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Let me start by stating this is first and foremost an opinion, albeit an opinion that seems to be relatively common from what I have observed both locally and online.

Let’s talk about Tau. I know I know, another posting about Tau! There are hundreds of topics similar to these all over the internet scattered amongst countless blogs and forum postings. This in itself should be telling, but let me elaborate.

It is my opinion that Tau is a horrendously balanced codex in a predominantly shooty edition. There are a multitude of reasons I feel this army quite literally ruins games.
The book seems to pride itself with outright ignoring a large portion of the rulebook itself. Cover saves? Nope. Deep Striking/Outlanking? Nope. Assault? Nope. Line of Sight? Nope. Fliers? Nope. You name it, Tau has an answer for it. This is problematic in what should be a strategic game.

The actual amount of thought that has to go into a typical Tau players turn is rarely more than “what should I shoot and where”. This is rarely an issue, as they have outright ridiculous ranges and firepower that doesn’t care about cover in most cases or LOS. Rinse and repeat until turn 5 to move onto objectives.

Did they shake up the meta? Absolutely, but it a terrible way. All of the seemingly ‘reliable’ ways people mention to ‘beat Tau’ rarely progress beyond anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. This typically involves specific units and lists. Since when is ‘list tailor and know what your opponent will be playing’ an acceptable solution to a strategy game? If he brings scissors, you bring a rock!
On the topic of matchups, Tau has no bad matchups that I can honestly think of- despite this, they outright destroy other armies (Dark Eldar, Vanilla Marines to name a few examples). Some armies simply do not have answers to what Tau can do.

I could go on, but I can summarize my point as follows: If an army wipes you off the board with very little thought or effort simply because you decided to play a pickup game with a balanced all-comers list- there is a problem.

Tau and tournament players will defend this to death and say it isn’t as bad as it seems, but when all of the Tau players I personally know literally FEEL BAD to play their army, there are issues. Tau has been relegated to the win-more tournament army of this edition- it’s Gray Knights in 5th edition all over again.

Can of Worms comes to mind....oh boy.

Meh, people have no problems against my Tau. I also don't see Tau winning tournaments... necrons are still on top.

I really think people are just taking an opportunity to place some of the blame off their own codices OP units and place it on the new FotM.

Well from the perspective of my local play group, nobody can reliably deal with Tau. He quite literally blows everything we can bring off the table.

I think from a casual perspective it is more of a problem. The biggest concern I have is they are simply not fun to play against by any stretch of the imagination.

Stripping away your opponents ability to do anything by ignoring rules is frustrating- as is waiting for 30 minutes while Tau shoots you and you just pull models. So many strategies and units are rendered obsolete just by design.

It's brainless poor army balance.

IG is how shooty should be done- deadly at range, but once you close in they fall apart. Tau mitigate all of these weaknesses.

How many marker lights is your opponent bringing if they are able to strip you completely of cover most of the game.... if half their army is marker lights then hardly any damage dealing weapons are in that army.

Place adequate terrain.... and not just trees.... bring buildings.... so most things can even hit you.

It would also be very helpful to see your army list and his army list, that way we can see how even the matchup are. If your tau player is running 3x riptides 3x pathfinder squads, 3x broadside squads and a bunch of fire warriors with an ethereal and fireblade.... then he is bring some of the most cost effective units in the codex. Alternatively if your army list (I have no idea what your army is) is something like stationary blobs of IG guardsmen with a lord comissar as HQ and a few orgryn squads.... well then.... maybe you should tell him to tone it down a bit.

If I bring 3 vespid squads and only kroot squds supported by skyrays.... I wouldn't exactly jump to conclusions and call my friends 3x helldrake spam list OP.

Generally two Pathfinder Squads, Skyrays, or the Markerlight Commander shenanigans.

It's not just Marerklights- any SMS he can bring/spam is also part of the issue. My point is that he will have enough to deal with the things that rely on cover, typically, before I can deal with it.

I can't outshoot him, either- I also find Tau vehicles to be hilariously tough to kill. I remember when melta was an acceptable way to deal with the tough Tau skimmers. Not anymore.. you get a 4+ at 1" away. This also assumes your dropping/teleporting melta lives to even shoot because of Riptides blowing you up as soon as you appear.

The typical response from most Tau players is to 'kill the markerlights' argument. Ok, fine. I will relegate all of my firepower to attempt to kill it, meanwhile the entire Tau army is shooting at me and weakening my ability to kill things at range every turn. It just isn't reliable. Even if you do kill the markerlights, it's not like Tau is terrible without them. They still have deadly shooting, especially if they roll well.

XenosTerminus wrote:
The typical response from most Tau players is to 'kill the markerlights' argument. Ok, fine. I will relegate all of my firepower to attempt to kill it, meanwhile the entire Tau army is shooting at me and weakening my ability to kill things at range every turn. It just isn't reliable. Even if you do kill the markerlights, it's not like Tau is terrible without them. They still have deadly shooting, especially if they roll well.

No don't target markerlights..... that is the worst thing you can do. It will take you two turns to kill all of them. So maybe turn 3 you will be ML free but then you have 2 turns of his full strength army shooting at whatever is left of yours. Kill his heavy hitters first and the game will end with him just shuffling around his pathfinders (who have nothing left to support).

Use some throw away units to rush the Tau in CC (oh know supporting fire) - if you do multiple assaults then supporting fire doesn't really matter anymore as you can only overwatch once per unit. I've had my crisis suits tied up for a turn or 2 by some barebone guard squad who took the initiative to rush in.

Did they shake up the meta? Absolutely, but it a terrible way. All of the seemingly ‘reliable’ ways people mention to ‘beat Tau’ rarely progress beyond anecdotal and circumstantial evidence.

Losing the auto-win button against Tau hasn't shaken up the meta, as tournaments show.

Mentioning what army anyone brings against random Tau opponents is largely irrelevant, because that really proves a point I mentioned earlier. If you cannot bring a balanced all-comers list against Tau (not even against optimized Tau) without having a realistic chance of winning, bar your opponent being inept or rolling like crap- there are balance issues.

Other books have bad matchups, and you will run into situations where you may not have specific things to deal with specific things your opponent brings. That is not the point. The issue is Tau's ability to ignore or shut down entire strategies just based on their army abilities.

How, by any stretch of the imagination, is this the least bit enjoyable to ANYONE playing this game? Is preventing your opponent from doing anything or using specific units/strategies against you enjoyable? Do you enjoy just sitting around shooting without really moving (other than JSJ/late game)? Do your friends play largely melee based armies that have already suffered from 6th editions outright boner for the shooting phase?

Tau is the army for you. But don't expect to make/maintain a lot of friends in a casual setting, ESPECIALLY if your other buddies play for fun and just bring whatever models they have/like.

Tau shats on Beer and Pretzel games, which is ironic since GW has turned this editions focus on that.

Seems like a lot of crying from people whose army could go melee in editions that were before . I play IG and have no problems with tau. They are a very efficient and cool codex which unlike my own isn't based around a 40-50pts undercosted flyer . As bad match ups go . Sure tau have problems with melee ,but melee isn't as easy as it was in editions before this one . Which in the end brings it down to the one rule that is true to all games created by man . If you want to have fun don't start something that only works when others let you , take something that works always and doesn't realy care what the opponent is doing .

Don't mind Tau, at least their basic troops don't effectively have AP2 weapons 1/6 times

I'll be completely honest, I play Tau and I kind of agree with you. I hate it how my friends don't really want to play with me anymore now the new codex drops. That said, once 7th edition drops and close combat is back on top (like its been ever since the game was created) and our codex sucks again I'm going to be interested in the Tau player's reactions.

Meh, not 7th ed WHFB Daemons level borked.

 dementedwombat wrote:
and close combat is back on top (like its been ever since the game was created)

Not really. Virus and Vortex Grenades and Overwatch were on top in 2nd(unless you house ruled limits on them).

Dunno. Tau ("A supposedly shooty army") doesn't pwn the shooty game in this shooty edition of 40K half as much as Space Wolves ("A supposedly choppy army") pwn the shooty game in the choppy edition.

No problem from my side of things.

Also, Heldrakes... Fix those first.

Thanks.

so, will we be revisiting this everytime a new codex comes out? probably...

 Platuan4th wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
and close combat is back on top (like its been ever since the game was created)

Not really. Virus and Vortex Grenades and Overwatch were on top in 2nd(unless you house ruled limits on them).

Heh, I jumped in with 3rd edition and assumed things were relatively the same throughout the game's life. My apologies for the inaccurate statement. I have certainly heard stories about the dreaded virus grenade, although I've never used it and don't exactly know what it does myself.

Tau just have a little cheese with them for now. I don't mind going against tau, i've won against them and lost against them but every army list and situation changes things so much. The only thing i really try to avoid with my nids is that large blast str 8 shot from the rip tides, if i can avoid those i do alright.

I habe already seen two riptides get engaged in close combat, and suffer because they are not immune to instant death. so it muat not be that hard to get there...

Sure, the Tau can do a lot of things. What people seem to ignore is that they can't do them all at once. They too must use an army list and pick units at certain points cost to fill it. They're not bringing all the HQs, all the units and all the upgrades.

They too have to use target priority against you, so if you let them kill your deathstar for free you have messed up.

I'm against this argument, and I have an explanation.

while I agree that Tau really have an effective counter to anything they will run into, they are, however, spread out across the codex. I think the Tau are like a box of precision tools - there's always a tool for a job, but do you really want to be lugging them all around with you? and, like precision tools, they are far from cheap. I have written a lot of Tau lists for my friends, and my god are some of the options expensive! save for Space Marines, Fire Warriors are some of the most expensive standard troops in the game, and T3 and a save of 4+ is rather average for 10 points. Riptide? Fortune and a excellent bullet magnet while you empty your points wallet. Battlesuits? a single plasma gun can make a Tau player panic - and rightly. Our dear friend markerlights? Think about what extra firepower you could take instead! And if you really think you can combine every tool the Tau have to make an unstoppable list, then its a recipe for disaster. All your separate elements will be so easy to deal with because you simply don't have enough models on the tabletop to pull through.

that's just from personal experience - I haven't been frightened of the Tau - I know their weaknesses. Some units make me jump, but I know that there will be loopholes in the list (like with any army), and if he has been stupid enough to take a pic 'n mix bag of Tau units, then that just makes the hole even bigger.

GA

I am aware Tau have weaknesses, and I never stated they were unbeatable.

The root of my argument has always been that it is poor design to have an army with specific weaknesses but a toolbox, as you stated, to deal with these weaknesses.

Playing against Tau, then, is very much Rock Paper Scissors. Can they take every tool for the job? No, of course not. They can, however, take a lot.. and if you happen to bring a generalist army (like I mentioned- I never analyze an army in a vacuum where they can be beaten with very specific situations) you are likely not going to win. They are just far too capable in this edition of dealing with the majority of threats most non-competitive lists can dish out.

Furthermore, my main point is more concentrated on the fact it is not fun to play against them. What makes 40k interesting is seeing a variety of units and actually moving, shooting AND assaulting. Tau doesn't typically care about most of these things, nor will they let their opponent capitalize on them. That is the issue.

Taking away an opponents ability to do things, or allowing your units to literally tool themselves out to deal with pretty much anything (yes I am aware spare marines can do this- the difference is they are average at it, not excel at it like Tau) is lazy design, and swung the balance pendulum far too much for a book that did in fact need an update badly.

Surely you can't disagree that from a 6e codex perspective Tau is undeniably the best. The other books have largely been considered 'meh' by most people (Dark Angels is laughable- but that's tradition).

Tau are a lot more manageable when you take out their markerlights. It's not the obvious thing to do, prioritising that small unit of pathfinders, when there's numerous battlesuits of various sizes on the other side of the table, but it helps. When I play Tau, I ask my opponent to point out every single one of his markerlights. I then destroy them.

While Tau are certainly a very strong army, I wouldn't call them OP. I think the reason why a lot of people don't playing Tau isn't because they're OP it's because, well, people don't like playing them. They're not a fun army to play. Many Tau players sit at the back, often behind an ADL, and shoot, shoot, shoot. Necrons are at least as good as Tau, but with Necrons you have a lot more threat variety. You've got the normal troops, flyers, large vehicles, tough characters etc. Playing Tau is just not as fun. And because people tend not to enjoy their games with Tau, particularly if they end up losing them, people start to point the cheese finger.

 gossipmeng wrote:
Meh, people have no problems against my Tau. I also don't see Tau winning tournaments... necrons are still on top.

I really think people are just taking an opportunity to place some of the blame off their own codices OP units and place it on the new FotM.

Tau won Astronomicon Toronto (crushed everyone in Battle Scores and placed Overall.)

For Conquest Toronto Tau placed first Overall and were 3 of the top 5 armies for the weekend.

They also finished first in the Singles event, and were also 3 of the 5 top armies in Singles (and one of the two remaining armies had heavy Tau allies.)

Surely you can't disagree that from a 6e codex perspective Tau is undeniably the best. The other books have largely been considered 'meh' by most people (Dark Angels is laughable- but that's tradition).

Hmm?
Daemons and Eldar "meh"? Dont agree whatsoever.

CSM has very good strenghts, just not an overall "killer" build and simply strange in other respects.

DAs get a whole lot of hating (a lot from netlisters) but have some absolutely amazing options. Sure, monobuild, they might not be top tier but throw some allies in and....

Dont believe everything you read on the net. Bandwagoning gone wild imho.

Mash the above Codicies with Allies and "what exactly is weak now?" Nada.

I don't think a book can be considered good just because of allies- that's not the book standing on it's own- I am of the opinion that Allies is a mess anyway. Cool concept- terrible execution (the same argument I make with Tau- mitigating weaknesses and combining things for combos that are not necessarily intended from a design perspective).

I think I am beating a dead horse here. I have gotten some legitimate people claim they agree that they aren't a fun army to play/against, which was my main point.

As suspected, lots of people are coming in here stating they don't think they are OP, how to beat them, suggestions on how to beat them, etc...

I wouldn't care IF I consistently beat Tau- I wouldn't enjoy those games either. Tau have never been terribly popular by most people (get anime mecha out of my 40k)- but they have officially created THE most boring auto pilot black/white army since, well... ever.

Tau and Eldar can make for some pretty gross combos, and I expect that the SPEHSS MEHREENS will also join the BATTUL BROTHAS shenanigans soon.

XenosTerminus wrote:
I don't think a book can be considered good just because of allies- that's not the book standing on it's own- I am of the opinion that Allies is a mess anyway. Cool concept- terrible execution (the same argument I make with Tau- mitigating weaknesses and combining things for combos that are not necessarily intended from a design perspective).

I think I am beating a dead horse here. I have gotten some legitimate people claim they agree that they aren't a fun army to play/against, which was my main point.

As suspected, lots of people are coming in here stating they don't think they are OP, how to beat them, suggestions on how to beat them, etc...

I wouldn't care IF I consistently beat Tau- I wouldn't enjoy those games either. Tau have never been terribly popular by most people (get anime mecha out of my 40k)- but they have officially created THE most boring auto pilot black/white army since, well... ever.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/521966.page

ill just leave this here, typical GW game balance.

"Nerf paper, Scissors are fine. - Rock"

Are new tau stronger than the 4th ed codex? yes

do the units in the codex have good synergy? yes

Are you playing a person with a WAAC list? mid to high probability.

Yes tau are great atm but we are only 5 codices (and 2 supplements) into 6th ed. once we get half of the armies into 6th ed lets come back to this topic and discuss it further.

agreed that some Tau players are downright boring, but you should just stop playing them if they are using a gunline - they will realise your gesture soon enough. Both of the other players in my tiny club are Tau players, and both of them really hate the idea of a gunline, stressing "that's not the way to play the game"

these are the proper Tau players.

and if we are having a conversation about gunlines, then the IG do a much better job of that for the sad player. battalions of cheap russes surrounded by cheap infantry to prevent assaults are far better than any Tau gunline I've seen. And don't get me started on vendettas in beehive like swarms....

what I am trying to say is that other armies can be as OP as the Tau at points, but good players realise that playing lists like this are not fun for them or their opponent. the Tau players who realise this are good players, and all the others should be left behind. problem solved for any apparent "OP codex" that's in the works - refuse to play those who squeeze the juice out of each one. where's the fun in having a simple win? I don't understand people who walk away from a game after destroying their opponent's reasonable list with a gunline who say "that was a great game".

GA