in Broadsides? I'll be vry interested to observe which way that goes. Will we see 9 Broadsides? Seems lss necessary for sure. But the firepower... M'lord the firepower.

 Desubot wrote:
What does Flyer spam list look like for IG? shouldn't they basically have nothing on the field?

We Should have a decent chance at removing most of whats on the field with our freaky range and infiltrating marker support. At the least we have the tools for it.

I don't think anyone has added yet but what do you guys think of the Death from the sky's add on for tau flyers? getting that d3 marker lights on everything within 12" is kinda cool.

Lots of T7 board presence due to Artillery Battery's and Sabre Defences Platforms. Look at the revised list and read the comments here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/516897.page

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:

Toasty wrote:Well I can definitely understand why Tau players are upset, I mean you wait 8 years or so and you get a codex (while has a very viable method of play) which has a lot of weaknesses which can easily be exploited by certain armies, and armies with specific army builds. GWs idea of solving it, is by making Tau able to ally everyone. None the less I like others still think with the right build Tau can be just as competitive as any other army, you just need to play test it a little bit I suppose, as was said earlier I really don't think the codex sucks but which methods and which army builds are competitive will come to light in the coming weeks, just give it a little bit of time. A little bit off topic, but I heard a while back, lots of Space Marine players concerned that fluff wise, the Emperor place the Ultramarines near the Tau to protect them as their resistance to chaos holds the key to humanity's salvation from chaos.....or something along those lines. Can I just ask the Tau players who have the codex does it say this in the new Tau codex? If not, is there any fluff that points towards this?

Martel732 wrote:Or the Tau could do what everyone else does to AV 14 and shoot it with melta. I think living armor is gone, so there's no AV 14 I know of that melta can't crack.

Tau have always had an easily exploited weakness... they suck in Assault. That hasn't changed. How have they got any worse than how they were before, especially in terms of net gain/loss? They can still deal with AV14, as Martel said.

Let's go over the gain/loss, and you can tell me if you find it well balanced.

Losses -
Broadsides - str10/ap1, Advanced Stabilization Systems, TA. Reducing overall mobility synthesis with a highly mobile army//reducing firing effectiveness both in accuracy and power.
XV8 Shas'vre/Bodyguard squad - TA Increasing reliance on ML support systems to retain original shooting power.
Vehicles - Mutli-Tracker, Disruption Pod reduction, reducing overall mobility synthesis with a highly mobile army.
Troops - Shas'ui loses access to varied infantry wargear, allowing you to "kit" your troops to respond or work with certain circumstances. Forced to take defensive grenades, increasing the likelihood that your troops will survive initial conflict, leaving enemy troops unable to be fired upon during your shooting phase.

Gains -
Suits - Automatic MT/BSF, saving valuable points and opening up options. Increasing your ability to perform firing actions with Broadsides who really could never afford a MT except on their Shas'ui
Shas'ui - Addition of automatic systems allows you to not require the Shas'ui upgrade to your troops in order to have an effective unit.
Hammerhead - For the points of the '06 codex's hammerhead, you can have one at BS5 with TH, PE - IG, and opening up multiple Overwatch opportunities.
Troops - Kroot become a powerful shooting addition to the army, with extremely expendable points for infiltrating snipers.
Markerlights - Across the board Markerlights became an option you can field everywhere. A reduction of almost 60% of the cost of ML drones, and removal of required PF taking DF makes markerlights an extremely spendable option. Also increasing the power of the cover save removal, while losing the LD subtractions
HQ - A strong addition creates a varied and widely usable HQ addition to any army, and indeed, opens up a lot of new options to you.
Heavy Support - Most units remain the same, XV-88 gains the H4 missile pod to replace the railgun. The biggest change here are the Sniper Drones - BS5 48" rapid fire sniper rifle... incredible. The only drawback is how expensive the kits would cost to get the full 9 drones... >.>
Fast Attack - Again, Pathfinders lose their required DF, and we gain two flyers. I don't plan on fielding them, but they could be fun to have around.
Elites - The Riptide is quite a powerful model, a massive presence on the field. XV-8's become a lot more fieldable, and the presence of automatic Multi-Trackers basically kills off any twin-linked kit, with increased ML support you can ensure shooting stays accurate with two weapons. If we actually CAN utilize two of the same weapon without twin-linking one this will be an enormous buff, but I don't see it happening. They like keeping the selections varied.

I mean, really here, all in all, we saw a lot of power increase, and lost our AV14(from across the table) stopping power. Our fielding options increased tenfold, and our original options that we came to know and love remain mostly intact, with the addition of extremely cheap Markerlight support on the drone level. Honestly, I'm gonna need another KR case just for all the troops and models I need to get to be able to field them. I'm still worried that the intent here was to create a stationary base that we have to skirt around, creating a weak-point to attack in our lines, as opposed to having to cross the battlefield almost twice by the end of the game if played right, but we can counter this by utilization of fast moving drones if that's our intent. I just wish there were more players in the Myrtle Beach, SC area, lol.

 Jancoran wrote:
neither one is a problem for Tau. And thats really what I like to focus on. =)

Yeah Helldrake is probably more of a problem simply becuase the torrent weapon will eat FW and suits as well or better than marines. On the upside we got way more AA than most marine codex.

 Jancoran wrote:
Tau should not fear Aircraft as much. Lascannons hardly matter against Tau bcause a Heavy boloter may as well BE 3 lascannon!

Er, what? How can a weapon that wounds on a 2+, ignores armor, and inflicts instant death "hardly matter" for an army that is built around T4/2W/3+ units?

Mine isn't.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Tau should not fear Aircraft as much. Lascannons hardly matter against Tau bcause a Heavy boloter may as well BE 3 lascannon!

Er, what? How can a weapon that wounds on a 2+, ignores armor, and inflicts instant death "hardly matter" for an army that is built around T4/2W/3+ units?

He's probably not running T4/2W/3+ suits. Which can easily be done with Riptides, Skyrays / Hammerheads, and massed Kroot / FWs / PF. Especially since he mentioned that he runs 115 models at 2000pts.

In which case, no, they don't really matter.

 Jancoran wrote:
Mine isn't.

Then your list sucks. You can't build a viable Tau army without having good targets for lascannons.

Veskrashen wrote:
In which case, no, they don't really matter.

Err, no. Lascannons are awesome against vehicles and MCs. The only way you can avoid caring about lascannons is to bring nothing but Fire Warriors and Kroot, in which case your army sucks because you have a handful of "autocannons" as your only weapon above STR 5 AP 5.

Lol. Peregrine, your lack of imagination continues to astound me. Have we not HAD this discussion before? I think we have.

And you idn't even pay attention to what he was trying to tell you Peregrine. He's pointing out to you that I dont really HAVE but Two armored hulls in that list, and one of them doesn't even start on the board.

So you can take all the bristling Lascannons you want to against me. I'm fine with that. After you kill the ONE hull that matters, all those points are wasted. But sure. you'll kill it and I'll try to look concerned when it happens. Deal?

 Jancoran wrote:
He's pointing out to you that I dont really HAVE but Two armored hulls in that list, and one of them doesn't even start on the board.

Sigh. Try reading the post again. Lascannons are good at killing vehicles, but they're also good at killing battlesuits. To ignore lascannons with Tau you have to remove all of your vehicles AND all of your battlesuits, which leaves you with a crippled army.

Try reading again. He's telling you I dont have any Crisis teams in the force Im talking about.

Dude. Seriouly. Your knee jerk posting without understanding what you're posting on is really... annoying.

 Jancoran wrote:
Try reading again. He's telling you I dont have any Crisis teams in the force Im talking about.

And I'm saying it's not just crisis suits. Lascannons kill Broadsides and Riptides just fine, along with all Tau vehicles. If you have a list that can ignore lascannons then your list sucks.

It sucks when you do get hit by it but we at least benefit from cover while denying the enemies.

You realistically shouldn't have suits tanks or most anything in the open anyway.

Jancoran, im curious as to what your list is. sounds like heavy infantry foot spam

First, im gonna say is anyone who thinks tau need markerlights to shoot effectively are pretty much fully slowed.(and ive seen a lot of them in this post.)

Markerlights in the old codex costed too much to be effective. you literally lost shooting efficiency 9 times out of 10 because you needed to use full squads of pathfinders with an overpriced devilfish, and then you had limited effective targets due to range/mobility limitations as well as some armys just not having any big juicy units to dump ammo into.

Im happy about the pathfinder buff but im dissapinted with the shield drone, stealthsuit and broadside nerfs. The firepower around the rest of the dex has gone wayyy wayyyyy up however, and we have the ability to spam out intercept units like nobody's business.

Overall the dex got stronger but I feel like the entire playstyle of the army has been overhauled and Its going to take a lot of time, effort and money to figure out how to make it work all over again. I am a little dissapointed because I finally felt that i had 6th edition tau down to a science.

 Jancoran wrote:
Try reading again. He's telling you I dont have any Crisis teams in the force Im talking about.

Dude. Seriouly. Your knee jerk posting without understanding what you're posting on is really... annoying.

What is your list? That'll solve this circle jerk of "lol lascannons can't hurt me" and "yes they can" by actually showing what it can or cannot hurt.

There's a lot of stress being shed over Lascannons (and anything else str8 and greater) being able to murder suits, but that's been the way that the Tau have died since 4E when I started. The situation you're describing (Where tons lascannons are on the field shooting you) straight up never happens, and if something like it does, then you've got an option to alter your deployment pre-game when you see what they're bringing.

The battlesuit unit that falls to heavy lascannon fire is one that didn't bring enough drones to eat shots for them, or failed to return to cover. In either of those situations you're going to die. period. I've played TONS of marine lists, and with exception to the GK when they've got 15 models on the table at 2000 points, it's really not difficult to bring marines down. Honestly it's your greatest hope that they just deploy so they're sitting in the back of the field. Then it's on them to outshoot you, rather than taking advantage of your weakness in close combat and dropping things in a foot away.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Try reading again. He's telling you I dont have any Crisis teams in the force Im talking about.

If you have a list that can ignore lascannons then your list sucks.

I especially liked this part of your comment.

If you could post that one more time, I'd appreciate it. It gives me something I can hand to my opponent before we get started to inform them of the easy time they are about to have.

 Jancoran wrote:
I especially liked this part of your comment.

If you could post that one more time, I'd appreciate it. It gives me something I can hand to my opponent before we get started to inform them of the easy time they are about to have.

Sigh. So when are you going to post your lascannon-ignoring list that is so awesome?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Anbutou wrote:
I've played TONS of marine lists, and with exception to the GK when they've got 15 models on the table at 2000 points, it's really not difficult to bring marines down.

The game is not just Tau vs. MEQs. Marines might not be able to bring LC spam, but IG certainly will, along with a lot of other things that battlesuits fear. And many of those things will be protected by dozens of meatshields you have to kill before you can even try to wound the real guns.

IG has always been our direct counter. When did this suddenly change? The ability to field massive amounts of units on one heavy gun, or drop multitudes of pie plates overhead pretty much ends our games before they begin. How was this supposed to be different? Confer automatic invulnerable saves to every unit that we own and reallocate to a t6 across the board? You're in for a hard fight when you face a competent Guard player, that doesn't change no matter what list you're running.

Do you really think SM smiles when they see a well built guard list deploy across from them? We've got one of the most variable, most adaptable armies in the game, we can build a list pretty much ENTIRELY out of deep-strike eligible models, we can avoid killing grounds like no ones business. IG is just one of those battles that's nearly over before it begins. You take this into account when facing them.

 Blaggard wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Try reading again. He's telling you I dont have any Crisis teams in the force Im talking about.

Dude. Seriouly. Your knee jerk posting without understanding what you're posting on is really... annoying.

What is your list? That'll solve this circle jerk of "lol lascannons can't hurt me" and "yes they can" by actually showing what it can or cannot hurt.

You have to understand that I have explained this to Peregrine IN PARTICULAR, ad nauseum. I have explained to him how to win sans Crisis Suits and so on, haverefferred him on to the blog which has ample m,aterial on this subject, and NOT just on one occassion. He has rejected and rebuffed it every time. So putting up a list wont solve his lack of imagination. He'll just tell me how "sucky" it is. And that's different from now...how? Lol. Big circle. I'll just let it rest I think.

To wade into this mess, he has a point. I 100% believe that you can build a list that doesn't have crisis suits. But a list that "ignores" lascannons?

Besides, the example of 9 vendettas is a bad one. They are unmanageable for most lists at 4-5, and that leaves tons of points for more IG killy death.

 Jancoran wrote:
I have explained to him how to win sans Crisis Suits and so on

Again with the same "no crisis suits" strawman. Please stop ignoring the fact that lascannons also efficiently kill all Tau vehicles as well as Broadsides and Riptides, therefore any "lascannon proof" list would have to remove all of those as well.

haverefferred him on to the blog which has ample m,aterial on this subject, and NOT just on one occassion.

What, your blog saying "rail rifle Pathfinders are good"? That's well short of making an entire list.

Oh, and your blog that you have referred me to contains exactly one new-Tau army list (in the battle report), and that list contains crisis suits, Riptides and multiple vehicles. So no, you haven't done anything to explain how your lascannon-proof list is supposed to work.

He'll just tell me how "sucky" it is.

So you admit that it's a bad list and you're refusing to post it because then everyone will see how weak your argument is?

Martel732 wrote:
To wade into this mess, he has a point. I 100% believe that you can build a list that doesn't have crisis suits. But a list that "ignores" lascannons?

Besides, the example of 9 vendettas is a bad one. They are unmanageable for most lists at 4-5, and that leaves tons of points for more IG killy death.

I dont know what "unmanageable" means. My opponent managed his Vindettas just fine!

I've been playing without Crisis teams for years. I have a lot more reason to play with them now than I used to and i did test them out recently in a test list, which wasn't a tourney list. If peregrine had actually read more than a sentence on the blog he'd have known that.

Having said that, the Lascannon is just a really expensive single shot. Against an army with 117 models, the Lascannon is not causing me much angst. I am far more concerned with Artillery, Lootas and the like. High volume is the way to go against it, not Lascannons.

i dont get the markerlight hate. in the old codex, markerlights could be used to boost BS if you needed it, and generally you would have 3-6 markers a turn. the REAL benefit was to remove cover and make LD checks impossible.

as far as i know thats still available, but in infinitie more abundance. markers everywhere for cheaper, and its not 1 marker per effect anymore, so its much better. remember when a single marker hit reduced cover by 1? now its 2 to just flat out ignore it.

tau have ALWAYS been a "team style" army. every unit had to work together with others to be effective, individually they sucked, but when comboed in with other units, suddenly tey got wicked powerful. the same seems true in the new book. by themselves unit stink.... but the theme of getting your units to work together for victory is very obvious. the book is full of units that are force multipliers, and if you can use those well, you will win without an issue.

but i guess since the tau didnt get BS 6 t5 2++ guys as 15pt troop options, and str 10 ap 1 on everything that means they suck.... h8rs gun h8 huh,

My question is, WHY DONT PATHFINDERS HAVE INFILTRATE?!?!?!? lol it just fits them sooo much that I feel its a typo that they dont have it.

Wolfnid420 wrote:
My question is, WHY DONT PATHFINDERS HAVE INFILTRATE?!?!?!? lol it just fits them sooo much that I feel its a typo that they dont have it.

I would have been more interested in Stealth and/or Moves Through Cover with them to be honest.