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 Da-Rock wrote:
I have read a lot about hate towards how the Tau play. Some are legitimate issues and others are just the standard cries from those who don't like something and want everyone else to hate what they do.

The issue at hand seems to boil down to this: The Tau were designed to be out of balance. Bad at Melee and good at shooting. So with that design, GW did the only thing you can with a one dimensional design in a competitive environment = make them GREAT at all things shooty. As we all know what this created..............no, not a none competitive army design......no, not an over powered shooty army..............yes, an army that caused frustration and a lack of fun for both sides.

I reject that the Tau are OP, I do however feel that those who say it sucks to play against the Tau are correct. Their ability to ignore rules and take away the fun parts of your army is what they do. This isn't the Tau players fault. GW did this when they designed a one dimensional army.

So............what does GW do?

Do they go simple and add melee abilities to the Tau?
Do they nerf them into oblivion?
Do they add new abilities and rules that balance it out - is that even possible?
Do they realize that in a game world filled with melee and shooting balanced armies you can't maintain balance with an unbalanced army.....seems simple right

Why is Tau being one dimensional a problem but Khorne being one dimensional not a problem? Because Khorne sucks?

I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.

 Gamgee wrote:
I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.

I never had an issue with Tau in 7th (as most people in the tournament scene that also used strong armies didn't) They were strong but not unstoppable and at least games were interactive.

Chaos demons were just as one dimensional as tau in the other direction but playing against chaos daemons was like whacking yourself in the nuts with a hammer while tom kirby makes fun of you for playing with dolls and then steals your wallet.

What is Tau composition right now?
I got into Tau when 6th came out and then they got a reboot and riptides, broadsides and pathfinders were all the rage.
I haven't really ever played 40k in a few years but I really like the crisis suits and stealth suits but don't actually own a Riptide or any broadsides so not sure how they play or any of the new stuff i.e ghostkeel or breachers not familiar with those units.

I got into Tau because I liked the xv8 suits and the cool look and I also liked shooting focused vs close combat but I can see why it can be annoying if you don't use much terrain...fine balance for terrain I usually play Fantasy/kings of war and when I did play 6th got other people to randomly make the table terrain up so that helps keep everything fair no matter the army.

I'm super excited for 8th to see the rules and how my Tau plays so I can get back into it!

As someone who plays a suit only army I hope we keep a way to keep that army style. I have no desire to paint firewarriors or pathfinders as I do not care very much for the models. In my experience once I lose my drone net, the army becomes easier to deal with even with 2 riptides as BS is the same a IG. Take out our markerligt support and we become a lot more manageable.

The Tau player who won ironically used a list similar to mine and was very antimeta. He had skyrays, darkstirder, and lots of crisis suits and came in 7th. I think the 7th edition faq's helped a lot of lists that wouldn't have made it that far get that far since it toned down a few things here and there.

Prior to that the netlist in a can most Tau used was Riptide Wing and two stormsurges. Some people would swap Riptides with Y'vaharh. I don't ever recall this list making it into the top 15 at any major ITC game.

As much as people complain about Ta'unar being "op" it's banned at all events other than the real no holds barred kind. It was winning those too though and almost every army had a Ta'unar allied in.

Here is William's list from the lvo 2017. He only took a single stormsurge which was pretty innovative. I think he regretted taking Darkstrider since he didn't get too much use out of him, but he blames himself kinda sort for not using him right as well. The most meta thing in his list was RIptide Wing.

http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/William-Abilez-7th-Overall-Las-Vegas-Open-2017.pdf

 Gamgee wrote:
I know when other armies are one dimensional it's okay. When the Tau are it's bad. Annoying.

Not as annoyed as so much undercosted firepower.

jeffersonian000 wrote:I disagree with the OP. Tau are balanced versus a table cluttered with line of sight blocking terrain. If you are unable to close with Tau without being shot to death, you do not have enough of the right terrain on the table. That's on you, not army balance.

Says... says who? There is guidelines in the rules for terrain, as well as a standard for tournaments and ITC. None of them involve blocking out the sun with a jungle of terrain. There is a fair and balanced amount, and it works this way for the sake of every match up playing well. When you have to change all set rules from both rulebook and tournament standard just to have a specific terrain set-up that changes the game for every other army that has to play on that table as well, a set-up you can almost guarantee you won't be given anywhere else but some specifically overzealous FLGS, just to avoid being Overpowered, you may as well call it what it is - Tau is an overtuned army.


I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.


This myth about melee being some achilles heel that balances out the ridiculous firepower, is a joke as well. Sure, most their damage output is in shooting, but a Riptide still beats a TMC in combat and a squad of Pathfinders tarpits just fine, and just to make it there I have to charge through overwatch. They don't autolose if you make it to combat by any means, it just helps take some of their overpowered damage off the table at best.

I don't find the Tau one-dimensional. Without Stormsurge and only one Riptide they are fun to play against. So basically it comes down to Stormsurge and Riptide being undercosted/ breaking the only weakness of Tau. Tau are usually an army of glasscannons, those two giant suits break that theme though.
With firewarriors, breachers, crisis suits, broadsides, tanks, and especially Kroot that army is quite versatile, probably much more than mono-god daemon armies, Necrons or Space Wolves.
If they balance the overlooked Tau units with the giant suits I'm sure Tau will become a nice army, especially since the stormsurge is the by far ugliest model in their whole range and then hopefully not an autoinclude anymore.

Not sure if it would help balance but as a weaabo gundam-lover i could change a lot of shooty power to melee power, loos a little of durability and make the Tau a mech army, not great at shoot, not great at melee but a middle point.

For me, the first reason to choose Tau are the mechs but the first reason to not choose them is melee.

And they are op at shoot so i could like to see them on a middle ground (the LAZERZ SWORD from the Farsight are a cool idea)

Dragobeth wrote:
Not sure if it would help balance but as a weaabo gundam-lover i could change a lot of shooty power to melee power, loos a little of durability and make the Tau a mech army, not great at shoot, not great at melee but a middle point.

For me, the first reason to choose Tau are the mechs but the first reason to not choose them is melee.

And they are op at shoot so i could like to see them on a middle ground (the LAZERZ SWORD from the Farsight are a cool idea)

So make them space marines and foreswore the army'a identity since 3rd ed?

 Jaxler wrote:

Dragobeth wrote:
Not sure if it would help balance but as a weaabo gundam-lover i could change a lot of shooty power to melee power, loos a little of durability and make the Tau a mech army, not great at shoot, not great at melee but a middle point.

For me, the first reason to choose Tau are the mechs but the first reason to not choose them is melee.

And they are op at shoot so i could like to see them on a middle ground (the LAZERZ SWORD from the Farsight are a cool idea)

So make them space marines and foreswore the army'a identity since 3rd ed?

That's is the big problem of my idea, that's why It's just a silly opinion. I should stop wanting super robot things on 40k really (just cant avoid it, sorry)

Reallisticaly I could reduce their shoot power and buff a little their allies like kroot to make them cool to play with (something like a combined army maybe?) that or make them full mech but not that durable.

 guardpiper wrote:
As someone who plays a suit only army I hope we keep a way to keep that army style. I have no desire to paint firewarriors or pathfinders as I do not care very much for the models. In my experience once I lose my drone net, the army becomes easier to deal with even with 2 riptides as BS is the same a IG. Take out our markerligt support and we become a lot more manageable.

I don't know, but I think that suit only lists should be a little harder to work with as they are missing elements in a more balanced force. To me, one of the things I think Tau should be good at is combined arms synergy. I would try to design the Tau to work best using the widest range of units that on their own/by themselves aren't great, but sum some is greater than the parts. I mean that an all suit army could work, but I would like to see it not be quite as optimized as an army that also included fire warriors, kroot/vespids or even tanks.

I think all army lists should have a good combined arms element to them. It is one of the reasons I like force organization in miniatures wargames. But the Tau in particular, I think should make use of it more than other factions. Because when I think of Tau strengths, first I think ranged combat. Then I think unit synergy. I want that to be reversed in the future. Honestly, as a Chaos Space Marine player (which I think unit synergy should be a weakness of theirs) I want to be more envious (and concerned) with the Tau's ability to make use of different units that support each other far better than anything the CSM can put together. I want that to be the challenge in a game far more than their superior ranged combat.

I also think changing the Tau's primary strength from ranged combat to unit synergy would also make games more fun for both players. It takes a lot more work to get your units to work well together than a gun line, and it is far more interesting to try to find the weak link among units than it is to simply face a gun line.

Gaurdpiper, I am not saying that I don't want suit only lists to be horrible. I think they should still have a place on the table. I just think that every faction to make use a pretty wide selection of their available units (as opposed to spamming a couple of good ones) to maximize their effect. I also think the Tau should probably me the best at this. I would like to see 8th edition, be a place where players don't complain about boring, gun line games against Tau, but trying to figure out where the chinks in their unit synergy armor instead.

 Gamgee wrote:
I hope GW doesn't listen to the posters in here for sure. Or else my best gun will be 3 inches str 2 ap nothing single one shot per game and a stat line fof 2's in everything except wounds. Then after the game the Tau players models self destruct.

Balance is good when it's fair, but there is such a huge hate and bias against Tau in the community I have to be skeptical. To the others it's only balanced when they can beat Tau. That seems to be the general message.

I actually thought the level of discourse in this thread was pretty respectable. Lots of good points here, and BlaxicanX in particular basically nailed what's wrong with Tau perfectly. Even Traditio, who has Traditio-nally had rather strong opinions about this subject, has been pretty laid back in this thread and is mainly just hoping GW fixes their mistakes with 8th, which I think is safe to say where we're all kinda standing right now.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think what a lot of people didn't realize is that for the average Tau player the game hasn't exactly been that fun for us, either. I'm one of those guys that liked "old Tau" better, and while I liked my suits as much as anyone, I thought it refreshing that GW used to shy away from the obvious anime tropes and kept the suit/mecha, sci-fi element of the army pretty reasonable. I died a little inside as soon as the riptide was introduced, and the stormsurge is just butt ugly and stupid. I wanted an army that relied more on infantry, grav tanks and the odd aircraft (like the barracuda, not the plastic abortion that is the sun shark) with suits as a support element, as intended, but the suits not only got bigger, they got to the point where you could literally take a handful of giant models as your army and comfortably replace everything else. I'm not necessarily knocking people who are into that, people like giant robots and that's basically the whole reason Knight armies exist, but despite the much-maligned "anime" influence of Tau that's not really what they were about.

I also don't think the answer is just shoe-horning in the token psykers and melee units, either. It's always so tempting to just give them ninjas and suits with energy swords, apparently, which is hilarious because it's just doubling down on that whole "anime" thing that people claim to hate so much, but personally that's one thing I always liked about the Tau, and they have very good lore explanations as to why they don't have that stuff. I don't want to see Tau lose what makes them unique and sets them apart from other factions in the game, and watch them basically turn into another army but with more "anime"-looking models, but then again GW already kinda ruined it for me with the introduction of all the new giant suits (and even an honest to god "Tau titan", something I hoped would never be made), so I don't know if I care anymore.

I think it's very possible to "fix" Tau without changing what they are. As others have said the fact that they're shooting-focused is not really what breaks them, nor does an army having a focus make it inherently broken, as it's been pointed out with the comparison to melee or psychic-focused armies being fine to play. Just need to figure out how to make it work...maybe "new" GW can do that. I sure as feth hope so anyway, I'd like to try actually playing the game again.

 Vryce wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
There's no rules for LOS blocking terrain placement. That's MY point. It costs no points and has no formalized method for being deployed. It should NOT be THE balancing feature for Tau unless this feature is codified in the rules. Which it is not.

As it is, Eldar and Tau want basically zero terrain and I have to talk them down from that most of the time. I'm not getting huge chunks of LOS blocking without rules to back me up.

I think I've found your problem - you play against holes.

You're not even wrong, he really does. His Tau/Eldar playing friends are hyper-competitive dicks who bring tournament-level lists always, force him to play on barren tables and argue against adding terrain, specifically because it isn't spelled out in the rules how a "proper" table should be set up or whether or not LOS-blocking terrain should even be used at all.

We all know what the main problem is, it's his group. But he insists he can't do anything about it. So his only recourse is praying that GW nerfs Tau and Eldar shooting into the dirt so he can play on a barren table with his Blood Angels and still beat them, which would mean that they'd be literally unplayable for anyone else playing the game on an average table, but that doesn't matter.

 SHUPPET wrote:
I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.

I can't speak for everyone, but for us "old Tau" players it's probably because we listened to people bitch for years about our army being "overpowered" even though it was mediocre at best, simply because stuff like JSJ or "Fish of Fury" were annoying to play against, or because they're sour over our basic gun being S5 when the almighty bolter is only S4, etc. I remember that in particular being a pretty big deal for a lot of people, who felt that it was wrong for another army to have better equipment than Space Marines no matter what the justification for it was...people didn't like the railgun, either, since it was strictly superior to the lascannon.

People basically cried wolf for multiple editions, so when the wolf finally showed up in 6th (with an ion accelerator and a jet pack strapped to its back), naturally we were more inclined to ignore them or dismiss it as mere whining and nothing more, since for years before that's basically all it was. Admittedly I didn't see what was so busted about the riptide when it came out, it didn't look that bad on paper really, but honestly I didn't give a gak because I hated the model and told myself I wasn't going to use it anyway. I was more upset about all the cool wargear and other stuff I lost with the new book, and how I was seemingly being pigeon-holed into playing my Tau a certain way (which others have pointed out already), which I wasn't really fond of.

I realize now what happened and just how bad the "new" Tau are, but it's still hard for me to agree with people because, as I said before, I'm coming from years of whining and complaints about how terrible and game-breaking things are that really weren't, and I'm also fully aware that people have more of a real hate for Tau that they don't feel for any other army. There's an obvious bias there which is hard to argue against. When it comes to Tau people always take it too far; they don't just want Tau fixed, a lot of them just want them gone, period. Either that, or to be nerfed into the ground so hard that no one plays them anymore and they can at least pretend that they're finally gone, because in their mind their very existence at all is an offense. It's the kind of irrational hate and disgust that I've never seen any other army receive before or since, and it has nothing to do with rules because that sentiment was there long before they became broken in 6th/7th.

 SHUPPET wrote:



I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.


This myth about melee being some achilles heel that balances out the ridiculous firepower, is a joke as well. Sure, most their damage output is in shooting, but a Riptide still beats a TMC in combat and a squad of Pathfinders tarpits just fine, and just to make it there I have to charge through overwatch. They don't autolose if you make it to combat by any means, it just helps take some of their overpowered damage off the table at best.

There are multiple posts in this thread alone of Tau players acknowledging the issues of our codex. We acknowledge the fact that our Riptides are OP/Undercosted. Our formations are crazy. The Stormsurge is ridiculous. We want more units in our book to be viable (Tho I will admit that I still wouldn't use Kroot/Vespids, I got into the Tau in '01 because of their suits and vehicles. I've never liked any of their auxiliaries, so expect my armies to remain XV8/XV88 and Breachers/Strike teams in DF). Read the thread before posting.

A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.

Give me Demiurg Auxiliares so cool as the ones in the Battlefleet Gothic videogame trailer and I will give you all my Riptides and Stormsurges! (1 and 0, basically )

I have more than 150 Firewarriors and I have to admit that using them all in a game, like a footsloging horde to a enemy that expect a list of only 3-4 giant robots and so he doesn't bring to the table any anti horde weaponry is hilarous

Sidstyler wrote:I can't speak for everyone, but I think what a lot of people didn't realize is that for the average Tau player the game hasn't exactly been that fun for us, either.

I think that's true for a lot of people in 7th.

Which, note carefully, is a reason why we should be excited that 8th edition is being "sigmarized," at least to some degree.

Say what you want, but people who play Age of Sigmar actually seem to enjoy playing the game.

I'm unaware of AoS players complaining about AoS in the same way that 40k players complain about 40k.

In fact, if you talk to people who play AoS, by and large, they seem to be pretty happy with the state of the game, and when it comes to the complaints that they do have, they are optimistic that the problems are going to be resolved in a timely manner.

That's actually my biggest hope for 8th edition, namely, that the average pick-up game will be...you know...fun. Preferably without needing to have an extended conversation in advance about what precisely each side is going to be using.

 Vryce wrote:



A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.

The problem with these examples is that you're trying to deflect the issues with Tau CC defense by pointing to other armies that have strong inherent CC capabilities. Yeah, GKT's will do great against TMC's in CC. They're dedicated CC specialists with strength augmenting wargear and powers coupled with force weapons. That's their dedicated role. A Riptide is a mobile medium-long range heavy shooting platform. That's where the problem lies.

Part of the problem with "tactics" in 40k is that, at least with 7E, the game really isn't all that deep tactically speaking, it just isn't, and the levels of firepower and/or resiliency some armies bring make "Tactics" (big T) beyond simple target priority largely irrelevant. It's not really a Tau specific issue, but is just highlighted particularly well in their case. Same thing goes for armies of unkillable stuff (2++ deathstars, Necron Decurions, etc), they require very little thought or tactical acumen to win with because they can just ignore so much of what an opponent does no matter how well fought.

Hopefully we see some big changes here with 8E in a few weeks.

And here I am mildly surprised at everyone saying how tau have no assault capability.

Have we all forgotten the number of times that shield drone has headbutted poor little Draigo into the ground? Where would this game be without the drunken ham-fists of RNGesus? I can practically read the kill counter scratched onto the rim.

All joking aside, I was much more comfortable playing against Tau before 6th: it feels like every game atm (7ed) is an Apoc game and they're the ones with the first shooting phase...
...Apoc veterans may know what I mean.

ERJAK wrote:

Why is Tau being one dimensional a problem but Khorne being one dimensional not a problem? Because Khorne sucks?

"Skulls for the Skull Throne!!" is just much cooler war cry than "Good for the Greater Good!!"

 Vryce wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:



I don't know why it's always Tau players downplaying so hard, even Eldar players have no trouble owning where their dex sits. Tau community seems incapable of being objective towards their own dex.


This myth about melee being some achilles heel that balances out the ridiculous firepower, is a joke as well. Sure, most their damage output is in shooting, but a Riptide still beats a TMC in combat and a squad of Pathfinders tarpits just fine, and just to make it there I have to charge through overwatch. They don't autolose if you make it to combat by any means, it just helps take some of their overpowered damage off the table at best.

There are multiple posts in this thread alone of Tau players acknowledging the issues of our codex. We acknowledge the fact that our Riptides are OP/Undercosted. Our formations are crazy. The Stormsurge is ridiculous. We want more units in our book to be viable (Tho I will admit that I still wouldn't use Kroot/Vespids, I got into the Tau in '01 because of their suits and vehicles. I've never liked any of their auxiliaries, so expect my armies to remain XV8/XV88 and Breachers/Strike teams in DF). Read the thread before posting.

A Riptide has a solid chance in CC against a TMC, but you know what else does? My GKT army. Should they be nerfed now, too? And what game are you playing where a squad of Pathfinders 'tarpit just fine'?? I mean, I guess I could see them holding up an equivalent model count of guardsmen or grots, but against anything with weight of numbers, or a marine statline, they're gonna buckle like a belt. CC remains the one of the more viable ways of countering them. It's not easy, but here's something that no one ever talks about - it's not easy for CC oriented armies to close into CC WITH ANY OTHER ARMY. Eldar are even more manueverable than we are, and are far better in CC with most of their units. DA have army wide BS2 on overwatch. Space Wolves have Counter-Attack. Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time closing into CC with us, but this hyperbolic fantasy argument that engaging only Tau in CC is impossible has to stop. Use tactics. Assault with multiple units. Have weight of numbers. It can be done, and it may not be your 'I win' button, but if you start rolling up Pathfinders/Marker drones in combat, or keeping our Broadsides from shooting, you're hurting the overall effectiveness of our army. Allowing you to move more openly, grab objectives, etc. People forget that tactics still exist in 40k.

Depends on your definition of tarpitting.
To my thinking there is offensive and defensive tarpitting.
Offensive tarpitting is where you charge the enemy to tie them down.
Defensive tarpitting is simply blocking the way with a sacrificial unit. In order to get by your blocking unit your opponent will have to destroy it in the Psychic, Shooting or Combat phases. If I want to charge your Stormsurge before it gets more shooting than just another round of Overwatch three drones blocking access to the Stormsurge will tarpit most units willing to tangle with a Stormsurge just fine, Split Fire and offensive Psychic spells tend to be in short supply when your unit has the snuff to get to and throw down with a GMC, so all your costly drones have to do is sit there blocking the way, I charge, you Overwatch, Drones die or break and die and my turn ends. Stormsurge laughs and shoots again.

Counter-Attack doesn't help the Space Wolves get to Close Combat, it doesn't even activate unless YOU CHARGE the Wolves, same for Counter-charge - you charge and anybody calling your army one-dimensional will have to retract their statement.

 Vaktathi wrote:
....A Riptide is a mobile medium-long range heavy shooting platform. That's where the problem lies.

Part of the problem with "tactics" in 40k is that, at least with 7E, the game really isn't all that deep tactically speaking, it just isn't, and the levels of firepower and/or resiliency some armies bring make "Tactics" (big T) beyond simple target priority largely irrelevant. It's not really a Tau specific issue, but is just highlighted particularly well in their case. Same thing goes for armies of unkillable stuff (2++ deathstars, Necron Decurions, etc), they require very little thought or tactical acumen to win with because they can just ignore so much of what an opponent does no matter how well fought.

Hopefully we see some big changes here with 8E in a few weeks.

A Riptide is also a MC, which brings inherent durability and CC ability compared to 'normal' models. Ignoring armor in CC and high base S & T is a large bonus in CC, even if the dedicated role of the unit is ranged support. I will concede, as I have before, that the Riptide is far too good for it's points. 300pts base, IA 35-40 pts, and all other options bumped up by 10-15pts. A fully kitted Riptide should be hitting the table costing somewhere near the 400pt mark.

As for your remaining point, I suppose that may be true. I guess I'm lucky in the fact that, in comparison to what I see here on Dakka, I play ultra-casually. The folks I play with don't do tourney's, don't chase the meta, and for the most part, we don't use formations all that often. My friend who plays Necrons has never fielded the Decurion, I've never seen one in action. Hell, I only own one Riptide (that only see's play when we have 2k+ games), and I don't even own a Stormsurge. So it seems that my gaming experience is quite different, and "Tactics" (to use your capital T description) actually play a larger part in our armies.

Tables aren't barren. They have a ton of cover. Just not extensive LoS blocking. But GW decided that astartes don't get much benefit from that, and Tau can take that away anyway.

Martel732 wrote:
Tables aren't barren. They have a ton of cover. Just not extensive LoS blocking. But GW decided that astartes don't get much benefit from that, and Tau can take that away anyway.

Astartes gain as much advantage as everyone else by the use of cover. And it sounds like you need to set your table up w/ more LoS blocking terrain. Markerlights can't strip your cover if they can't see you to shoot you in the first place.

Actually they don't at all. It only helps vs weapons that pen 3+ armor.

Yes, I'm aware of how much LoS might change things. I'm still skeptical though because of supporting fire.

Well, considering this is a thread discussing Tau, and AP2/1 is available on every suit we can put on the table, then it absolutely benefits you.

Not enough. Tau can put out enough AP1/2 to easily power through a 5++ cover.

I have two comments to made pursuant to the most recent line of discussion.

1. The first point holds regardless of what edition of 40k we are playing, whether we be playing 4th edition or 8th edition:

I learned that a good way of setting up terrain is to divide the table into 9 squares, and put a substantial piece of terrain in each. 5-6 of these should block line of sight.

2. That said, I think that the changes coming in 8th edition are going to make cover a lot more useful.

In AoS, cover simply adds a +1 modifier to all saves. It's not an either/or thing. Furthermore, AP is going to act as a modifier, and I suspect that it is going to max out at Rend -4.

Well, I don't really know what to tell you then, Martel. I mean, it's obvious where you play has a ridiculously power gamer-esque meta, and none of the folks you play want to even remotely give you a fighting chance. But you're starting to sound like a petulant child, when anytime someone gives you a suggestion, or tries to help (in whatever way forum discussions can be said to 'help') you just dismiss it out of hand.

I play against a gun-line DA player on the regular, and our games are down to the wire and we have a fairly even W:L ratio between us, so I don't know what to tell you anymore. Perhaps 8th edition will be more kind to you.

Martel732 is a martir of a power-gaming crow playing with the army he loves, an army that totally sucks and has sucked for years.

You know the "hollows" in Dark Souls, people that has give away all of his hope and just wander like mumies without a purpose?

This is Martel after years of being totally destroyed by Tau and Eldar:


Is too late for him