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From wrote:
Tau, a realists review(Or how I learned to stop worrying and take Ork allies)

Or SM or IG.

But that is 6th. I haven't built or devised any armies in 6th that wouldn't have taken allies. I find them necessary.

LValx wrote:

From wrote:
Tau, a realists review(Or how I learned to stop worrying and take Ork allies)

Or SM or IG.

But that is 6th. I haven't built or devised any armies in 6th that wouldn't have taken allies. I find them necessary.

They obviously buff the army a lot, as an ally's strength can fill in your weakness, but i for one like to not take allies, as when I collect an army, i want to collect models from that army and not another, and it seems kind of stupid when you see some combinations, the only allies i would really do would be SM/CSM and Imperial guard, but that's only to provide a realistic imperium battlefield experience

Not slating anyone who wants to take allies, it benefits you and can be fluffy, but i'm not fond of t myself, and plus, I'md rather review the units in the book for this discussion rather than just say 'I can take allies'.

Well, I think in 6th, when considering a codex you have to consider the allied combos you can take. In a competitive setting it makes more sense to fill in gaps if you can, than not to due to fluff reasons.

When designing an army or reviewing a codex in the current edition you absolutely must consider all the rules, not just the codices, allies are now an integral part of the game and as such GW should be "Balancing" armies around that fact.

That said... Tau have some glaring flaws, that's fine, use the rules to help balance out the weak points of your army by adding in allies. It also fits nicely with the fluff considering Tau have used Ork auxiliaries in the past, eventually having to put them down, but for a time I'm sure it was awesome. You can recreate that awesome using the rules!

TL;DR

Don't bash a 6th edition codex without first considering all options

Yeah I love the modeling options. I plan on converting lizard men for half my Orks, using Orks for half and converting some other alien auxiliary as my Pathfinders. This will give me a lot of variety visually and also give it an interesting unified "greater good" feel.

 GoDz BuZzSaW wrote:

I personally love how the Meta has changed,

Also, i too would like to see this 117 model list, i doubt it's very effective if you have no suits or vehicles as you said lascannons won't be a 'big deal', what happens if you go up against a Mech Army? Apart from EMP grenades and the odd S7 pathfinder ion rifle you won' have any heavy weapons so you're pretty much screwed.
.

Let me give you a very short history. My list, which won 6 tournies and countless best gnerals (my paint aint great) included, Roughly:
Broadside
Broadside
6 FW
6 Fw + Devilfish
6 Fw +Devilish
10 Kroot+6 hounds
10 Kroot+ 6 Hounds
Obligatory commander with some stuff on him most important being the Positional Relay
4 Piranhas (fusion, TL etc)
11 Stingwings
8 Pathfinders + Devilfish.

I deployed the Broadsides, commander and Pathfinders and nothing else to start the game. Yup really.

Do you see any Crisis teams? Do you see a plethora of Broadsides? Do you see Hammerheads? A hedgehog of Fire Warriors? No you do not. So in mech HEAVY 5E, I won and won a lot. No amount of theory hammering is going to change those wins into losses! It's just not.

It is true that some have not learned to play without a Crisis team in their list. I RESPECT that you can win with Crisis Teams (a person who I taught to play has won Best Overall in the last four tourneys he's been in, using my strategy and he plays with Crisis teams). I dont feel a need to villainize them. Thy've proven they CAN work also. But... you dont need them to win. It's jut a lack of imagination that would cause someone to say so.

Most people would love to have the win totals my so-called "sucky" Tau got. You cannot win them all...obviously... but I never said to myelf after a game "oh if ONLY I had those suits".

As this is a tactics thread, it seems moe valuable to talk about HOW to use units rather than getting all hung up on whether you should at all. It's amazing how much more gets accomplished when you think positively.

 Jancoran wrote:

 GoDz BuZzSaW wrote:

I personally love how the Meta has changed,

Also, i too would like to see this 117 model list, i doubt it's very effective if you have no suits or vehicles as you said lascannons won't be a 'big deal', what happens if you go up against a Mech Army? Apart from EMP grenades and the odd S7 pathfinder ion rifle you won' have any heavy weapons so you're pretty much screwed.
.

Let me give you a very short history. My list, which won 6 tournies and countless best gnerals (my paint aint great) included, Roughly:
Broadside
Broadside
6 FW
6 Fw + Devilfish
6 Fw +Devilish
10 Kroot+6 hounds
10 Kroot+ 6 Hounds
Obligatory commander with some stuff on him most important being the Positional Relay
4 Piranhas (fusion, TL etc)
11 Stingwings
8 Pathfinders + Devilfish.

I deployed the Broadsides, commander and Pathfinders and nothing else to start the game. Yup really.

Do you see any Crisis teams? Do you see a plethora of Broadsides? Do you see Hammerheads? A hedgehog of Fire Warriors? No you do not. So in mech HEAVY 5E, I won and won a lot. No amount of theory hammering is going to change those wins into losses! It's just not.

It is true that some have not learned to play without a Crisis team in their list. I RESPECT that you can win with Crisis Teams (a person who I taught to play has won Best Overall in the last four tourneys he's been in, using my strategy and he plays with Crisis teams). I dont feel a need to villainize them. Thy've proven they CAN work also. But... you dont need them to win. It's jut a lack of imagination that would cause someone to say so.

Most people would love to have the win totals my so-called "sucky" Tau got. You cannot win them all...obviously... but I never said to myelf after a game "oh if ONLY I had those suits".

As this is a tactics thread, it seems moe valuable to talk about HOW to use units rather than getting all hung up on whether you should at all. It's amazing how much more gets accomplished when you think positively.

Id love to know your tactics. and got any battle reports to back some of these wins?

Yup. go to my blog. Its there. I fought a Quad Land Raider list with it once!

http://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2012/01/space-marine-vs-tau-video-battle-report.html

There are two BattleReports in January 012, but this is the video one, and people seem to like those best. But there are many more there.

Actually if you poke around you'll find many battl reports for other o-called "odd" armies I hve played.

Aun Va in a broadside unit; bring all your lascannons. ;-) Still you're bound to eventually roll low enough to kill one or two of them eventually but low-ap weapons get laughed at by Aun Va.

Aun'Va is cool. I used him to lead an assault based Tau army. In that army, i DId use Crisis Teams. But that was just a or-fun, what-the-hell kind of thing to see if I could do it. there's a Batrep up of a game against Chaos Space marines using my assault Tau. Hilariously fun game. Dont take it to tournies though. No no no.

"yeah, but what do Lascannons excel against that the "meta" is really big on?"

I don't care so much about meta. I care about killing things my BA ASM can't effectively punch to death. To me, heavy support is there to kill stuff with high T, high W, and 2+ armor. I make an exception for whirlwinds because they can ignore cover.

Thats cool, though slightly dated it seems, hope to see you doing some with the 6th ed codex

Well its a 5E game so yeah. Makes the point though.

I did one for 6th already:
http://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/04/tau-vs-space-marine-battle-report.html

It isn't video but its there. I dont do many vieo reports. A lot of effort and really its mostly just for my own amusement. I'm not out to pove anything with Battle reports. I just like writing, I think.

I'm just reading alot of bitching and moaning in this thread because people can't do what they did in 5th edition and have it work.

Look, every army has weaknesses. Tau is no exception.

No, you can't spam S10 AP1 anymore...but let's face it, if you could still spam S10 AP1 w/ Skyfire or Interceptor, it would essentially make flyers DOA, and we all know that GW loves money way too much to let that happen.

So, instead, you get a cheaper XV88 that doesn't have quite the stopping power of the previous edition, but still enough firepower between the missiles and the HRR that light vehicles and MCs will try to stay out of it's sights. And flyers don't exactly operate with impunity around it either.

The loss of Targeting Arrays was also much lamented. I used TAs on my bodyguards too; this individual wargear buff has been replaced by the wargear commanders carry and the buffing effects of Ethereals. This emphasizes an army that is reliant on the sum of it's parts to be truly effective.

Our Fast Attack slots have lots of choices, but few are better than Pathfinders or Marker Drones because they're an incredible force multiplier. They're the boon and the bane of the Tau. Markerlights can allow you to make a unit completely disappear. The units shooting at it get a BS buff, they lose their cover, seeker missiles come raining down...no other army can focus fire like Tau.

So, it naturally follows that whenever Tau lose their laser pointers, the army suffers. Pathfinders, of course, become a priority target...but at what cost? If you have enough redundancy, there's no way your opponent can kill all your markerlights before the end of the game; it also ensures that he'll be diverting firepower from your scoring units and your heavy hitters. It doesn't matter if he killed all your Markerlights by Turn 4 if you're sitting on 3 out of 5 objectives by Turn 5.

 Jancoran wrote:
Well its a 5E game so yeah. Makes the point though.

I did one for 6th already:
http://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/04/tau-vs-space-marine-battle-report.html

It isn't video but its there. I dont do many vieo reports. A lot of effort and really its mostly just for my own amusement. I'm not out to pove anything with Battle reports. I just like writing, I think.

Meh cant watch video reps anyway at work. but the textrep was nice. kinda funny with that faulty nova reactor catching fire.

 RogueFox wrote:
I'm just reading alot of bitching and moaning in this thread because people can't do what they did in 5th edition and have it work.

Look, every army has weaknesses. Tau is no exception.

No, you can't spam S10 AP1 anymore...but let's face it, if you could still spam S10 AP1 w/ Skyfire or Interceptor, it would essentially make flyers DOA, and we all know that GW loves money way too much to let that happen.

So, instead, you get a cheaper XV88 that doesn't have quite the stopping power of the previous edition, but still enough firepower between the missiles and the HRR that light vehicles and MCs will try to stay out of it's sights. And flyers don't exactly operate with impunity around it either.

The loss of Targeting Arrays was also much lamented. I used TAs on my bodyguards too; this individual wargear buff has been replaced by the wargear commanders carry and the buffing effects of Ethereals. This emphasizes an army that is reliant on the sum of it's parts to be truly effective.

Our Fast Attack slots have lots of choices, but few are better than Pathfinders or Marker Drones because they're an incredible force multiplier. They're the boon and the bane of the Tau. Markerlights can allow you to make a unit completely disappear. The units shooting at it get a BS buff, they lose their cover, seeker missiles come raining down...no other army can focus fire like Tau.

So, it naturally follows that whenever Tau lose their laser pointers, the army suffers. Pathfinders, of course, become a priority target...but at what cost? If you have enough redundancy, there's no way your opponent can kill all your markerlights before the end of the game; it also ensures that he'll be diverting firepower from your scoring units and your heavy hitters. It doesn't matter if he killed all your Markerlights by Turn 4 if you're sitting on 3 out of 5 objectives by Turn 5.

The problem though is that other armies can generally field many different kinds of armies, while Tau are usually restricted to a few builds. IG can bring air cav, blobs, tank squads; Marines can field rhinos/razorback spam, bike armies, terminator troops, drop pod lists, and so on, Necrons only have two troop units but they can still mech up or footslog fairly effectively and have flying dedicated transports. Lets put it this way, when I prep to go against an IG player and ask for advice, everyone's first question will be "What type of list is he running?" while if I asked for advice about Tau people probably wouldn't bother since the know the exact list +/- a few details.

And the whole problem with the "Sum of the parts" argument is that all you need to do is remove the leg, and they can't form Voltron. Tau are very vulnerable to this because our support units have always been high priority targets and probably even more so now. To put it in comparison, how much easier do you think it is to kill the Dakka banner on the DA bike horde than to take down a squad of 5+ T3 pathfinders? Do you really think they will devote the same kind of firepower to take down pathfinders as they would to take down Crisis suits and other heavy firepower?

What are the feasible sources of markerlights other than Pathfinders? If any? I'd use them, if so.

I dont agree. The army in my batrep is vry different from the one Im using tonight. I plan to do a batrep on it, so be watching for that.

As for someone NOT asking "what kind of army is he running"... well... If you were to play me, you might wish you had asked the question ahead of time. I might surprise you a bit.

Do not despair SavageConvoy. Your job, if you want to debunk these false and insolent rumors of sameness, would be to play something that IS unique and learn to win doing it and stop listenin to all the "oneway to win" garbage.

Thats what I've done. Others have too. Once you wrap your brain around more than just math and you start thinking about movement as a weapon, time as a weapon and misdirection as weapons, the list changes and morphs to meet your mental picture. Good plans WILL work.

Try something new. Try something others dont do. then build around it.

how about everyone build a GOOd list that is based around Pinning. Or prchance a blast heavy Tau list. Try something new.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 RogueFox wrote:
I'm just reading alot of bitching and moaning in this thread because people can't do what they did in 5th edition and have it work.

Look, every army has weaknesses. Tau is no exception.

No, you can't spam S10 AP1 anymore...but let's face it, if you could still spam S10 AP1 w/ Skyfire or Interceptor, it would essentially make flyers DOA, and we all know that GW loves money way too much to let that happen.

So, instead, you get a cheaper XV88 that doesn't have quite the stopping power of the previous edition, but still enough firepower between the missiles and the HRR that light vehicles and MCs will try to stay out of it's sights. And flyers don't exactly operate with impunity around it either.

The loss of Targeting Arrays was also much lamented. I used TAs on my bodyguards too; this individual wargear buff has been replaced by the wargear commanders carry and the buffing effects of Ethereals. This emphasizes an army that is reliant on the sum of it's parts to be truly effective.

Our Fast Attack slots have lots of choices, but few are better than Pathfinders or Marker Drones because they're an incredible force multiplier. They're the boon and the bane of the Tau. Markerlights can allow you to make a unit completely disappear. The units shooting at it get a BS buff, they lose their cover, seeker missiles come raining down...no other army can focus fire like Tau.

So, it naturally follows that whenever Tau lose their laser pointers, the army suffers. Pathfinders, of course, become a priority target...but at what cost? If you have enough redundancy, there's no way your opponent can kill all your markerlights before the end of the game; it also ensures that he'll be diverting firepower from your scoring units and your heavy hitters. It doesn't matter if he killed all your Markerlights by Turn 4 if you're sitting on 3 out of 5 objectives by Turn 5.

The problem though is that other armies can generally field many different kinds of armies, while Tau are usually restricted to a few builds. IG can bring air cav, blobs, tank squads; Marines can field rhinos/razorback spam, bike armies, terminator troops, drop pod lists, and so on, Necrons only have two troop units but they can still mech up or footslog fairly effectively and have flying dedicated transports. Lets put it this way, when I prep to go against an IG player and ask for advice, everyone's first question will be "What type of list is he running?" while if I asked for advice about Tau people probably wouldn't bother since the know the exact list +/- a few details.

And the whole problem with the "Sum of the parts" argument is that all you need to do is remove the leg, and they can't form Voltron. Tau are very vulnerable to this because our support units have always been high priority targets and probably even more so now. To put it in comparison, how much easier do you think it is to kill the Dakka banner on the DA bike horde than to take down a squad of 5+ T3 pathfinders? Do you really think they will devote the same kind of firepower to take down pathfinders as they would to take down Crisis suits and other heavy firepower?

to be fair it's exactly the same with nids, and if you are facing CSM now you always prepare to face at last 1 hell turkey.

 Jancoran wrote:
I dont agree. The army in my batrep is vry different from the one Im using tonight. I plan to do a batrep on it, so be watching for that.

As for someone NOT asking "what kind of army is he running"... well... If you were to play me, you might wish you had asked the question ahead of time. I might surprise you a bit.

Do not despair SavageConvoy. Your job, if you want to debunk these false and insolent rumors of sameness, would be to play something that IS unique and learn to win doing it and stop listenin to all the "oneway to win" garbage.

Thats what I've done. Others have too. Once you wrap your brain around more than just math and you start thinking about movement as a weapon, time as a weapon and misdirection as weapons, the list changes and morphs to meet your mental picture. Good plans WILL work.

Try something new. Try something others dont do. then build around it.

how about everyone build a GOOd list that is based around Pinning. Or prchance a blast heavy Tau list. Try something new.

I think this is a really cool idea, but 40k has a lot of armies with access to fearless. That would be my first concern.

Its not like those pinning weapons dont do damage. =). The pinning just makes it doubly annoying.

... Then why make a list based on Pinning? They will just get shrugged off by most armies anyways, and it's far too unreliable to base anything around.

So make a list based off weapons that deal damage and have the offchance to pin? Like... Just... about every Tau list.... Ever?

Meh, Convoy, I think there are lots of different builds. Some will be predominantly mech based and use Sky Rays/Hammerheads/Devilfish. Some will be Suit heavy. Some folks with invest a lot into Kroot. Since all of the slots are varied and pretty good, i'd say you'll see a lot of variety in army builds.

 Jancoran wrote:

 GoDz BuZzSaW wrote:

I personally love how the Meta has changed,

Also, i too would like to see this 117 model list, i doubt it's very effective if you have no suits or vehicles as you said lascannons won't be a 'big deal', what happens if you go up against a Mech Army? Apart from EMP grenades and the odd S7 pathfinder ion rifle you won' have any heavy weapons so you're pretty much screwed.
.

Let me give you a very short history. My list, which won 6 tournies and countless best gnerals (my paint aint great) included, Roughly:
Broadside
Broadside
6 FW
6 Fw + Devilfish
6 Fw +Devilish
10 Kroot+6 hounds
10 Kroot+ 6 Hounds
Obligatory commander with some stuff on him most important being the Positional Relay
4 Piranhas (fusion, TL etc)
11 Stingwings
8 Pathfinders + Devilfish.

I'm sorry, but how is this list "lascannon-proof"? You have all your anti-tank in stuff that's prime targets for Lascannons. It doesn't matter how much you won with it or not, what matters is that it's hardly Lascannon-proof. No one ever said anything about a no-suit list being crap. You're still arguing as if someone did.

He never said it was "lascannon proof" just merely that lascannons didnt scare him.

I wouldn't say that Lascannons aren't scary with that list, the devilfi, Piranhas and Broadsides are all vulnerable targets, how are you going to win a game with 3 squads of 6 FWs if their protection gets lost T1? Even without Theory Hammering, you opponents must have been pretty special or running the same kind of 'unorthodox' list as you are to be winning as much as you claim. Also, I don't think 79 models is 117, just sayin', you might want to check the maths on that one.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
... Then why make a list based on Pinning? They will just get shrugged off by most armies anyways, and it's far too unreliable to base anything around.

So make a list based off weapons that deal damage and have the offchance to pin? Like... Just... about every Tau list.... Ever?

It was simply an idea, a creative push. If you want to find a rationalization not to do it, great. Doesn't matter to me. More than half the armies are NOT fearless however, so rushing to point out that a minority of lists will be immune to ONE of its cool tricks is...I guess... not that relevant to me. You get damage output, but the added benefit of making people stand still. No downside that I can see.

 Jancoran wrote:
More than half the armies are NOT fearless however, so rushing to point out that a minority of lists will be immune to ONE of its cool tricks is...I guess... not that relevant to me.

It's not just fearless armies. LD 9/10 armies will rarely be pinned, and anything with a re-roll on pinning is pretty much immune. And of course any army that lacks durable units (MSU, IG, etc) doesn't care about pinning because all of their units are probably killed entirely instead of pinned. It's nice when pinning happens, but it's insane to build your army around it.

You get damage output, but the added benefit of making people stand still. No downside that I can see.

The downside is that you're taking sub-optimal choices just because they have pinning.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 GoDz BuZzSaW wrote:

I personally love how the Meta has changed,

Also, i too would like to see this 117 model list, i doubt it's very effective if you have no suits or vehicles as you said lascannons won't be a 'big deal', what happens if you go up against a Mech Army? Apart from EMP grenades and the odd S7 pathfinder ion rifle you won' have any heavy weapons so you're pretty much screwed.
.

Let me give you a very short history. My list, which won 6 tournies and countless best gnerals (my paint aint great) included, Roughly:
Broadside
Broadside
6 FW
6 Fw + Devilfish
6 Fw +Devilish
10 Kroot+6 hounds
10 Kroot+ 6 Hounds
Obligatory commander with some stuff on him most important being the Positional Relay
4 Piranhas (fusion, TL etc)
11 Stingwings
8 Pathfinders + Devilfish.

I'm sorry, but how is this list "lascannon-proof"? You have all your anti-tank in stuff that's prime targets for Lascannons. It doesn't matter how much you won with it or not, what matters is that it's hardly Lascannon-proof. No one ever said anything about a no-suit list being crap. You're still arguing as if someone did.

I didn't ever say THIS list was Lascannon proof, actually. So...I can't tell you how its Lacannon proof. You tell me.

 Jancoran wrote:
I didn't ever say THIS list was Lascannon proof, actually. So...I can't tell you how its Lacannon proof. You tell me.

So post the list then. Otherwise we'll have to assume that the quoted list is the one you are talking about.