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 Vaktathi wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
For those of us on the low end of the totem pole power wise, you could ask yourself the same question about Imperial Guard.

They have a seemingly unbreakable and unlimited amount of infantry, ridiculously undercosted batle tanks disguised as "transports", nearly impervious to shooting bigger tanks, objectively the best fliers in the game,

While some of this is true in a sense, they likely aren't all true at once in any one list.

Oh, I agree. My point was you can say such things about any army. It's a matter of perspective.

Tau can't do all those things either.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

bogalubov wrote:

The OP even said that he doesn't mind losing as long as the decisions of positioning and movement had meaning.

Those things don't lose meaning, they become even more important.

I think its getting a bit melodramatic in here... Early Warning Overrides are nice, but you do have to take a "meaningful sacrifice" as each unit type has limited slots for support equipment, and there is more than 1 useful thing to put in each slot.

Tau are effectively the extreme end of the CC spectrum and therefore must shoot things to death. On the other hand, if you actually get anything into combat with them they lose bigtime. Not only is a full squad of FWs likely to run away from and get overrun by only 2 or 3 CC troops, but while they're in combat getting whittled down a relatively large portion of the army shooting effectiveness has gone. In other armies the balance between CC and shooting is a bit more even and there are usually some pretty hard hitting CC options to use as countercharge.

Overwatch is still of marginal effectiveness and if you roll up a flank, then you still limit the amount of Tau units shooting at you. If the Tau army bunches up to maximise the overwatch benefit then they are massively vulnerable to blasts and templates, which are readily available to all armies, even CC armies.

In terms of ignoring cover, you need a hell of a lot of markerlights to allow 1 or 2 units to take this benefit, and if a unit is only firing markerlights its not actually doing any damage. This boils down to a Tau army being pretty much optimised to focus on one target at a time. Sure the targeted unit is likely to evaporate, so go for MSUs and rush as much as possible forward at a time.

I remember feeling very frustrated in earlier editions about the power of close combat armies. One of my first Tau games saw a Death Company squad move about 120" in one game and massacre 2/3rds of my army by consolidating into nearby units. however, once you get used to the tactics required to take a particular army down, the balance restores itself.

bogalubov wrote:I think you're missing the OP's point. It's not about being overpowered. Both tau and IG can be beaten. It's the fact that the tau take all thought out of the game. There's no point in seeking cover saves. There's no point in outflanking. Tau make multiple phases of the game irrelevant.

The OP even said that he doesn't mind losing as long as the decisions of positioning and movement had meaning.

Exactly.

I mean, at least against a guard gunline, they're really vulnerable against assault armies, and fast armies (especially deepstrikers and outflankers). They've got tanks, while are very vulnerable to large blast spam, rather than monstrous creatures, which sort of just ignore them. Their stuff is still in line of sight, so you can still shoot them, and only two serious artillery pieces can shoot over cover, but neither of them are good against vehicles (or, in the case of the basilisk, much of anything).

Gunlines are boring to play against. No doubt. At least against a guard gunline you get to DO stuff.

And really, I think this is a meta shift. Leafblowers were so good, that the codices (and rules editions) after it had to get progressively better at breaking up gunlines. This, however, has apparently caused a backlash amongst people who apparently WANT gunlines.

For example, you can beat a gunline by deepstriking, so they made tau be able to intercept things easily and without penalty. You can beat a gunline with fast units, so they gave tau long range guns that ignore cover (both the usual kind, and jink saves). You can beat gunlines with close combat, so they gave tau speedbump units while the whole army gets to overwatch against them when they try and assault.

But, really, it's not just a matter of power. Adding a newer, better gunline army is crappy, but not a dealbreaker. It's the WAY they constructed it. If the only way to have a chance to do anything against a gunline is to do nothing by bringing a gunline, then I really don't get the point of it all. At least, against Tau.

DarknessEternal wrote:

bogalubov wrote:The OP even said that he doesn't mind losing as long as the decisions of positioning and movement had meaning.

Those things don't lose meaning, they become even more important.

Why?

What is the point of movement vis a vis terrain if your opponent is just going to ignore it? You might as well be playing on a blank table. What is the point of your movement if your opponent is always in range with their guns, but can then scoot away after they're done shooting to be out of range of yours?

I think bogalubov said it best when he said it makes the game more thoughtless. You use fewer rules, have fewer inroads for strategy, and things become a lot more obvious.

Flinty wrote:Tau are effectively the extreme end of the CC spectrum and therefore must shoot things to death. On the other hand, if you actually get anything into combat with them they lose bigtime.

But they don't. You rush in, eat an entire army of overwatch, then kill a single unit in an MSU army (so, not accomplishing much), and then you get shot at by said entire other shooty army again with all the attending benefits.

CC is already pretty much a joke in 6th ed to begin with, but against Tau it's straight-up pointless.

It's only a drawback if it's a serious liability, which CC isn't, in this case.

Flinty wrote:In terms of ignoring cover, you need a hell of a lot of markerlights to allow 1 or 2 units to take this benefit, and if a unit is only firing markerlights its not actually doing any damage.

So, in every game I've seen at my store so far, it was a non-challenge to get at least two markerlights on at least two different units. Yeah, those firewarriors didn't get to shoot (at targets they couldn't hurt anyways), but once the markerlights are done, then the riptides and broadsides throw their high-strength, low-ap shots at them and just wipe them off the board.

You can't exactly advance against an army that gets to pick off your closest few units for free every turn.

I mean, last night I saw a game against ravenwing. The closest bikes never got to use a jink save, and Tau have plenty of Ap2 and Ap3 weapons. After the SECOND round of Tau shooting, the ravenwing player had sammael and just a couple of bikes on the table. The bikes could either repeat that travesty on the bottom of their turn 2, or charge in. They did. Only Sammael was left after overwatch fire from everything.

The entire game for him was pretty much over before his second player turn, and it WAS over before his third. Sammael killed some pathfinders and was then riptide+broadside+pulse weaponed to death.

In this case the fact that he was fast didn't matter, because everything was always in range. The fact that he had jink saves didn't matter, because a combination of markerlights and volume of fire made it irrelevant. The fact that he could get into close combat quickly was pointless because he was all but killed by overwatch, and then, after running into a speedbump, was tabled.

I can't even begin to imagine what a fun game for a ravenwing player would look like against Tau.

If you think CC is a joke then you are doing it wrong. Sorry but it still decides an awful lot of games.

The less models you have, the more frustrating playing tau will be. I lost 10 models on overwatch. As a marine player, I cry. As an ork player, I laugh and chop me up some sushi.

The point i'm making is, every army has it's rock-paper-scissors equivalent. You might not like playing tau with your army, and tau won't like playing a super-quick assault army with little to no vehicles like daemons.

Tau just happens to be the scissors to your paper.

 Ailaros wrote:

Flinty wrote:Tau are effectively the extreme end of the CC spectrum and therefore must shoot things to death. On the other hand, if you actually get anything into combat with them they lose bigtime.

But they don't. You rush in, eat an entire army of overwatch,

That's one of the major things people are having trouble wrapping their heads around; it's a paradigm shift.

You can't eat Tau in assault with one unit. They welcome your deathstar. If you want to assault Tau, you have to assault as an army.

Tau kill one unit at a time because of markerlights, but everyone has it in their head that it's just one unit doing it. It's multiple units of fire, just most of those units did no actual damage. When you fire 3 units at one, don't you expect that one to die? It's a semantic difference, not a practical one.

Tau upset the paradigm, and people react poorly to change.

All of your examples about "closest units" is the problem. Make your army all the closest units. Then your only losing as many as you would have before and all these mysterious Tau magical abilities function exactly the same as everyone else's.

There's a certain level of irony here...

For me, IG are the least amount of fun to play against. Reinforced gunline with a bunch of suicide units that you just have to take their firepower and weather it before you can act against it, heavy arty that just sits back and shells everything.

Maybe this is just payback? Also, you're seeing mountains for mole hills. IG have tons of 36"+ range weapons. The stuff that ignores cover (besides markerlights, which are only 36" range) is all sub 30". I'd think Tau hate IG games. You just sit their and shell them with everything. You can build almost any type of army and still out gun them.

By playin a speedy ork army.

 Lobukia wrote:
Also, you're seeing mountains for mole hills. IG have tons of 36"+ range weapons.

In particular, they have 36"+ range weapons that also ignore cover. They've had this for like 6 years now, it's still a mystery why it's considered so bad.

Kill their markerlights, then their suits, then you win the game. Seriously it's not that hard, especially as guard.

Once again, I don't care about beating Tau. That's not the point.

It's not a matter of winning a game, but to have any reasonable chance to get to participate in it at all. Without needing to either play tau, or play a gunline yourself.

With all due respect to the OP, it seems like he's made up his mind that Tau are boring to play against; nothing anyone says in this thread is going to change his mind. The thread seems more an attempt at a rant (which is perfectly fine by me) than a genuine request for ideas.

wfischer wrote:
With all due respect to the OP, it seems like he's made up his mind that Tau are boring to play against; nothing anyone says in this thread is going to change his mind. The thread seems more an attempt at a rant (which is perfectly fine by me) than a genuine request for ideas.

This.

I don't know why people continue to argue this, OP has obviously made up his mind that Tau make everything pointless and no amount of trivial details like "facts" will convince him otherwise.

To the OP: if you really believe that gaining cover saves is the end-all way to have fun in this game, then you won't have fun playing versus Tau.

On the other hand, cover saves are only one way that terrain can be used. You can deny them shots altogether. Interceptor only has value if you intend to bring units in from reserve.

Playing against any gunline is a bit like solving a puzzle. The gunline player sets up the puzzle, and you have to figure out how to crack it. There's always a way though. The thing is, the way to crack Tau isn't the same way that you crack guard. The tricks you use against guard gunlines are the exact ones that Tau have the tools to defend against. That doesn't mean there aren't other ways to solve the puzzle.

If solving gunline puzzles isn't something you enjoy, well, then you're right, you won't have that much fun versus Tau. But to say there's no interaction is false. It's just that much of that interaction is front-loaded into the deployment phase, and the game watches it unfold.

I've played against Tau as IG and DA for a long time now (best friend plays Tau), and I have to say it has been a GREAT way for me to learn about a unit's survivability and the best way to get it into combat.

While they have some good AT weapons, they definitely can't handle a ton of AV14, and artillery is great to bombard their troops into oblivion since their pulse rifles destroy guardsmen.

Pretty much every unit in the guard codex is a threat to one or more Tau units, making their target priority pretty tough.

Oh, and Ailaros, I know you've been using the HH a fair amount lately. Tau hate them.

OP, I feel like I'm about to get into a similar situation with a good buddy of mine. His main armies are chaos daemons and tau. I've always hated playing against daemons. I always win, but the games are just so boring. Tau on the other hand was always fun. I had to choose my targets wisely, and had to think about how to avoid the nasty end of a broadside barrel.

Since the new codex came out, said buddy has been constantly telling me about how the new tau ignores covers, blasts things coming in from reserves, has these non perils powers, etc. etc. I truly am dreading the upcoming game. Not from a win or lose standpoint, as like I've said I've had miserable victories, while also having awesome losses. I dunno, but for some reason the armies over the past year and a half or so have really started to kill my enthusiasm for the game.

 BryllCream wrote:

Makumba wrote:

Run Rhinos up the board and LOS some units

imperial guard doesnt run up the board , nor does it have rhinos.

They have chimeras and deepstriking stormtroopers. I don't know the stats of Tau backfield units but I'm guessing that deepstriking stormies with plasma guns will do some damage, and three of them will break up the backfield nicely.

OP, I do see where you're coming from. Tau can be very boring to play against, but only if your army is mundane. A guard player will have Basilisks which will outrange his stuff, and deepstrikers/outflanking blob so that the Tau player doesn't have the option of simply sitting back and rolling dice.

Ive had DS stormies with straight up hotshot lasguns in my backfield..that ap3 chewed through my backfield FW objective squad and then at half a crisis team...

I wait for the day stealth suits can take plasma guns...soooooo expensive but soooooooo good.

The thread started has an interesting take. I had never ever really heard of anyone not liking to play against them. They aren't uber competitive in most peoples eyes and people always liketo tell me how "brave" I am for taking them to a tourney.

I like it when they say those things...

But what I thought was interesting about this post was that it addressed another issue: the ABLATIVE nature of the Tau. Essential, as in marial arts, we kind of use your strength against you (and that is reflected in the Kau'yon way of fighting) or we do indeed sort of have tools if we're willing to use them, as counters to typical; lists.

I thought about it and he's not wrong. We dont have great stats (and thats being kind), we rely entirely on volume of fire...in an army...that is easy to whittle most of the time. Seems like a recipe for disaster when you say that out loud. The Tau forces rely on one another so they dont just suffer for the loss of firepower when some die, butthey also suffer the loss of the synergy which makes them dangerous, as that erodes during the game.

So Tau sit on a precarious perch most of the time, trying to win against forces that are very clearly superior in most ways, and trying not to die too quickly so they can keep helping outtheir buddies (Pathfinders and the like gotta watch their back with 5+ saves now).

But it surprises me that an army that can sort of play an atypical style of ablation and aggresive defense would elicit such a reaction. I mean up til now they were often on defense but more mobile than IG gunlines. More fun to play than an IG gunline too.

Like I say, no one has ever really expressed a dislike for playing against them. They see it as a potential win in the making before I even roll for Warlord Traits and probably after also.

The new codex is going to erase some smugness from its opponents I assure you. But being unfun to oppose? hmm...

I understand your sentiments Ailaros, I think the problems you're referring to is what I'd call rules bloat. 40k is increasingly becoming a game where you sit down, unpack your minis, compare special rules and whoever has the better ones wins. For example, there are some armies that other armies simply cannot win against (if both sides are using competitive lists) and I think that its a state reflection of the game we're playing that sometimes its better I don't even get my army out.

My secret is using cadbury mini eggs as marker light tokens; when your army produces candy for the opponent to eat, the cheese is hard to smell.

 EmilCrane wrote:
I understand your sentiments Ailaros, I think the problems you're referring to is what I'd call rules bloat. 40k is increasingly becoming a game where you sit down, unpack your minis, compare special rules and whoever has the better ones wins. For example, there are some armies that other armies simply cannot win against (if both sides are using competitive lists) and I think that its a state reflection of the game we're playing that sometimes its better I don't even get my army out.

Not buying.

 Jancoran wrote:

 EmilCrane wrote:
I understand your sentiments Ailaros, I think the problems you're referring to is what I'd call rules bloat. 40k is increasingly becoming a game where you sit down, unpack your minis, compare special rules and whoever has the better ones wins. For example, there are some armies that other armies simply cannot win against (if both sides are using competitive lists) and I think that its a state reflection of the game we're playing that sometimes its better I don't even get my army out.

Not buying.

I'm not complaining about Tau per se here, actually I'm thinking of tyranids vs space marines. A good tyranid player will never lose to space marines (especially blood angels)

 dbsamurai wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:

Makumba wrote:

Run Rhinos up the board and LOS some units

imperial guard doesnt run up the board , nor does it have rhinos.

They have chimeras and deepstriking stormtroopers. I don't know the stats of Tau backfield units but I'm guessing that deepstriking stormies with plasma guns will do some damage, and three of them will break up the backfield nicely.

OP, I do see where you're coming from. Tau can be very boring to play against, but only if your army is mundane. A guard player will have Basilisks which will outrange his stuff, and deepstrikers/outflanking blob so that the Tau player doesn't have the option of simply sitting back and rolling dice.

Ive had DS stormies with straight up hotshot lasguns in my backfield..that ap3 chewed through my backfield FW objective squad and then at half a crisis team...

I wait for the day stealth suits can take plasma guns...soooooo expensive but soooooooo good.

I wait for the day they had rail rifles. They would have fitted in perfectly with their 4th or 5th ed rules since they can't be seen at that range, but alas. Who would give the stealth units sniper rifles?

I wish my main opponent would pick Tau up again. He had an awesome Tau army in 3rd edition, but got rid of it when he got a hankering for power armour.

Now, he plays a Dark Eldar Wych army, and while fun to play against, is very similar in playstyle to my Tyranids. Fast moving and aggressive, only different in that its strong in melee while my Tyranids are strong at close range shooting.

Fighting a slower, more shooting focused army like Tau would be a fun break. And give me a reason to buy a few Biovores and a Mawloc.

Why can't I have fun playing Nidzilla versus Grey Knights? Ugh 40k sucks.

Well, I suppose you could be an arse about it and just bring a "Tide" list. Bunch of conscripts. Slow play your Tau opponent til he dies of boredom. Then burn all his models.

I always think this about gunlines. Any gun line. Tau, Space Marines, Imperial Guard. I've learned to just suck it up and play the game. I'll latch on to small little pieces of the battle that interest me, like close assaults or my few outflanking units digging into a soft and squishy backfield unit. That'll usually hold me over as I wait for the hour long shooting phase to conclude.

Aliaros, I feel your frustration. There's definitely armies that are fun to play against, and there's ones that are just a total pain in the butt. I feel about demons a lot like you do about Tau - doesn't matter what I do, I have to try and chew through 45 wounds of T5 before his bikes and DP and everything else hit my lines. And I've got *maybe* 1 turn to do it in, 2 if I'm lucky.

As a Tau player, I can understand that same kind of frustration. I despise gunline Tau with a passion, but they do a damn good job of it, there's no denying it. I feel that - even with the limits you generally place on yourself as far as list construction - there's easily ways to make it more fun.

It seems, based on what you've mentioned so far, that you're going up against Riptides with EWO and Ion Accelerators, probably 2-3 units of Markerlights, lots of FWs, and probably a couple Hammerheads. Given what I've seen of your playstyle, I'm willing to bet you're using a couple LR variants, some foot platoons / PCS / CCS, maybe some light armor. I'd suggest running 2 squadrons of LR variants, with a battery of artillery in the backfield. The strategy, then, would be to advance your infantry behind a wall of LRs, while your artillery lays waste to that squishy sushi behind his Aegis. One you're close enough, FRFSRF to your heart's content. You should be able to get enough plasma in range to take care of the Riptides and Hammerheads. Markerlights only have a 36" range, so camo netted artillery in ruins / behind an aegis should be relatively safe, especially if you can block LOS to it with your LRs at the same time. Other options include your old-school Send In The Next Wave conscript blobs, since killing those by the dozen doesn't matter. Even Deep Strikers are an option, assuming you're willing to eat a BS3 S8 pie plate and plan your drops accordingly (i.e. out of LOS / into cover / danger close to the Tau lines).

This would let you play your foot / tank lists, force your opponent to break up his gunline, and give you a reasonable chance of making the game interesting.

In short after far too many words, I feel that you have the tools to make it a more interesting game already. It's a matter of adjusting to a new meta, where cover isn't safe anymore, and you need to straight up block LOS to keep things from harm. Fortunately, as Guard, you've got AV14 options for that, where a lot of other armies don't. Guard have a lot of good counters for Tau, even without using Vendettas (which I personally feel are suboptimal against Tau) or trying to MechVet rush.

 Ailaros wrote:
So, I've been playing on and off again since 4th edition, so this is hardly new, but as they've got a new codex, I've found myself playing against Tau more frequently. I just played another game against them tonight, and it struck me, in all these years, I don't think I've ever had fun playing against a Tau army. Not once.

And the more I think about it, the less it's surprising, as this particular army for some time now has been shutting down your opponent's ability to do things as its primary style, but it seems even more egregious with the current codex.

For example, why does it matter how I move or deploy if my opponent's guns are basically always in range, and they basically always ignore cover now? What's the point of bringing high-mobility options when so many things get interceptor, and come with secondary weapons so they still get to shoot the next turn anyways? What's the point of the assault phase when you can eat an entire army of overwatch fire every time you charge? What's the point of the shooting phase if you stuff is either not in range, because their stuff has longer range and/or is more mobile, and because your opponents get to use the shooting phase but you don't, thanks to MSM and LOS-blocking terrain.

And don't get me wrong, it's not that Tau are just overpowered or anything. I can handle strong armies. It's more that I don't even want to win against Tau if it means I have to suffer through playing a game against them. It just feels like the special rules of this army have traditionally, and now moreso, just cheapen so much of the game that it's rather difficult to see it as more than my opponent doing virtually nothing (not likely moving that much, and never assaulting), and spending their time preventing me from doing virtually anything, what with making so many of my potential decisions irrelevant. Really, I might as well just watch someone play yahtzee with themselves.

And so this thread is in the general forum not because I need advice for how to beat Tau armies. What I want to know is how it's possible to have a game that's... well... a game against this particular army. How do you have fun against an army whose special rules strip what little strategy 40k has right out of the game?

Or should I just take a little break until the next codex comes out and I can finally get some non-tau opponents to play against again?

Play it the Russian way, acknowledge that they will get favorable kill ratios. But don't give a single feth because you have more bodies than their space-utilitarianist arses have bullets. Few things are more satisfying than watching a Tau army try to dam the flow of my Tyranid swarm before the wall breaches and unleashes the flood. It's doubly fun when I'm using my Soviet style painted Tyranids, and well worth the odd looks people see me place a tyranid army painted red with a yellow hammer and sickle.

It's doubly worth the odd looks when they ask why the hell my Swarmlord has a Ushanka and I explain to them that Hive Fleet Babushka ate a ship with Lenin in it some time ago, and all became communist and roar in stereotypical Russian accents.

Hilarious.

Think about frying fish, or making some sushi. Then every dead fishman will make you laugh at least on the inside.