Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

X078 wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:

X078 wrote:
Wait what so now that the (many many) nerfed Tau armies playing did not make it to the top 8 the reason is that they were...

... drumroll...

unlucky?

And WarCon being superstrong not making it says what?

You do understand the difference was that Tau had two potential players making it into the top 8 in the last round, and both lost that last round, that's bad luck. War Convocation had zero people competing for top 8 in the last round, which can still be chalked up to luck to an extent, but it's significantly worse than the Tau.

Again, I'll repeat, there was a Tau player on table 3 and 4 in the last round before the top 8, there was no War Convocation player in the top 8 table (top 16 players) in the last round before top 8. There was easily a chance of up to Tau players in the top 8, there was zero chance of War Convocation.

I do not think it is a matter of potentionally two Tau players almost making it or not, as much as it is that people probably expected to see at least 50% Tau in the top because of all the nerfs and op-crying they recieved. Even after the nerfs they were said to be super good so one would reasonable expect several competing in the top 8 finals.
Anyways, there is know a first sample of empirical data stating otherwise.

Considering this is one event, it was Maelstrom-ish which Tau definitely can have a hard time with, and one player literally went undefeated, I'd hardly say Tau are not OP. Sure, it wasn't a blow out, but Tau are still crazy strong, especially with their formation that lets you always hit the rear armor of a vehicle.

If Tau wer THAT strong compared to all the other armies around there should at least 2-3 Tau armies in the top 8.

Simply because top players usualy choose a top army to play. If Tau were that OP they should also exel at Mealstrom Missions. Simply because a super OP army shoudl be able to take some points n blow out the oponent. Surprisingly Tau were not that OP. it also seems that not that many player considered them as such a super OP army. because if they did there would have been more of them and especialy more of them in the top 8.

So it comes down to: Tau are a strong army. but not that OP.
oh btw. comparing Tau with CSM or a other super bad Codex proves nothing. simply because these super weak Codieces suck against other strong Codiecies as well.

I'm actually pleasantly surprised by those results. I didn't expect any Tau player to breach the top 8 (16 certainly) but that one went undefeated is pretty impressive to me.

Not remotely surprised some people are arguing Tau are OP for making it into the top 16, though that some are doing it while accusing Tau players of moving the goalposts is its own kind of impressive.

That ghostkeel ruling is still bad.

 _ghost_ wrote:
If Tau wer THAT strong compared to all the other armies around there should at least 2-3 Tau armies in the top 8.

Simply because top players usualy choose a top army to play. If Tau were that OP they should also exel at Mealstrom Missions. Simply because a super OP army shoudl be able to take some points n blow out the oponent. Surprisingly Tau were not that OP. it also seems that not that many player considered them as such a super OP army. because if they did there would have been more of them and especialy more of them in the top 8.

So it comes down to: Tau are a strong army. but not that OP.
oh btw. comparing Tau with CSM or a other super bad Codex proves nothing. simply because these super weak Codieces suck against other strong Codiecies as well.

Not really. The main reason Tau didn't make Top 8 is because Eldar. I would like to see a breakdown of armies that entered, not just TOP 8, but all over. I would bet there's twice as many Eldar players as Tau. That doesn't mean Tau/SM/Daemons aren't OP, just that Eldar, like always, take the cake.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Not entirely.

And yet its almost always the same people.

From another "Tau aren't OP!!!!1111" thread, actually interesting data.

 1PlusLogan wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
How many players total per faction?
You need to know that before any number means anything.

54 Space Marines
50 Eldar
22 Tau
21 Necrons
20 Daemons
16 Cult Mechanicus
11 Dark Angels
7 Grey Knights

You can grab the rest yourself from the link there - http://bcp.modelingforadvantage.com/event/lvo2016

So nearly 20% of Tau entrants got in the top 10% of results. ITC clearly made Tau awful Meanwhile 12% of Eldar got in top 10% of results.

To put my earlier post (quoted above) in perspective... there were SEVEN Renegades lists, and 4 made it into top 10%.

Nerf Chaos, buff Tau.

 1PlusLogan wrote:
To put my earlier post (quoted above) in perspective... there were SEVEN Renegades lists, and 4 made it into top 10%.

Nerf Chaos, buff Tau.

Perfect response to that. Have some glorious exalt.

OOooh a GK player got 21st place? I kinda want to see his list as it did above average in most of his games. Maybe he got lucky in matchups?

EDIT: aaaand the other GK players are in the bottom 25% dammit

You guys could be a lot worse off. >.>
The top BA in the event tied for 93rd.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
You guys could be a lot worse off. >.>
The top BA in the event tied for 93rd.

But I complain too much. Clearly.

Martel732 wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
You guys could be a lot worse off. >.>
The top BA in the event tied for 93rd.

But I complain too much. Clearly.

Our poor, poor Sons of Sanguinius. How far the mighty have fallen.

Martel was right all along..

 Quickjager wrote:
OOooh a GK player got 21st place? I kinda want to see his list as it did above average in most of his games. Maybe he got lucky in matchups?

EDIT: aaaand the other GK players are in the bottom 25% dammit

If your NDK make a lot of saves during the tournament you could easily wreck a lot of top lists. Problem is they usually all are dead turn 2-3.

Although Harlies topped at 137, they are more an allied force.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
OOooh a GK player got 21st place? I kinda want to see his list as it did above average in most of his games. Maybe he got lucky in matchups?

EDIT: aaaand the other GK players are in the bottom 25% dammit

If your NDK make a lot of saves during the tournament you could easily wreck a lot of top lists. Problem is they usually all are dead turn 2-3.

Pretty much, if a NDK is still alive by turn 3 that means it will be making all of its points back. But like ya said, people know that.

I didn't see any Tau on that link, so whatever.

I'm more curious that somebody took an Obelisk AND a Monolith.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'm more curious that somebody took an Obelisk AND a Monolith.

Living Tomb formation, so it's all about the auto-entry zero scatter T2 deepstrike

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I didn't see any Tau on that link, so whatever.

I'm more curious that somebody took an Obelisk AND a Monolith.

Their highest place was 12th,

Obelisk and Monolith were awesome to see doing well. Shame that the winner was SpiderSpam. I guess I should be happy that ScatterSpam didn't win but eh.

 Frozocrone wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I didn't see any Tau on that link, so whatever.

I'm more curious that somebody took an Obelisk AND a Monolith.

Their highest place was 12th,

Obelisk and Monolith were awesome to see doing well. Shame that the winner was SpiderSpam. I guess I should be happy that ScatterSpam didn't win but eh.

Spider spam is a permutation of scatterspam. It's still all about the S6, the panacea of 7th ed.

It's better too, what with the wound on initiative and in-built protection by flicker jump.

I know it's for a tournament but it's just bland and boring. I like originality and things we haven't seen before. I only play spam lists when my friends do.

I've been playing spider spam since the craft world Eldar supplement released. It's both nice and strange that my army went from average to very powerful, but at least I don't have to change my list to play locally anymore.

So I've had a read of Pablo's post on FLG about the results. Very interesting. With all the utterly baseless claims here that Tau DESERVED these nerfs because "ZOMG they're so OP waaaa!", you would expect that to be represented with all top 8 spots being Tau right? Right? I mean my god, they're just so OP! Hide yo kids!

Here's the actual top 8:

White Scars Gladius Strike Force
Eldar Warp Spider Spam + Inquisitor
Chaos Daemons Double CAD
Necron Decurion
Eldar CAD + Corpse-Thief Claw
Eldar CAD + DE CAD
Necron Formations
Ravenwing CAD + SW CAD

It's a few of the usual suspects, no? And hmm, no Tau...

Just to reiterate the point, there were two Tau lists in top 16 (one of which was undefeated before not making top 8) but that STILL doesn't somehow translate to Tau being uuber OP.

Against the better players in my group I don't always come away with a "W" when I'm playing as Tau. In fact I lose some games. There's an Ork player who not only got the charge off against my front lines in one game wiping me off the table in a turn, but he actually OUT-SHOT ME in another game! In fact I don't think I've beaten him yet with my Tau... Hmm, I may need some more games against him! And as I said previously I was 2/3rds wiped off the board in a game against a Knight formation and some Militarum Tempestus just a few weeks ago. What I'm saying is anything is possible when you put your mind to it and practice as often as possible! If the supposed worst codex in the game (Orks) can beat my supposed most OP codex in the game (Tau as people would have you believe) on multiple occasions without nit-picking every rule and we can still come away with some extremely enjoyable games, then clearly some people have missed the point entirely.

I'm not saying that the ITC have crippled Tau [in their events] with these rulings, so to imply that is a lie. Of course Tau still remain extremely powerful. My point has been that Tau aren't the end-all be-all of 40k like people scream about, and that for FLG to arbitrarily nerf units/formations directly without proper explanation, transparency, and proof of analysis is inappropriate at best. As RiTides has said a dozen times, they should really be hands-off with those kinds of rulings unless it's something more universal (and more detrimental) to the game (2+ re-rollables, etc).

 dbgoldberg323 wrote:
So I've had a read of Pablo's post on FLG about the results. Very interesting. With all the utterly baseless claims here that Tau DESERVED these nerfs because "ZOMG they're so OP waaaa!", you would expect that to be represented with all top 8 spots being Tau right? Right? I mean my god, they're just so OP! Hide yo kids!

Here's the actual top 8:

White Scars Gladius Strike Force
Eldar Warp Spider Spam + Inquisitor
Chaos Daemons Double CAD
Necron Decurion
Eldar CAD + Corpse-Thief Claw
Eldar CAD + DE CAD
Necron Formations
Ravenwing CAD + SW CAD

It's a few of the usual suspects, no? And hmm, no Tau...

Just to reiterate the point, there were two Tau lists in top 16 (one of which was undefeated before not making top 8) but that STILL doesn't somehow translate to Tau being uuber OP.

Just because something else is OP doesn't automatically mean Tau aren't OP. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Also, guess what, Tau didn't place in the Top 8, considering there were double their numbers in Eldar players. Again, just because something else is OP doesn't automatically mean Tau aren't OP.

Against the better players in my group I don't always come away with a "W" when I'm playing as Tau. In fact I lose some games. There's an Ork player who not only got the charge off against my front lines in one game wiping me off the table in a turn, but he actually OUT-SHOT ME in another game! In fact I don't think I've beaten him yet with my Tau... Hmm, I may need some more games against him! And as I said previously I was 2/3rds wiped off the board in a game against a Knight formation and some Militarum Tempestus just a few weeks ago. What I'm saying is anything is possible when you put your mind to it and practice as often as possible! If the supposed worst codex in the game (Orks) can beat my supposed most OP codex in the game (Tau as people would have you believe) on multiple occasions without nit-picking every rule and we can still come away with some extremely enjoyable games, then clearly some people have missed the point entirely.

So, sounds like either A) you had bad luck or B) you're a terrible player, especially if neither of you are running fully optimized lists. Honestly, in a first to 5 match, I'd put money on Tau over either of those armies. Also, just cuz a weaker codex (Orks) can beat a superior codex (Tau) in a match, does not automatically mean the two are balanced.

I'm not saying that the ITC have crippled Tau [in their events] with these rulings, so to imply that is a lie. Of course Tau still remain extremely powerful. My point has been that Tau aren't the end-all be-all of 40k like people scream about, and that for FLG to arbitrarily nerf units/formations directly without proper explanation, transparency, and proof of analysis is inappropriate at best. As RiTides has said a dozen times, they should really be hands-off with those kinds of rulings unless it's something more universal to the game (2+ re-rollables, etc).

I would rather have these rulings with after the fact voting than have them waste a TO's and each opponent's time making individual rulings. This way, going in everyone knows what the rules are and there are no confusions.

Also, guess what? Even with the nerfs, some of the Tau formations are still extremely broken, especially the always hits rear armor that you can give Ignores Cover too. Your army lost to Eldar. Hey, so did 4 other extremely strong armies. That doesn't make your army weak.

First no one is saying Tau is the most OP codex in the game. Quit making up stuff to fit your narrative. The most common complaints about Tau is that they are the least fun to play against due to them not participating in two phases of the game.

Second your anecdotal evidence means nothing. I can just as easily infer you are bad at the game from such a statement.

Lastly this tourney just confirms one thing, the powerhouses are still powerhouses and Tau can match them blow for blow.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Izzy's tau actually went undefeated. Unfortunately it was 4w2d0L which made him unable to hit top 8. Either one of those draws being a win and he would've been in, knocking out Aleong's wolfravenstar.


Of course, this being the Internet, the goalposts would move anyway. If one made top 8, someone would be like "y you no make top 7!?" anyway.

I think the records are more important than the top 8 thing. What does the preponderance of the evidence tell us? It doesn't tell us that Tau did poorly. It certainly tells us ZILCH as to whether the ITC "decision" affected them.

More importantly, the lists themselves were run by actual Generals. We cannot attribute the top 8 to just the lists. Worthy lists were no doubt struck dead by superior strategy. The ultimate truth is that better generals end up in the finals a lot, despite their competitions best efforts and best lists. Lists don't win championships. We do.

 Jancoran wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Izzy's tau actually went undefeated. Unfortunately it was 4w2d0L which made him unable to hit top 8. Either one of those draws being a win and he would've been in, knocking out Aleong's wolfravenstar.


Of course, this being the Internet, the goalposts would move anyway. If one made top 8, someone would be like "y you no make top 7!?" anyway.

I think the records are more important than the top 8 thing. What does the preponderance of the evidence tell us? It doesn't tell us that Tau did poorly. It certainly tells us ZILCH as to whether the ITC "decision" affected them.

More importantly, the lists themselves were run by actual Generals. We cannot attribute the top 8 to just the lists. Worthy lists were no doubt struck dead by superior strategy. The ultimate truth is that better generals end up in the finals a lot, despite their competitions best efforts and best lists. Lists don't win championships. We do.

I'd say this is only partially true, because you can't dodge the math forever.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:

X078 wrote:
Wait what so now that the (many many) nerfed Tau armies playing did not make it to the top 8 the reason is that they were...

... drumroll...

unlucky?

And WarCon being superstrong not making it says what?

You do understand the difference was that Tau had two potential players making it into the top 8 in the last round, and both lost that last round, that's bad luck. War Convocation had zero people competing for top 8 in the last round, which can still be chalked up to luck to an extent, but it's significantly worse than the Tau.

Again, I'll repeat, there was a Tau player on table 3 and 4 in the last round before the top 8, there was no War Convocation player in the top 8 table (top 16 players) in the last round before top 8. There was easily a chance of up to Tau players in the top 8, there was zero chance of War Convocation.

To look at this from a theoretical viewpoint is that an argument for doing minor nerfs to Tau (the Ghost Keel Holophotons) or an argument for giving War Convocation a boost?

Is it actually the role of ITC to boost factions that GW have left badly sub-par? I don't think ITC would want to go down that road.

As I understand it, the AdMech isn't really a complete codex, though offering more choices than Knights. Should players realistically expect to be competitive when really their codex is actually actually to sell some cool kits for use as allies in IG or SM armies?

Neither, it's an argument to show the absurtity of the Imperium receiving excessive favourtism or the Tau being unplayable because of the minor nerfs. Honestly, I'm on the dense about the Ghostkeel change, and oppose the ECPA change, but otherwise I think the Tau are spot on in the ITC. I have no real stance on the War Convocation one way or the other.

Martel732 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Izzy's tau actually went undefeated. Unfortunately it was 4w2d0L which made him unable to hit top 8. Either one of those draws being a win and he would've been in, knocking out Aleong's wolfravenstar.


Of course, this being the Internet, the goalposts would move anyway. If one made top 8, someone would be like "y you no make top 7!?" anyway.

I think the records are more important than the top 8 thing. What does the preponderance of the evidence tell us? It doesn't tell us that Tau did poorly. It certainly tells us ZILCH as to whether the ITC "decision" affected them.

More importantly, the lists themselves were run by actual Generals. We cannot attribute the top 8 to just the lists. Worthy lists were no doubt struck dead by superior strategy. The ultimate truth is that better generals end up in the finals a lot, despite their competitions best efforts and best lists. Lists don't win championships. We do.

I'd say this is only partially true, because you can't dodge the math forever.

You're not dodging the math. On the contrary. You're using it to your advantage.

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Izzy's tau actually went undefeated. Unfortunately it was 4w2d0L which made him unable to hit top 8. Either one of those draws being a win and he would've been in, knocking out Aleong's wolfravenstar.


Of course, this being the Internet, the goalposts would move anyway. If one made top 8, someone would be like "y you no make top 7!?" anyway.

I think the records are more important than the top 8 thing. What does the preponderance of the evidence tell us? It doesn't tell us that Tau did poorly. It certainly tells us ZILCH as to whether the ITC "decision" affected them.

More importantly, the lists themselves were run by actual Generals. We cannot attribute the top 8 to just the lists. Worthy lists were no doubt struck dead by superior strategy. The ultimate truth is that better generals end up in the finals a lot, despite their competitions best efforts and best lists. Lists don't win championships. We do.

I'd say this is only partially true, because you can't dodge the math forever.

You're not dodging the math. On the contrary. You're using it to your advantage.

I don't think you and I have the same concept of math, then. There's a reason BA maxed at 93rd place. Unless your contention is that NO good generals were playing BA.