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 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

99% of the 40k playing population would disagree about Riptides being last.

The riptide is last because it's ridiculously hard to kill via shooting and no sane Tau player is ever going to let you get into assault with one.

And how does that make it last? What is posted above says Pathfinder are better than Troops and the Ethereal, which are better than the other good stuff, and then that the Riptide is the worst of the good stuff. Or at least that's how the above reads, unless I missed something?

It's usually a waste of time to try and shoot it to death. You have to consider the time economy of 40k, you only have so many turns to do something, and spending time from lots of heavy weapons to try and take down a unit as tough as a Riptide that shows no appreciable diminishment in capacity until it actually dies is not a good investment of said units' time. Rather, it's best to neuter it by dealing with it's more vulnerable support that boosts it's lethality.

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
why tau are op.....

1) overwatch is another turn of shootong (good point but applies to all armies)
2) they ignore cover like nothing else. (weaker than 4th ed codex)
3) missile suits (have always had deathrains)
4) massed long range fire power (stronger in 3rd-4th codex)
5) eldar allies (good point but everyone (except nids) can take Tau allies if they wanted to)
6) riptides (so without it tau wouldn't be as strong?)
7) they ingnore cover like a boss (agian weaker markerlight than 4th ed)
8) repeat above^^^

my question for people who dislike the new tau... Did you get rolled by Tau before they got their 6th edition codex? People complain about Markerlights.... they were stronger in the older codex yet people didn't complain about them back then. People saying that Fire warrriors are now one of the best infantry in the game.... yet they folded almost instantly in previous codices.

How many people played agianst tau in 5th edition? Were there a ton of tau players in 5th edition? or is everyone complaining about them because a metric gak ton of people jumped the bandwagon?

 Ninjacommando wrote:

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
why tau are op.....

1) overwatch is another turn of shootong (good point but applies to all armies)
2) they ignore cover like nothing else. (weaker than 4th ed codex)
3) missile suits (have always had deathrains)
4) massed long range fire power (stronger in 3rd-4th codex)
5) eldar allies (good point but everyone (except nids) can take Tau allies if they wanted to)
6) riptides (so without it tau wouldn't be as strong?)
7) they ingnore cover like a boss (agian weaker markerlight than 4th ed)
8) repeat above^^^

my question for people who dislike the new tau... Did you get rolled by Tau before they got their 6th edition codex? People complain about Markerlights.... they were stronger in the older codex yet people didn't complain about them back then. People saying that Fire warrriors are now one of the best infantry in the game.... yet they folded almost instantly in previous codices.

How many people played agianst tau in 5th edition? Were there a ton of tau players in 5th edition? or is everyone complaining about them because a metric gak ton of people jumped the bandwagon?

The old Tau was very monobuild.

If you could deal with Crisis suits and Railsides, congratulations, you now can defeat 90% of all 5e Tau armies.

And even then they weren't really prize winners as their scoring units were still junk as the old rapid fire rules really did not play to the Tau's favour.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Stop trying desubot, people like him keep crying foul even after proven wrong over and over again.

Tau has a shopping list of problems, and most of their units depends on other units to be efficient, and in every case at least one of them is highly fragile.

Overwatch is NOTHING like an extra shooting turn. you hit on 6s and don't quite control who gets to shoot what.

"Cheap interceptor" is not at all cheap, 5 points per model might look like a bargain, but once you realize it comes on an already expensive model, with attached opportunity price of limited system choices, you realize they are less then amazing. (also, wild thought, if he spammed interceptors-don't try to sneak in from outflank?)

Getting into assault is easy, if you got a shred of clue what you are doing and proper artillery support to force the tau to split up.

Missile suits are efficient, but expensive and immoile, if they are spammed just use your heavy guns to take them out from outside their reach, or again, take high AV so they can't really do anything.

You should not assume he has or has not a riptide, we should just learn to deal with them-and in 90% of the times, it means leave them alone.

God, why do people keep bitching about tau when they clearly don't even do minimal effort for using actual TACTICS against them.
Why do you THINK you get pounded? tau spent the entire last edition being stomped to the ground and were forced to learn every single trick in the book, come new codex and said tricks coupled with actual power mocks the age-old "just walk up and swipe them with no effort" way of action they call "strategy" is no longer enough.
I have yet to see ANYONE attempt a tank shock against me, despite it being a good choice at time, despite that I constantly do that to them and they SEE it in action, and unlike some armies, I don't really have anything to "death or glory" with.
Its also rare that people use movement to block my LoS, despite me doing it non-stop to them.
Dodging shots, forcing me to move more then I want to, scattering to prevent blast efficiency, non-standard deployment, trying to trick me-none of it almost ever happen.

If you can't take on tau, improve your play. and learn the rulebook because there are TONS of stuff you can do and probably not even aware. (for example, did you know jetpacks and skimmers can stand on impassable terrain as long you actually manage to place the model?)

What he said

As always i am amazed at the sheer ignorance/contempt some players have for the new Tau... and they then whine and call it it partly grinds my gears

Riptides either have to be taken out or ignored, and then taken out later on if at all. The players i have lost to got this idea from the get go, partly due to them being far more experienced than my humble self. The other players at my club whine and moan when they get taken apart with the right application of firepower and markerlights, combined with a steady advance, and as yet they don't seem to want to take precautions to stop it effectively.

Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

Their intercepter is very cheap. 25 or so points gets you interceptor on 5 models, and can basically force your opponent to avoid deep striking/outflanking/coming in from reserve in any form. That cuts off a huge number of tactics that would counter Tau. Early Warning Override on a Riptide with an Ion Accelerator is cheap to add and utterly deadly.

"don't try to sneak in from outflank?"

WOW, what a concept! Ok, I'll just start on the field so they can't interceptor me!

*gets blown up*

Maybe if I use cover I can get over there safely. Oh wait *markerlights ignore cover* *seeker doesn't need LOS*

Getting to CC is easy if you're smart? Well, you can't outflank/scout into CC because they took those rules away. You never could assault out of deep strike, except for very special units like Vanguards and Lucius Drop Pod dreads, except they took those rules away too. You can't walk over, that's asking to be murdered in gruesome ways. Light transports are cannon fodder.

I guess I could pony up the points for a Land Raider/AV14 equivalent, but that's a huge chunk of points to get one unit into CC sometime around turn 3, and which will likely kill one unit before the game ends around turn 6.

I suppose you could hope cover saved you, setting up ruins and terrain and the like, except markerlights make every type of cover that doesn't completely block LOS practically useless. And I doubt many players will agree to enough LOS blocking terrain that someone could safety cross a full table, unless you agreed to a cityscape setting before hand.

Kill the marketlights then? Well, we've established we can't deep strike/outflank to try and shoot them without exposing ourselves to lots of interceptor. Trying to assault pathfinders has all the problems listed above. You can try to shoot them from beyond 36", but there's a limited number of guns and units that can do that, and most of them, while powerful, give you very few shots, many of which, assuming you put your pathfinders in 4+ cover, will be saved.

I guess if you're playing IG with lots of big guns it's not a huge deal, bombard them to death from afar, but most other armies don't have that kind of firepower.

If he doesn't want a riptide as a new player, that's fine, it's basically the equivalent of handicapping yourself, which is understandable as a new player since you likely don't have the models available, but the OP also asked what makes Tau so good. Riptides are a large part of what makes them so good. They're incredibly hard to kill.

Not to mention, leaving them alone while trying to kill everything else is a great way to get an AP2 large blast on top of you.

In the little notebooks the game designers used when making C:SM, they probably scribbled all over the margins "invent Riptide counter," and the result was grav weapons.

Tau is good because 6th ed IS a gunline game, and tau do gunlines very well, but, most importantly, they have a bunch of special rules that are specifically designed to counter gunlines.

Gunlines have bad mobility, so I'll just use zone attackers like ouflankers or deepstrikers... but I can't, because everything has interceptor, including a large blast Ap2 weapon interceptor. But that's okay, because gunlines are bad in assault... except you'll never get there against missilespam, etc., and if you do, their entire army gets to overwatch you, at better BS as markerlights start hitting, every charge. But that's okay, because at least I can advance up the field, hugging cover so I'll still arrive with most of my guys due to cover saves... which tau pretty much systematically ignore with markerlights. This is especially bad for bikes and skimmers. Night fight will give me at least a turn to rush things up quickly while taking less damage. Except tau still ignore cover saves, and they also ignore night fighting. Maybe I'll keep a few guys back and shoot as the rest of my army advances... but tau can ignore the cover on your dug-in units while being able to keep cover themselves while being able to shoot at you without you being able to shoot back with LOS blocking terrain and MSM/smart missiles. Maybe I'll just bunch up in a corner... except tau can outshoot you, and they can bring in deepstrikers of their own, between the too-many-special-weapons farsight bomb, or also including a unit that can cast psychic powers, except without having to make a psychic test and you can't deny the witch against them. Maybe I'll just put my minis down on the table, and spend the next two or three turns picking them up as your die rolls dictate without getting to do anything myself this game...

... yeah, I think the tau player will let you do that.

WARNING! This will be my most condescending post EVER!

I realize that this will make me sound like the quintessential internet douchebag but it still needs to be said.

The Tau are no more capable on the table than any other army. What makes them so competitive in the sense that I think you mean is that they are so simpole and intuitive to play. In a sense they are Games Workshop's ultimate acheivement since they are super easy to play, and have a strong appeal to first time players. Tau have, despite my personal distate for them, done a good deal to bring new players to the game. But that is beside the point.

As to why they are so competitive. Well, they are simple to play. While there are many examples to use in the various other races, I will use Space Marines as an example to illustrate my point.

The most basic difference between Tau and other armies is that other armies have the ability to play the game on more than on level. Space Marines, Eldar, Tyranids, Chaos (Marines & Daemons), Dark Eldar, etc all have the means to field units that can engage at range or close for assault. They have varied delivery systems such as light transports, drop pods, teleporting, assault transports, etc that can affect their use or role in the game. These armies all have a sort of depth to them that allows for every player the freedom to experiment and enjoy a style that works for them with some degree of success.

The Tau however are extremely two-dimensional. They have virtually no presence in the game as it concerns assaults. If you are assaulting the Tau, you've already defeated them. They have very limited use for their transports, and the only real strength that they possess as an army is their ranged firepower. The end result of all this is that all Tau players ultimately play the same way. There is no other way to player them. The strategy is hide in cover and fire your long range weapons at the enemy until they either die or break through your lines and kill you. There isn't a lot of varieety, and there isn't a lot that can be done to change the outcome of a game after a certain point.

Is this a bad thing? No. Their lack of versatility is a result of their ease of use. Anyone can pick up a Tau army and enjoy some victories in the game. They are a great introductory force. So great in fact that when two new players face off and one of them is playing Tau, that players is more likely to win. Not because they are a better player but becuase they are simply not bothered by having to learn more about the game their counterparts. They do only one thing, and they do it better than most other armies. It's a frightening sort of efficiency.

My best advice to you as a player who is facing Tau on the table is to look up the things in your codex (whichever it happens to be) and rely on the units in there that are not applying the same mechanics as the Tau player. Don't try and out-shoot them. You'll lose. Don't try and out-range them. You'll lose. Just find the units to which they have no answer - such as fast melee units, or units that bypass some special rules (snipers and units with poisioned weapons will eat units with high toughness valuse like the Riptide). Don't let yourself be confined to the same limitations as the Tau and you will win neatrly every game against them. Let yourself become as two-dimensional as them and you will lose (they kind of own those dimensions )

Why do people always say "Markers let you ignore cover" like it is a reason to stay out of cover?
Guess what? If you keep the units in cover that means more markerlights are going to be required per unit. When running this with MSU it becomes a huge bonus since scattering on to a neighboring unit still allows for a cover save on the other unit.

And if you think pathfinders are hard to kill then I'd like to point out the TFC and whirlwinds.

Its also a used hard point. and not only that interceptor has weaknesses too. if your able to bait it out they wont be shooting till the end of the next turn. meaning its even better if you bait it out on your turn (next turn they wont be able to intercept)

Use some LOS blocking terrain
And MSU answers alot of the other complaints

As it comes armies are getting more access to ignore cover as well. perhaps some list tweaking is in order.

Edit: damn you ninjas!

DogofWar1 wrote:
Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

And if you think pathfinders are hard to kill then I'd like to point out the TFC and whirlwinds.

Just one thing to add: Whirlwinds are superbad against tau. Their ignores cover shot is only S4 and the Large Blast is way less flexible and somewhat smaller than 4 Small Blasts. And taking out a Whirlwind is EZ for a good Tau list. Had to realize this in my third battle against the fish people. It was a pretty hard lesson.

 Ninjacommando wrote:

DogofWar1 wrote:
Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

What do you believe led to so many people bringing such similar armies?

 Ninjacommando wrote:

DogofWar1 wrote:
Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. In 5th, tournies were won by Gk. why?
Strongest army.
Did Gk players make posts very similar to yours and Boomwolfs?
Yup
Did that change everyone knowing they were the strongest army on the block?
Not even a little.

If you really think you are a better player than everyone at NOVA, then kudos to you. Please post your tau destroying lists for the other armies in the game, and strategies.
After that, I'm having issues isolating two isomers of a Rh linked compounds without destroying the Rh linkage itself. Since I also assume you are an expert in biochemistry as well

I beat Tau all the time with my Tyranids. You can use tactics to negate their advantages.

I drop my guys in spore pods and deploy my 6" straight ahead to stand next to a tau unit. That means when my opponent tries to drop a str 8 ap 2 large blast template, he can't target me because he'd be touching a friendly model.

I use pinning weapons to force pinning checks on them.

I use puppet masters to have riptides blow up their own units.

I take hard-to-kill sacrificial units to run up the center and draw fire from the rest of my army (Swarmlord w/buffs, Gargoyles w/buffs)

Space marines, I imagine, would take some whirlwinds or drop some flamers on the marker light units and then mop up.

Chaos daemons would rush them with chaos hounds.

Eldar would focus down their missilesides and then go to town on fire warriors.

6th edition is not a gunline game... if you try to play it that way you'll get stomped by the gunline army... Tau.

 Ninjacommando wrote:

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

Well, they're not bringing Deathwing, or Ravenwing, or CSM, or Chaos Daemons. There's a correlation, yes, but based upon W-L a causal one too.

Space Marines will hopefully push back against the meta. Grav weapons and new TFC rules do help, the former with riptides and crisis suits and the latter with pathfinders and fire warriors. Getting the competitive game back to being balanced would be nice. (I feel sorry for CSM though)

It would just be nice if GW would get their act together and get the 40k meta actually balanced from the get-go rather than turning it into a many way tug of war where one army with a couple overzealous concepts pulls everyone over, and then the next army has to be designed to pull back.

Edit: And as others have said, whirlwinds are a bad choice. AV11 dies pretty quick, and the ignores cover is S4 AP5. TFCs are indeed better, their ignores cover is S5 AP4 I believe. They aren't a cure all, but they are better.

 En Excelsis wrote:
WARNING! This will be my most condescending post EVER!

I realize that this will make me sound like the quintessential internet douchebag but it still needs to be said.

The Tau are no more capable on the table than any other army. What makes them so competitive in the sense that I think you mean is that they are so simpole and intuitive to play. In a sense they are Games Workshop's ultimate acheivement since they are super easy to play, and have a strong appeal to first time players. Tau have, despite my personal distate for them, done a good deal to bring new players to the game. But that is beside the point.

As to why they are so competitive. Well, they are simple to play. While there are many examples to use in the various other races, I will use Space Marines as an example to illustrate my point.

The most basic difference between Tau and other armies is that other armies have the ability to play the game on more than on level. Space Marines, Eldar, Tyranids, Chaos (Marines & Daemons), Dark Eldar, etc all have the means to field units that can engage at range or close for assault. They have varied delivery systems such as light transports, drop pods, teleporting, assault transports, etc that can affect their use or role in the game. These armies all have a sort of depth to them that allows for every player the freedom to experiment and enjoy a style that works for them with some degree of success.

The Tau however are extremely two-dimensional. They have virtually no presence in the game as it concerns assaults. If you are assaulting the Tau, you've already defeated them. They have very limited use for their transports, and the only real strength that they possess as an army is their ranged firepower. The end result of all this is that all Tau players ultimately play the same way. There is no other way to player them. The strategy is hide in cover and fire your long range weapons at the enemy until they either die or break through your lines and kill you. There isn't a lot of varieety, and there isn't a lot that can be done to change the outcome of a game after a certain point.

Is this a bad thing? No. Their lack of versatility is a result of their ease of use. Anyone can pick up a Tau army and enjoy some victories in the game. They are a great introductory force. So great in fact that when two new players face off and one of them is playing Tau, that players is more likely to win. Not because they are a better player but becuase they are simply not bothered by having to learn more about the game their counterparts. They do only one thing, and they do it better than most other armies. It's a frightening sort of efficiency.

My best advice to you as a player who is facing Tau on the table is to look up the things in your codex (whichever it happens to be) and rely on the units in there that are not applying the same mechanics as the Tau player. Don't try and out-shoot them. You'll lose. Don't try and out-range them. You'll lose. Just find the units to which they have no answer - such as fast melee units, or units that bypass some special rules (snipers and units with poisioned weapons will eat units with high toughness valuse like the Riptide). Don't let yourself be confined to the same limitations as the Tau and you will win neatrly every game against them. Let yourself become as two-dimensional as them and you will lose (they kind of own those dimensions )

The existence of codex: BA makes the second sentence of your diatribe completely false. Try again.

Martel,
How does Ba's existence make him sound less condescending or like a douchebag?

Fixed.

En Excelsis wrote:


***Lots of drivel***

Just a big huge NO to almost everything you said. I have seven different builds with my Tau models and some of them even focus on transport use and/or CC. Your statement doesn't come off as douchey so much as uneducated about the topic at hand. Maybe your local Tau players aren't that imaginative, or maybe you just have a very weak grasp of the book, but almost everything you said there is false.

Especially the part about Tau being a good "beginner" army. Tau, more so then any other army save the Eldar, need their units to work together as a cohesive whole. The trick with unraveling Tau is fairly simple. You knock out each part of that "whole" one at a time and the army becomes less and less efficient with each missing piece. Start at the markerlights and work your way back and you will likely win. That makes Tau far more difficult to use than say, Space Marines where you can lose several units at once and still not have an appreciable loss in over-all power. I'm just not sure you really "get" the Tau ...

 Ninjacommando wrote:
so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

Yeah, good example!
But in that hypothetical tournament ONE person would bring a Tau-army and he'd have the first place.

Nova-tournament was 'okayish' balanced, but the top10 was still dominated by Tau even when there were 5 other codices with almost as many players.

Tycho wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:


***Lots of drivel***

Just a big huge NO to almost everything you said. I have seven different builds with my Tau models and some of them even focus on transport use and/or CC. Your statement doesn't come off as douchey so much as uneducated about the topic at hand. Maybe your local Tau players aren't that imaginative, or maybe you just have a very weak grasp of the book, but almost everything you said there is false.

Especially the part about Tau being a good "beginner" army. Tau, more so then any other army save the Eldar, need their units to work together as a cohesive whole. The trick with unraveling Tau is fairly simple. You knock out each part of that "whole" one at a time and the army becomes less and less efficient with each missing piece. Start at the markerlights and work your way back and you will likely win. That makes Tau far more difficult to use than say, Space Marines where you can lose several units at once and still not have an appreciable loss in over-all power. I'm just not sure you really "get" the Tau ...

I agree with this. After their marker lights go down you're looking at a shooting based army that is primarily BS3.

I would argue that the thing that makes riptides and missilesides so popular is that their more survivable than most Tau units. Like I said previously, you'll struggle to just shoot down a riptide.

Tau are a chain of units that allow a player to win. If you know which link to take out first, the chain quickly falls apart.

Why Tau are OP:

- they have an effective killzone that stretches 6" longer than most other armies. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it makes a difference.
- They can effectively, with correct order, ignore a large potion of the game's mechanics, or use them against you.
- have (arguably) the best infantry-standard firearm in 40k
- have certain combos that troll the living gak out of the majority of everything, including your own trolly combos

and a fair few more.



Tactics to beat them:

- they run on hitting you as you close the gap, so you have to have a few things just appear at once, then they go to hell
- they don't have enough of anything in a TAC list to be a hard counter to every build, so try unusual combinations that they might prioritize incorrectly
- Bring suicide units. they are designed to die anyway, so any shot going at them is one not going for your actual army.

Tycho wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:


***Points obviously above Tycho's head***

Just a big huge NO to almost everything you said. I have seven different builds with my Tau models and some of them even focus on transport use and/or CC. Your statement doesn't come off as douchey so much as uneducated about the topic at hand. Maybe your local Tau players aren't that imaginative, or maybe you just have a very weak grasp of the book, but almost everything you said there is false.

Especially the part about Tau being a good "beginner" army. Tau, more so then any other army save the Eldar, need their units to work together as a cohesive whole. The trick with unraveling Tau is fairly simple. You knock out each part of that "whole" one at a time and the army becomes less and less efficient with each missing piece. Start at the markerlights and work your way back and you will likely win. That makes Tau far more difficult to use than say, Space Marines where you can lose several units at once and still not have an appreciable loss in over-all power. I'm just not sure you really "get" the Tau ...

Bite back all you like, but that reason has really run thin. ALL armies are more than the sum of their parts. ALL armies rely on units working together. That's not something unique to the Tau or the Eldar. In fact, it only strengthens my point that the Tau are so super-two-dimensional. Arguing that the existance of Pathfinders adds some depth to their play style is a joke. They still have a short list of unit types. Shooty units, and units that make the shooty units more shooty. Obviously Pathfinders are the later, and if you take them out first you do cripple most of the remaining forces.

Now... how exactly does that make them less friendly to beginners?

The bottom line is that the Tau simply do not have the variety of play styles or strategies available to them that other armies do. All Tau players, from the neophyte to the Expert play the same game with Tau. Deploy Army in a gunline - roll buckets of dice - profft. They don't need to bother about moving around the table since they have range to all of it. They don't need to worry about unit positioning since they don't need LoS. They don't have to worry about formations since they can shre overwatch. They don't have to worry about breakaway units or flyers since they have easy access to interceptor.

All the things that other players have to learn and dapt to... making them more skillful strategists, are absent in the Tau meta. They just don't have to adress them.

Tau mainly dominate the Meta because they casually crush marines and termies. And soooo many people just refuse to change their lists that they've used for so long.

Depends on the layout of the army really.
If they use heavy ML support, take it out as soon as you can.

Removing cover, raising BS and firing seekers at you isnt much fun to be honest, so you want to get rid of that quickly.

Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

Then you have tau that actually use no ML's, which seems strange, but they dont really seem to suffer that badly because they have other ways of doing the job.

Another pain unit that may not seem obvious;
Commander with 2x burst cannons, drone controller, chip, suite and other junk with 2 gun drones.
Then 12 gun drones with him aswell.
You have 8 shots from him and 28 TL shots from the drones.
And at any point he can give up shooting to make his unit ignore cover saves.

Seems a bit of a weird one, but it tends to shred basic troops pretty badly.




Main thing though, tau sit back and usually castle up.
Templates and more templates.
Even if your killing a few FW's and chipping wounds off suits, its doing something.

Also, anything with precision shots should be aiming at ethereals and fireblades as they will be boosting the shooting even more.

 Jackal wrote:
Depends on the layout of the army really.
If they use heavy ML support, take it out as soon as you can.

Removing cover, raising BS and firing seekers at you isnt much fun to be honest, so you want to get rid of that quickly.

Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

Then you have tau that actually use no ML's, which seems strange, but they dont really seem to suffer that badly because they have other ways of doing the job.

Another pain unit that may not seem obvious;
Commander with 2x burst cannons, drone controller, chip, suite and other junk with 2 gun drones.
Then 12 gun drones with him aswell.
You have 8 shots from him and 28 TL shots from the drones.
And at any point he can give up shooting to make his unit ignore cover saves.

Seems a bit of a weird one, but it tends to shred basic troops pretty badly.




Main thing though, tau sit back and usually castle up.
Templates and more templates.
Even if your killing a few FW's and chipping wounds off suits, its doing something.

Also, anything with precision shots should be aiming at ethereals and fireblades as they will be boosting the shooting even more.

If you take a unit of 5 Piranhas and detach their gundrones you get a free 10-gun-drone unit... works well.

Another thing people haven't pointed out is their ability to ally with themselves, to get essentially double FoC in sub 2k games and the best of both signature systems which synergise with themselves.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Tau mainly dominate the Meta because they casually crush marines and termies. And soooo many people just refuse to change their lists that they've used for so long.

That is really not constructive at all.
So you are saying that people are only losing because they are bad?
So people on the tournaments are all bad and that's why they lose to Riptide-spam?

 Jackal wrote:
Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

The idea behind it is that you kill the ML-providers which allows you to hide in cover.
If you start the game with shooting at a Riptide he has BS5 and 'Ignores Cover' the entire game.
If you take a turn or two to shoot down ML-providers, he only has BS3.

 En Excelsis wrote:

The bottom line is that the Tau simply do not have the variety of play styles or strategies available to them that other armies do. All Tau players, from the neophyte to the Expert play the same game with Tau. Deploy Army in a gunline - roll buckets of dice - profft. They don't need to bother about moving around the table since they have range to all of it. They don't need to worry about unit positioning since they don't need LoS. They don't have to worry about formations since they can shre overwatch. They don't have to worry about breakaway units or flyers since they have easy access to interceptor.

False.

I play tau, I do not play a gunline.
I do not use ethereal.
I do not use broadsides.
I do not use skyray.
I only use one riptide (and with a HBC, not a IC)

True, i play farsight main, but I play different for "all tau can do is gunline", and it works pretty well.
And yet, there are a few players that crush me, constantly. and other who I crush with ease.
Why? because from some reason my riptide almost never survives turn 2, even when my opponent got no jets/reserves (he is set up as VT/EWO with the enclave ECPA) and plays power armor (meaning his dakka spam is useless)

BoomWolf, it is not an Imperium's way to use tactics. People are to win by courage, endurance and furious charge! Anything that makes it impossible is a cheat .