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Playing against Tau has me adopting a very Russian Army mindset of WW2.

Acceptable casualties.

After I got over that, it's business as usual. I feed them assault units and have my range dismantle their range. If they ignore my assault, I will get into multi-assault by turn 2 pretty much anywhere on the map. If I don't have such a thing, then I bring allies to get such a unit or two.

Long range firepower is absolutely needed as Tau units die to firepower just like others and it's just like any new army, figuring out your target priority is key to winning.

Tau are not broken. Theyre not the cheeseknights of old. In fact theyre pretty easy to fail with, you gotta know something about the army and some tactical play to use them whereas cheeseknights were "I win i play GK" most of the time.

None of the races are that bad anymore. If something hard counters you like nothing else, reviseyour list youre probably bringing paper to a scissor's board and not realizing it.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Tau are not broken. Theyre not the cheeseknights of old. In fact theyre pretty easy to fail with, you gotta know something about the army and some tactical play to use them whereas cheeseknights were "I win i play GK" most of the time.

None of the races are that bad anymore. If something hard counters you like nothing else, reviseyour list youre probably bringing paper to a scissor's board and not realizing it.

Ehh the Black Templars are still kinda rubbish. Also, while the Tau aren't broken, they are heinously unfun to play against, so this picture still applies.

 TheKbob wrote:
I have beaten Tau with Sisters of Battle. His arguments are invalid.

As a tau player, sisters is a really though matchup for us.

That being said, eldar as just as good as tau, and so are CSM and DE-just learn to use your strengths and exploit tau weaknesses.


You know what supporting fire means? charging a block of tau is like charging at a spike wall.
You know what it does for an isolated unit? nothing. it completely depends on other units being near.
You know what prevents units from stacking up? AoE guns.
Should not be hard to figure out from this point.


@gr1m_dan: the riptide killed 3 terminators? thats cute. just how much a termi cost compared to the riptide? like 1/5 of him? less?

I just played against my friends Tau army last night and it was fun as hell. He had a riptide and about as many marker lights and missiles you can fit into a 1250 list. I had my DA Green Wing. I was able to take out the riptide with lascannons, luck and a faulty nova reactor lol. It wasn't an easy game but it wasn't impossible. BTW Whirlwinds work wonders against pathfinders and firewarriors and ignore cover to give them a taste of their own medicine. Lots of fun to play against. I love tau.

Orktavius wrote:
Every army is overpowered if you lose to it. Treat this as exactly what it is, your brother being a sore loser.

Do some armies struggle against certain armies? Certainly!

Is 40k's game balance perfect? Of course not!

Does this mean folks should be on here 7 days a week screaming to the peanut gallery that X army is overpowered because they lost to it? Hell no.

In short, roll your eye's at him and tell him to stop being such a b****.

...and then switch armies and play him with his own so you can show him WHY he's being a little B****

 BoomWolf wrote:


@gr1m_dan: the riptide killed 3 terminators? thats cute. just how much a termi cost compared to the riptide? like 1/5 of him? less?

3 Terminators in Close Combat. It's a shooting unit that can jump away from CC threats, and when/if you finally catch it it kills most of what gets into Close Combat. People say "just charge it, duh!", someone points out that the Riptide will likely murder whatever charges it and he's met with derision, and people wonder why Tau are disliked?

Tau definitely have many more cost effective tools than before. I really do miss the old broadsides though (missilesides make up for it a bit).

I think it really comes down the the list each player is using. Tau are very much a rock, paper, scissors army. The games are usually one sided, but whose side depends on army composition.

My armies are basically a few somewhat minimal FW squads with some broadside support and as many crisis suits as can be squeezed in with the remaining points The army absolutely rolls over TEQ and mid-sized MEQ due to the high volume of "quality" shots. However, hoards will ruin my day.

Deployment and cover (LoS) also play very large roles.

I don't think Tau are overpowered, they are really good but their are plenty of things they are vulnerable against and if you play to their weakness most armies have a fighting chance.

If you were going to make an argument for them as overpowered I don't think the Riptide and markerlights per se would be where you have a case. The argument IMO that they are overpowered is they have to many available options to ignore some basic game mechanics that generally exist to balance the game. Tau are the only army with mass ability to ignore cover, don't require line of sight, and can target more than 1 unit at a time. Many codexs rely on cover and utilizing terrain to make up for low toughness or poor armor saves which tau completely negate.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:


@gr1m_dan: the riptide killed 3 terminators? thats cute. just how much a termi cost compared to the riptide? like 1/5 of him? less?

3 Terminators in Close Combat. It's a shooting unit that can jump away from CC threats, and when/if you finally catch it it kills most of what gets into Close Combat. People say "just charge it, duh!", someone points out that the Riptide will likely murder whatever charges it and he's met with derision, and people wonder why Tau are disliked?

If anyone tells you "just charge it", they should take a look at it's profile, it can take some punishment.
What it CANT to, is deliver (unless super lucky, like I assume in that case he was. 3 termies should have taken him abnormally good rolls. with AS2 and 3 attacks, they got higher AS, and more attack between them.
Drown him in chumps, or hit him with something that is dedicated to attacking MC, otherwise just move along to a squishier and more potent target. riptide is just there to draw attention from the firstplace.

(and I thought he meant overall by that, not only in assault, no way of telling by the way he has written it, and considering taking out 3 termis in CC would require so much luck that strategy is thrown off the window anyway....)

Considering he adressed the post at someone who told him to charge it I can't possibly see how you'd think he meant overall.

Besides, if lithe Riptide kills one with Overwatch and 1 in CC there'd only be 3 Terminators left, which probably won't be enough to kill it in one go. Next turn it'd die but take one with it; that's not too far-fetched, and regardless it requires you to actually get the Terminators there in the first place, which is the point.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I honestly think the tau army is pretty well balanced internally. There's lots of things you can do, it's just that their easiest and probably best (or at least most broadly useful) strategy is mostly immobile shooting.

Also I was totally expecting this to be a "I just lost to Tau and they suck" thread. I had "Cry some more" all lined up and everything too. I'm sad now...

Cry more

In all honesty, they can be a tough match up. Tau v. Anything else will result in Tau winning if they roll well and the player is great. Generally both don't happen at the same time, but the current Eldar can definitely give the new Tau something to shart a brick about. They have fast transports, fast infantry (Warp Spiders) and a very good flier (Crimson hunter). Tau don't have a good transport (though a friend uses them to GREAT ends and wins games because of his Devilfish). Eldar are fast. Tau are not. They are both mobile. Sure, the Tau have suits that can JSJ, but the Eldar can run and shoot in the same phase, and not necessarily in that order. They are both great armies that only suffer with bad rolls (it happens) or a bad general.

I think its funny, as a long time Tau player, how deliciously overpowered people think they have become. Before the new codex came out Tau had almost no way of winning a game at all. Now they have so many new tricks up their sleeves its almost too good to be true.

 TheKbob wrote:
I have beaten Tau with Sisters of Battle. His arguments are invalid.

And I beat Space Wolves with Black Templars, but does that mean Black Templars are better than space wolves or that Space Wolves don't have units better than my entire army? Because they do.

Player skill can make up for a bad army, but given equal player skill not all armies were created equal.

^
True, but theres always a diverse level of skill between players at all levels. Theres more tactic to the game than deciding what unit to shoot at first.

Personally i think becuase of the way they do the rules the game will never be balanced, technically. What can happen is they can prevent any insta-win armies by not giving them an absurred rule that basically makes them immortal or 1shot half an army. Right now it seems fairly even, though if i had to say anything about Tau being above other races its that ignore cover comes a bit easy. I was both shocked and very happy to see it only took 2 markerlights. when i heard they can strip cover, i expected 1 markerlight = -1 cover modifier, so i'd need 2-4 depending on what the save is.

 TheKbob wrote:
I have beaten Tau with Sisters of Battle. His arguments are invalid.

Not really.

Unbalanced and/or Over-powered = Will win > 50% of all battles all other things (e.g. player skill) being equal.

Unbeatable = Will win 100% of all battles no matter what.

This thread is an argument that Tau may (or may not) qualify for the former. It's not an argument that Tau qualify for the latter. Thus your rebuttal is invalid.

remind them about how terrible your leadership is, I swear i have lost more Firewarriors to falling off the board than to actual deaths in the last 6 months, not to also count the last ten ten years. The ethereal really helps ( i LOVE that HQ) but he is fragile. Ive had more than one game where I overextended myself at the end to capture objectives with my firewarriors and ended up having them fall back hard when failing leadership. In fact, i had a game where a BA player threw Dante and his guard on top of me while also having a Land Raider full of death company barreling toward me. I had to take dante out quickly but that allowed the crusader to get too close. Even though i annihilated all but 3 death company that was enough to get into combat, kill a bunch of guys, then force me off the board along with the ethereal. Those three guys then got lucky and collapsed my entire fireline. It wasnt even bad luck on my part, a little good luck for him, but thats how fragile they are.

Tell your bro to go all out with striking scorpions right up in your firelines face and flamer Wraithlords coming from other directions. Enough hard to kill firepower with alot of choices in what to kill will cause Tau to fold once someone touches a unit.

 generalchaos34 wrote:
Enough hard to kill firepower with alot of choices in what to kill will cause Tau to fold once someone touches a unit.

This. Targets? I have Rhinorushing sisters, Celestine with Seraphim, Retributors with heavy bolters and an Exorcist or two. That's a lot of choices. Exorcists can kill suits and vehicles, Sisters can kill the infantry (and vehicles) and the Retributors work against everything except the Hammerhead.

And while Tau units work really well together (markerlights, support fire, JSJ, etc) they don't do so well anymore once a part of the army has been crippled. I never manage a wipe-out victory since the suits are so mobile, but they're not winning without the infantry - and they're not killy enough fast enough if they don't risk the infantry. Same goes for me ofc, but I can easily bring more than Tau, often a 2vs1 advantage.

The only OP thing they have IMO are those big mech guys with the missiles on there missiles on there missiles which are all twin linked..

Cheap as chips and a hell of allot of Dakka!! they scare me... but I stay 37" away from them and try kill everything on the other flank first.

But yeah... kill marker light squads first, and hope that you roll the many objectives game. And make sure you make him take those leadership tests!! do not forget!

they have some farsight shadowsun bomb. i dont know the details but it's something like 2+ cover save and 8 shots per suit or something stupid. so ya, sounds like gg gw breaks their games as usual.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
As a Tau player i say this.
Tell him to be quiet. There are so many ways to kill use. CC with a riptide is an option, as with most other things.

Never underestimate the Riptide in CC young honey badger! My friends cleaned 17 of Ymgarl Genestealers before being taken down by the Doom.

 Zande4 wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
As a Tau player i say this.
Tell him to be quiet. There are so many ways to kill use. CC with a riptide is an option, as with most other things.

Never underestimate the Riptide in CC young honey badger! My friends cleaned 17 of Ymgarl Genestealers before being taken down by the Doom.

...That needs some special dice rolling there.