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 Vineheart01 wrote:
Ok, so the riptide isnt fragile. Yes, youre right, theyre tough as nails.

And what model do people complain about fighting in numbers? Riptides

Eldar have aewsome firepower and the much hated Seer Council amongst other things I would agree

Agree with me? Good, because I'm right. And tourney stats show that I'm right.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The best part is that lasguns are lasers too, yet it's ok to get cover against them.

The difference is that the lasgun actually has to hit you to do any damage. If a lasgun shot is stopped by the wall you're hiding behind then you're safe. If a markerlight shot is stopped by the wall you're hiding behind then the seeker missile it's marking you for hits the wall and kills you anyway.

But modern day laser guidence you have to "paint the target". Not, "paint the wall he is standing behind and hope for the best". For a markerlight or laser guidence system to actually have any use it has to have a bead on the enemy does it not. It cant just be in the general area because that would not be enough to benefit any supporting fire.

So if I shoot a lasgun or a bolter against that ork in the ruin and on a 4+ the ruin blocks the shot leaving the ork unharmed. Then surely at the same 4+ the ruin blocks the markerlight. Therefore the ork is not "painted up" and therefore any other units wishing to shoot him have no extra benefit because the marker light never hit its target. Does that not sound reasonable?

The other thing I would change for tau would be the nova reactor being more 50-50. Taking a wound on a 1,2,3 would make it much more tactical to use and decide if its worht the risk/reward. At the moment the risk is very little to the gains it can make by using that piece of equipment.

 tuiman wrote:
It cant just be in the general area because that would not be enough to benefit any supporting fire.

That depends on how close a shot has to get to be lethal. A markerlight guiding in a seeker missile strike or railgun shot probably doesn't have to worry about flawless precision because even a near miss is going to kill anything nearby.

So if I shoot a lasgun or a bolter against that ork in the ruin and on a 4+ the ruin blocks the shot leaving the ork unharmed. Then surely at the same 4+ the ruin blocks the markerlight. Therefore the ork is not "painted up" and therefore any other units wishing to shoot him have no extra benefit because the marker light never hit its target. Does that not sound reasonable?

You're assuming that shots can't go through cover, and that the models on the table accurately represent exactly what is happening in the "real" battle. Consider three scenarios:

Scenario A: a fire warrior is trying to shoot at an ork hiding behind a wall. The fire warrior knows the ork is somewhere behind the wall and his pulse rifle can easily shoot through the flimsy barrier, but isn't sure about exactly where the target is. So he fires blindly at the wall, which is represented by a 4+ cover save for the ork. Half the shots hit the ork, the other half hit an empty part of the wall and are wasted.

Scenario B: our hero has a pathfinder friend in an excellent position to observe the fight. She uses her markerlight to mark the spot on the wall that the ork is hiding behind. The fire warrior uses this information to shoot at the right part of the wall instead of blindly guessing, and most of his shots hit the ork (he's only BS 3 after all).

Scenario C: our hero gains a field promotion to a Hammerhead with a railgun. He again knows that the ork is hiding behind the wall (this time a sturdier wall that can stop a shot), but isn't sure about the exact range to the target. Fortunately his pathfinder friend is still around, and uses her markerlight to find the exact spot, within a reasonable margin of error because it's a 50/50 chance of the markerlight hitting the ork or the wall next to the ork. The Hammerhead gunner now fires a railgun submunition shot with an airburst fuse timed to explode over the ork's head. But because the subminition shot sprays lethal shrapnel over a wide area the small difference in aim doesn't really matter as long as the markerlight narrows it down enough.

I play Dark Angels. Written by the same Codex author, in fact. My issue with Tau is that the types of armies you tend to see people run with them completely counter the majority of tactics I have access to. Biker armies are just point sinks because markerlights mean no jink saves. Tons of important units for Tau have interceptor AND AP2 weapons meaning I can't really run terminators either because then I just lose a ton of my own units, ON MY OWN TURN.

And then Riptides. God. Overpowered unit. Monstrous creature inherently makes you better at close combat, even at WS2 I2, than most units in the game. The fact it can also overcharge and get a 3++ is also just stupid. I managed to charge a Riptide with 2 separate squads of 5 terminators apiece, and only managed to wound it twice in 5 rounds of combat, while it managed, easily, to kill 3 terminators.

Honestly I got into Warhammer 40k as a hobby about a year ago and I am already done with the actual game side of it. It's just not fun, largely because I have yet to win a game against Tau or Eldar. There's a metric load of rules so the game takes forever to play, and because I'm not Tau/Eldar/Grey Knights/Dark Eldar, I can't win pretty much ever. I don't know whether to be happy or glad I enjoy the painting and modeling aspect as much as I do.

 Peregrine wrote:



That depends on how close a shot has to get to be lethal. A markerlight guiding in a seeker missile strike or railgun shot probably doesn't have to worry about flawless precision because even a near miss is going to kill anything nearby.



You're assuming that shots can't go through cover, and that the models on the table accurately represent exactly what is happening in the "real" battle. Consider three scenarios:

Scenario A: a fire warrior is trying to shoot at an ork hiding behind a wall. The fire warrior knows the ork is somewhere behind the wall and his pulse rifle can easily shoot through the flimsy barrier, but isn't sure about exactly where the target is. So he fires blindly at the wall, which is represented by a 4+ cover save for the ork. Half the shots hit the ork, the other half hit an empty part of the wall and are wasted.

Scenario B: our hero has a pathfinder friend in an excellent position to observe the fight. She uses her markerlight to mark the spot on the wall that the ork is hiding behind. The fire warrior uses this information to shoot at the right part of the wall instead of blindly guessing, and most of his shots hit the ork (he's only BS 3 after all).

Scenario C: our hero gains a field promotion to a Hammerhead with a railgun. He again knows that the ork is hiding behind the wall (this time a sturdier wall that can stop a shot), but isn't sure about the exact range to the target. Fortunately his pathfinder friend is still around, and uses her markerlight to find the exact spot, within a reasonable margin of error because it's a 50/50 chance of the markerlight hitting the ork or the wall next to the ork. The Hammerhead gunner now fires a railgun submunition shot with an airburst fuse timed to explode over the ork's head. But because the subminition shot sprays lethal shrapnel over a wide area the small difference in aim doesn't really matter as long as the markerlight narrows it down enough.

But for scenario b and c you are assuming the path finder knows where the ork is. He will be firing blindly at the wall with his marker light the same way the warrior in scenario a is. Only after finally picking out the ork can the markerlight actually be useful to the fire warrior.

Im not saying markerlight hits can be used to ignore cover. Im saying that you should be able to get cover saves against marker lights.

I see a TON of riptide complaints, is just one riptide really that bad?

As far as I can tell one Riptide isn't that bad, although it's still a fairly strong unit. Three or more Riptides can be considered abusive because they're fairly hard to deal with for non-Tau/Eldar armies.

 Vineheart01 wrote:

One model in an entire army doesnt remove the "Fragile army" tag. And there are ways to deal with riptides, ive lost mine to a single shooting wave several times against eldar or other tau. Or jaws for that matter (damn dpods lol).

So your argument is that other Tau players and Eldar players (you know, that other power Codex...) can handle Riptides so they're fine? Are you for real?

Yeah I keep seeing people defend the Tau codex by saying, "But Eldar do all that and more!" Well...yeah...that is why you see people complaining about Eldar too. It's not like a codex being more powerful than another makes the later any less powerful...

There are 15 codices. 15 points of data in the spectrum from most powerful to least powerful so we have plenty of information to go by when considering something as powerful or "OP." That is just counting the base books, not including things like the Inquisitor codex, suppliments, forge world, and allied formations. That is a lot of points on a graph to give an idea of what is ahead of the power curve.

You know what? Tyranids have a boat load of problems but their most powerful builds are better than the median power level of the armies, so I have a hard time with someone discounting them when it comes to a discussion about power creep in this game. Tau and Eldar are so far ahead of the power curve that it is silly to say that one is less powerful than the other so that makes it okay. Necrons are STILL a power house army, just because they aren't number one or two does not mean that the Flying Bakery list is just as powerful as it always was. There are just a few armies out there that can now deal with it. About five out of the fifteen codices can deal in some meaningful way with Flying Bakery, that does not diminish the power of that army. Just like the fact that Eldar can deal with Tau does not diminish the power of Tau.

..because seeker missiles have so good AP properties that e.g. a lascannon miss, of course they kill targets hiding behind walls illuminated by magic markerlight lasers.

No, that does not make any sense. Tau players trying to rationalize that functionality also do not make sense.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
Yeah I keep seeing people defend the Tau codex by saying, "But Eldar do all that and more!" Well...yeah...that is why you see people complaining about Eldar too. It's not like a codex being more powerful than another makes the later any less powerful...

There are 15 codices. 15 points of data in the spectrum from most powerful to least powerful so we have plenty of information to go by when considering something as powerful or "OP." That is just counting the base books, not including things like the Inquisitor codex, suppliments, forge world, and allied formations. That is a lot of points on a graph to give an idea of what is ahead of the power curve.

You know what? Tyranids have a boat load of problems but their most powerful builds are better than the median power level of the armies, so I have a hard time with someone discounting them when it comes to a discussion about power creep in this game. Tau and Eldar are so far ahead of the power curve that it is silly to say that one is less powerful than the other so that makes it okay. Necrons are STILL a power house army, just because they aren't number one or two does not mean that the Flying Bakery list is just as powerful as it always was. There are just a few armies out there that can now deal with it. About five out of the fifteen codices can deal in some meaningful way with Flying Bakery, that does not diminish the power of that army. Just like the fact that Eldar can deal with Tau does not diminish the power of Tau.

Yup can't shift the blame to other codices for being even more powerful doesn't work that way. I personally only bring one Riptide to pick up games in my local LGS and there has been two types of players that I've come across the more "veteran" players being able to overcome the Riptide and the more "inexperienced" players who don't know what to do to deal with getting rid of it. A lot comes down to dice as well as player skill. Saw my friend roll 5 ones and no FNP saves in a single shooting phase. Single Riptides are easy to deal with and as soon as you bring one more it becomes exponentially hard to deal with.

Naw wrote:
..because seeker missiles have so good AP properties that e.g. a lascannon miss, of course they kill targets hiding behind walls illuminated by magic markerlight lasers.

No, that does not make any sense. Tau players trying to rationalize that functionality also do not make sense.

I use a simple house rule that helps with all of this (I did this as a tau player too, so son't lump all tau players together).
Cover saves can be taken for any hit (after rolling to wound/pen). A saved cover save is treated like the shot never hit. This is a logical explanation, that helps greatly with things like laser-lock and marker lights. A laser still has to hit you (even if it is invisible to the naked eye as markerlights are) and unlike armour saves, cover saves represent the munition/laser/thing hitting something other than you.

On the other hand, seeker missiles have internal guidance systems, as well as being guided by the marker lights, so it is a bit like a drone with a bomb attached to it. A markerlighted seeker missile makes sense to have ignore cover and homing (ignore LoS).

Maybe markerlights are more than just a laser pointer for a shot to follow in. Maybe they are an imaging system that feeds info to the other weapons systems that are homing in on them. They give info about what type of cover the target is behind, and the info of the area around it. More like the camera on a guided missile feds to the operator to let them make last minute corrections.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Maybe markerlights are more than just a laser pointer for a shot to follow in. Maybe they are an imaging system that feeds info to the other weapons systems that are homing in on them. They give info about what type of cover the target is behind, and the info of the area around it. More like the camera on a guided missile feds to the operator to let them make last minute corrections.

That would make sense (and it sounds more technologically advances and Tauy than just laser designators.

Hell, from a space-borne race, maybe the image of the area directly around the target is even 3-dimensional.

Also, I don't hate Tau at all. I think their army is really, really cool. I just don't like GW's point assignments on some of their units. The usual problems.

The marker light mechanic is a simple buff and debuff ones. you hit with marker lights and you apply a fairly simplistic system to debuff your enemies, and buff your own units. and marker lights are useable by any unit that wants to use them, but only a single unit at a time can spend 'hits' Understandably, you will generally use the hits to buff something hard hitting, and debuff whatever its shooting at. this leads to an understandable array of Riptides sporting ion accelerators (overloaded of course) accompanied by a commander who makes their guns twin linked, makes them ignore cover, and then the riptide spends marker lights to boost his BS as high as possible so the pie plate of doom doesn't miss.

That sounds about right doesn't it? and the only thing worse than a marker light buffed unit (450+ points for it all) is an O'Vesa Star which is farsight, 2 riptides a buffmander AND marker lights for around 800 points. Personally speaking, if i was to invest 450-800 points in an offensive build for any army, i would be very upset if that build didn't have the offensive punch to wreck face.

You would also think from reading this particular thread that Tau are the only ones who can (de)buff units, and you would be right! there are no psykers, no flamers, no barrage weapons, no special issue ammunition, wave serpents don't have ignore cover shield thingies. daemons can't get 2++ saves either, and to add insult to injury, tau have so many marker lights everything ignores cover, and everything will be BS10

the sky is falling, what shall we do????

HTFU, adapt or die

madtankbloke wrote:
The marker light mechanic is a simple buff and debuff ones. you hit with marker lights and you apply a fairly simplistic system to debuff your enemies, and buff your own units. and marker lights are useable by any unit that wants to use them, but only a single unit at a time can spend 'hits' Understandably, you will generally use the hits to buff something hard hitting, and debuff whatever its shooting at. this leads to an understandable array of Riptides sporting ion accelerators (overloaded of course) accompanied by a commander who makes their guns twin linked, makes them ignore cover, and then the riptide spends marker lights to boost his BS as high as possible so the pie plate of doom doesn't miss.

That sounds about right doesn't it? and the only thing worse than a marker light buffed unit (450+ points for it all) is an O'Vesa Star which is farsight, 2 riptides a buffmander AND marker lights for around 800 points. Personally speaking, if i was to invest 450-800 points in an offensive build for any army, i would be very upset if that build didn't have the offensive punch to wreck face.

You would also think from reading this particular thread that Tau are the only ones who can (de)buff units, and you would be right! there are no psykers, no flamers, no barrage weapons, no special issue ammunition, wave serpents don't have ignore cover shield thingies. daemons can't get 2++ saves either, and to add insult to injury, tau have so many marker lights everything ignores cover, and everything will be BS10

the sky is falling, what shall we do????

HTFU, adapt or die

According to your post - give up or buy new Tau, Eldar or Demon armies -

madtankbloke wrote:
The marker light mechanic is a simple buff and debuff ones. you hit with marker lights and you apply a fairly simplistic system to debuff your enemies, and buff your own units. and marker lights are useable by any unit that wants to use them, but only a single unit at a time can spend 'hits' Understandably, you will generally use the hits to buff something hard hitting, and debuff whatever its shooting at. this leads to an understandable array of Riptides sporting ion accelerators (overloaded of course) accompanied by a commander who makes their guns twin linked, makes them ignore cover, and then the riptide spends marker lights to boost his BS as high as possible so the pie plate of doom doesn't miss.

That sounds about right doesn't it? and the only thing worse than a marker light buffed unit (450+ points for it all) is an O'Vesa Star which is farsight, 2 riptides a buffmander AND marker lights for around 800 points. Personally speaking, if i was to invest 450-800 points in an offensive build for any army, i would be very upset if that build didn't have the offensive punch to wreck face.

You would also think from reading this particular thread that Tau are the only ones who can (de)buff units, and you would be right! there are no psykers, no flamers, no barrage weapons, no special issue ammunition, wave serpents don't have ignore cover shield thingies. daemons can't get 2++ saves either, and to add insult to injury, tau have so many marker lights everything ignores cover, and everything will be BS10

the sky is falling, what shall we do????

HTFU, adapt or die

Try taking an 800-point Deathstar as any MEQ Codex and see how well you end up. The fact that you're comparing Markerlights and Riptides to flamers and special issue ammunition makes it hard for me to take you seriously.

 Mr Morden wrote:


According to your post - give up or buy new Tau, Eldar or Demon armies -

As it is and always has been with GW, the newer the codex the stronger the army out of the box. So yeah, if you want to compete on a purely power for point perspective, you use the big boy codexs or go home. And usually, but not always, the big boy codex is one of the last three to be released. GW has been doing it this way for 15 years, I don't see them changing their tune anytime soon.

The Tau's biggest enemy is GW. At separate times they have gotten flak for being either a crap army, or an overpowered army.

'Course, so has Eldar.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The Tau's biggest enemy is GW. At separate times they have gotten flak for being either a crap army, or an overpowered army.

'Course, so has Eldar.

That is true. For a long time it seemed like I could fine no one else who played tau (asides form ATT, but that doesn't really count). Now people are playing tau, not because they like to fluff or the models (the reason I, and most original tau players got in for), but because the tau codex is viewed as powerful. This is a lot of the reason for tau hate right now as I see it. All these WAAC players and TFGs got tau armies or tau allies* and have been wining, so the hate is shifted on to anyone who plays tau, including people like me who have played tau from the beginning, and may have not altered their army lists at all (other than some wargear to update to the new codex). There are lots of people out there who hate tau. They attack the tau's fluff, saying it's not grimdark (a complete fallacy BTW, the tau are plenty grimdark, they are just not in-your-face grimdark), say that they are just unoriginal anime gundam things (Compared to magical space elves, chitinous monsters from space, superhumans in power armour, demons, WWI armies, and an army made of terminators. And the anime thing is stupid too, have you guys watched sci-fi movies at all? Battlesuit-like things are everywhere. ). The real reason for most of that is that the tau codex is viewed as cheese. A lot of the old hate is Fish of Fury based, and a lot of things in the tau codex just seem to be the new FoF.



*Despite the much of the tau allies table making no fluff sense whatsoever. Tau are battle brother with space marines but not with IG. What happened to "Death to xenos scum!"? What happened to gue'vessa? GW really needs to fix the table.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


Try taking an 800-point Deathstar as any MEQ Codex and see how well you end up. The fact that you're comparing Markerlights and Riptides to flamers and special issue ammunition makes it hard for me to take you seriously.

Yes, because Marker lights are the only unit in the game that has the ability to buff, or debuff anything, isn't it. and marker lights are the only way anyone can ever ignore cover with anything. oh wait....

and seriously, are you saying that having an 800 point deathstar that performs, is unfair because MARINES cant do it? because its a Tau army, and not a marine one, i'm not entitled to expect that a significant points investment should have the audacity to actually kill stuff??

and marker lights are almost exactly the same as they were in the last codex, just an FYI

madtankbloke wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


Try taking an 800-point Deathstar as any MEQ Codex and see how well you end up. The fact that you're comparing Markerlights and Riptides to flamers and special issue ammunition makes it hard for me to take you seriously.

Yes, because Marker lights are the only unit in the game that has the ability to buff, or debuff anything, isn't it. and marker lights are the only way anyone can ever ignore cover with anything. oh wait....

and seriously, are you saying that having an 800 point deathstar that performs, is unfair because MARINES cant do it? because its a Tau army, and not a marine one, i'm not entitled to expect that a significant points investment should have the audacity to actually kill stuff??

and marker lights are almost exactly the same as they were in the last codex, just an FYI

The only actual change for markerlights is that they can get BS to higher than 5 (IIRC they were limited because there was to BS6+ at the time, I forget which edition that was then), and that cover used to be -1 per markerlight.

 UlrikDecado wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

Yaknow, someone who is actually trying to be good, and not outright "OMG SO GRIMDARK!" somehow ruins their galaxy.

Well, truth to be told, Im no Tau hater, but their fluff and visual style isnt something I would expect and like in WH40K. They scream to me "we must add another faction!" (despite fact that they are here "few" years, I know ) and all the mecha irritates me. On the other hand, I think that their "we are gooooood" is probably another face of grimdark, just GW didnt evolve the story to show their brainwashing etc.

Still, no Tau hater, just dont like them much, but whatever, many people loves Tau, so enjoy

I think the Tau are fairly fascist in there methods actually. Yeah if you join them life's great, but they blow the crap out of you if you tell them to feth themselves.

 Aleph-Sama wrote:

 UlrikDecado wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

Yaknow, someone who is actually trying to be good, and not outright "OMG SO GRIMDARK!" somehow ruins their galaxy.

Well, truth to be told, Im no Tau hater, but their fluff and visual style isnt something I would expect and like in WH40K. They scream to me "we must add another faction!" (despite fact that they are here "few" years, I know ) and all the mecha irritates me. On the other hand, I think that their "we are gooooood" is probably another face of grimdark, just GW didnt evolve the story to show their brainwashing etc.

Still, no Tau hater, just dont like them much, but whatever, many people loves Tau, so enjoy

I think the Tau are fairly fascist in there methods actually. Yeah if you join them life's great, but they blow the crap out of you if you tell them to feth themselves.

The only reason tau are the "nice guys" is that they offer you a chance to join them. Everybody else just shoots/virus-bombs/rapes/burns you.

madtankbloke wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


Try taking an 800-point Deathstar as any MEQ Codex and see how well you end up. The fact that you're comparing Markerlights and Riptides to flamers and special issue ammunition makes it hard for me to take you seriously.

Yes, because Marker lights are the only unit in the game that has the ability to buff, or debuff anything, isn't it. and marker lights are the only way anyone can ever ignore cover with anything. oh wait....

and seriously, are you saying that having an 800 point deathstar that performs, is unfair because MARINES cant do it? because its a Tau army, and not a marine one, i'm not entitled to expect that a significant points investment should have the audacity to actually kill stuff??

and marker lights are almost exactly the same as they were in the last codex, just an FYI

Marker Lights are much better now. No more cap to how much you can increase the BS of a unit, need less hits to remove cover, make a seeker missile Ignore Cover. The difference between the O'vesa Star and say a Draigowing or Wraithwing is the Ov'esa Star can easily remove those units in one round of shooting and make it's points back and a pain to get off the board being Majority Toughness 6, 2+, 5++ (3++), 5+++, has Fleet and Hit and Run due to the VRT at I5. If you say it's perfectly fine to run the Ovesastar and other people should get over it that's a WAAC/ TFG mentality.

My personal beef with Tau is that they are just so...damn....boring to play against. A good player will take advantage of the manouverability afforded by the Devilfish, or will place their defence line outside the deployment zone and move forward in their first turn to bring the Fire Warriors into range, but most of the time they're just so darn static. Even IG move forward more. But the only "movement" I ever really see are Riptides moving into the mid-board and (maybe) lone, deep-striking crisis suits.

Just......so........dull.

 LeadLegion wrote:
A good player will take advantage of the manouverability afforded by the Devilfish

A good Tau player isn't using devilfish, because they're too expensive, their firepower is inconsequential for the price paid, and you're ferrying around fire warriors who, as you rightly pointed out, don't want to move out of their deployment zone anyway. So other than picking up a squad and losing valuable turns of shooting just to put it even closer into melee range for your opponent, you're not really accomplishing anything else with them and you're just wasting points that could have been spent on other, better things.

It's GW's fault that games against Tau are "dull" in the end, not mine. They had a chance to give Tau more options and make them a more exciting army to play, but instead they encouraged Tau players to build a static gunline and spam the new $85 hotness, and not only that but they actually took away some of the Tau's mobility while they were at it just to further pigeon-hole us into playing that way. It's one of the reasons why I, as a Tau player, have equally lost interest in playing the game at this point, because I don't have fun sitting in one place the entire game, either, but it's currently not worthwhile to get into mid-range and risk being assaulted (other than with riptides, because they're one of the few units in the book that still have crazy mobility and they're survivable enough to make it worth the risk), when you can more easily win by sitting in your deployment zone the whole game. There's no incentive for a Tau player to move up the board at all. And there's only so much I can do as a player to make the game "fun" without just giving up any chance I have of actually winning.