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I'm a Tau player and I'm happy with the Codex... it buffed everything I play and use... but I can understand why people is upset, specially if they played a heavy suit army.

I never liked Crisis suits, or Suits as the core of my army. The only suits I use are one commander and 6-9 stealth suits.
For the job of Crisis Suits I use Vespids.

And I don't have a static gunline. Theres mechanized Tau armies that are movile and dont need to spam crisis suits and JSJ. JSJ isnt the end and all of Tau flavour.

I'm reaaaaallly off put by how much people liked JSJ. Like really? You liked warpspiders as well maybe?

It wasn't a fun mechanic when so much of the game was based off shooting when you didn't get to shoot half the time.

 Peregrine wrote:

Pandabeer wrote:
Put 5 markerlights on a target and pop the 2 aforementioned stratagems on them and they go from BS4+ to BS2+ with rerolling 1s and reroll all wound rolls when they deepstrike while Farsight only loses 2 plasma shots.

And that's the problem. You're talking about a full squad of pathfinders and burning a bunch of CP for the stratagems just to get them up to a decent, not god-tier, level. That's a pretty big investment to make, especially when it's a one-shot weapon now that JSJ no longer exists.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pandabeer wrote:
And unfounded whining based on entitlement and gut feeling.

Yeah, that horrible entitlement, how dare we feel entitled to an army that is more than an ork-style gunline that castles in the corner and rolls buckets of dice until someone wins. How dare we be annoyed at GW for progressively removing more and more of what the Tau used to be in favor of more gunlines. We should just accept that we are the most boring one-dimensional gunline army ever, and be thankful that we're maybe at least second tier in competitive games.

I think you might enjoy a heavy ghostkeel army. It's an in your face type unit and it got buffed pretty big in the codex.

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm reaaaaallly off put by how much people liked JSJ. Like really? You liked warpspiders as well maybe?

It wasn't a fun mechanic when so much of the game was based off shooting when you didn't get to shoot half the time.

JSJ was a toxic mechanic. Basically made movement and placement irrelevant. You could shoot whatever you wanted without any hope of retaliation from your opponent.

 Galas wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm reaaaaallly off put by how much people liked JSJ. Like really? You liked warpspiders as well maybe?

It wasn't a fun mechanic when so much of the game was based off shooting when you didn't get to shoot half the time.

JSJ was a toxic mechanic. Basically made movement and placement irrelevant. You could shoot whatever you wanted without any hope of retaliation from your opponent.

Until you rolled snake eyes, a three or even a four.

 Jaxler wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm reaaaaallly off put by how much people liked JSJ. Like really? You liked warpspiders as well maybe?

It wasn't a fun mechanic when so much of the game was based off shooting when you didn't get to shoot half the time.

JSJ was a toxic mechanic. Basically made movement and placement irrelevant. You could shoot whatever you wanted without any hope of retaliation from your opponent.

Until you rolled snake eyes, a three or even a four.

Yeah and if you rolled only snake eyes, threes or fours psykers would be thrash.

But we know the averages, and rolling two 6's, a 11 or a 10 are just as likely as rolling those outcomes.

 Galas wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm reaaaaallly off put by how much people liked JSJ. Like really? You liked warpspiders as well maybe?

It wasn't a fun mechanic when so much of the game was based off shooting when you didn't get to shoot half the time.

JSJ was a toxic mechanic. Basically made movement and placement irrelevant. You could shoot whatever you wanted without any hope of retaliation from your opponent.

Assault units with 12" movement could easily chase down a JSJ crisis suit that is firing from the butter zones for a plasma or fusion weapon (CIB suits where a bit harder to catch) and if they are far enough away to make assaults unobtainable then they where probably not shooting from their optimal firing range. JSJ basically made it so Crisis and Stealths where not 100% suicide units who got 1 round of shooting before getting charged and wiped. With my Tau in 7th edition I mainly used thrust move to draw the enemy away from my main battle line to buy more time after my suits dropped in and did their shooting. If my suits where in my battle lines (generally happens when they need to DS near an ethereal with a homing beacon) I would just thrust moves to move the suits behind a line of Fire Warriors to screen them from a charge. That being said its not like crisis suits or stealths where hard to kill with shooting. A crisis was as durable as two MEQs (or instakill it with S8+) while a stealth was only T3 which makes any weapon with a decent rate of fire able to get a wound past the typical 2+ cover save.

As to the comparison to warp spiders, the gimmick people hated about Warp Spiders is that they would jump after being targeted for shooting so they could jump behind LoS blocking terrain or get out of firing range/arc which would waste the shooting. With blast weapons they could also jump next to their opponents unit (seen this with transports) to make it so a blast template would clip a friendly unit and thus not allowed to fire there.

 Galas wrote:

 Jaxler wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm reaaaaallly off put by how much people liked JSJ. Like really? You liked warpspiders as well maybe?

It wasn't a fun mechanic when so much of the game was based off shooting when you didn't get to shoot half the time.

JSJ was a toxic mechanic. Basically made movement and placement irrelevant. You could shoot whatever you wanted without any hope of retaliation from your opponent.

Until you rolled snake eyes, a three or even a four.

Yeah and if you rolled only snake eyes, threes or fours psykers would be thrash.

But we know the averages, and rolling two 6's, a 11 or a 10 are just as likely as rolling those outcomes.

With JSJ you were just trying to hide, and usually aiming for being only 5 inches from cover. Rolling higher than the needed distance really wasn’t any better than rolling right on the minimum needed.

Wait are you arguing that an ability that significantly reduced your opponents ability to retaliate was ok because it wasn't 100%.

The ability is bad for the game as much as 2++ rerollables

in effect not because it is as powerful as 2++ rerollables but because its not fun for anyone.

you may as well been making pew pew noises because it denied your opponents anything to do.

My all-suit FSE army was essentially invalidated, and I have no desire to build and/or paint any Tau infantry. Not my thing. The death of battlesuits has made me unable to play Tau.

 Verviedi wrote:
My all-suit FSE army was essentially invalidated, and I have no desire to build and/or paint any Tau infantry. Not my thing. The death of battlesuits has made me unable to play Tau.

There's always house rules. If you're opponent is ok with it you could just bring back JSJ. But equally you shouldn't need to houserule a unit back into usability.

 Desubot wrote:
Wait are you arguing that an ability that significantly reduced your opponents ability to retaliate was ok because it wasn't 100%.

The ability is bad for the game as much as 2++ rerollables

in effect not because it is as powerful as 2++ rerollables but because its not fun for anyone.

you may as well been making pew pew noises because it denied your opponents anything to do.

If you were good at the game there were many ways to counter JSJ, like deep strikers of your own, cornering them, and positioning so that unless they hide in subpar positions you will see them. Just because you don’t want to counter something in a more nuanced way than just shooting it does not mean it is toxic to the game. The game should not be dumbed down to compensate for unwillingness to adapt to another player’s strategy.

 Jaxler wrote:
The game should not be dumbed down to compensate for unwillingness to adapt to another player’s strategy.

May I quote you on this in the 'Defense of Soup' thread?

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Jaxler wrote:
The game should not be dumbed down to compensate for unwillingness to adapt to another player’s strategy.

May I quote you on this in the 'Defense of Soup' thread?

Go ahead.

 Jaxler wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Wait are you arguing that an ability that significantly reduced your opponents ability to retaliate was ok because it wasn't 100%.

The ability is bad for the game as much as 2++ rerollables

in effect not because it is as powerful as 2++ rerollables but because its not fun for anyone.

you may as well been making pew pew noises because it denied your opponents anything to do.

If you were good at the game there were many ways to counter JSJ, like deep strikers of your own, cornering them, and positioning so that unless they hide in subpar positions you will see them. Just because you don’t want to counter something in a more nuanced way than just shooting it does not mean it is toxic to the game. The game should not be dumbed down to compensate for unwillingness to adapt to another player’s strategy.

You mean in the same way tau suits should also be beholden to good positioning? its a no brainier strategy to jump in and out of los to shoot things and move back.

 Desubot wrote:

 Jaxler wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Wait are you arguing that an ability that significantly reduced your opponents ability to retaliate was ok because it wasn't 100%.

The ability is bad for the game as much as 2++ rerollables

in effect not because it is as powerful as 2++ rerollables but because its not fun for anyone.

you may as well been making pew pew noises because it denied your opponents anything to do.

If you were good at the game there were many ways to counter JSJ, like deep strikers of your own, cornering them, and positioning so that unless they hide in subpar positions you will see them. Just because you don’t want to counter something in a more nuanced way than just shooting it does not mean it is toxic to the game. The game should not be dumbed down to compensate for unwillingness to adapt to another player’s strategy.

You mean in the same way tau suits should also be beholden to good positioning? its a no brainier strategy to jump in and out of los to shoot things and move back.

So identifying the best position for shooting on your guns that work best at range 12 inches, and landing someonwhere where your both close to out of LOS terrain, in effective range, and able to reliably jump shoot jump back to cover while compensating for the fact your enemy could flank around your suits and while making sure you can shoot the the right targets while using that limited range does not qualify as “needing to have good positioning”?

Ok.

If anything crisis suits take less skill now. Basically their skill cap is knowing what to shoot so that you get your points back in a round of soothing. Positioning with them is practically irrelevant because you can’t keep them alive and they need to be in danger to work.

Well if you only ever want to take 12" guns then sure.

JSJ was fine on Crisis suits when first introduced. Small model count units sporting short-and-medium-but-not-long range weapons meant that they could be relatively easily destroyed if able to be engaged at all and they couldnt just sit back on the opposite side of the table and avoid everything forever, especially if they DS'd in and wanted to make maximum use of stuff like melta weapons or doubletapping plasma. That they could flubb their JSJ roll also helped.

 Desubot wrote:
Well if you only ever want to take 12" guns then sure.

Crisis suit missile pods are trash compared to our other str 7 options. This leaves weapons that are melta, rapid fire, flamers or range 18. Allow me to correct myself tough “18 inches to one foot” would be the real range you are realistically working with.

Crisis suits kinda needed the JSJ for their point cost, I mean, T4 2W 3+ isn't exactly durable, especially when each suit would cost ~50-55pt and fought in close ranges most of the time, with dual MP suits being the exception.

 Wolfblade wrote:
Crisis suits kinda needed the JSJ for their point cost, I mean, T4 2W 3+ isn't exactly durable, especially when each suit would cost ~50-55pt and fought in close ranges most of the time, with dual MP suits being the exception.

Or at the very least, Stimulant Injectors/Shield Generators should be "rolled in" to the cost.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

The goal isn't to bring everyone up to IG and Ynarri you know.

Why not?

 meleti wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

The goal isn't to bring everyone up to IG and Ynarri you know.

Why not?

Because thats powercreep and a arms race that nobody likes. We had it from 3rd to 7th. Look how it ended.

You try to balance towards the middle, not towards the top.

 Galas wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

The goal isn't to bring everyone up to IG and Ynarri you know.

Why not?

Because thats powercreep and a arms race that nobody likes. We had it from 3rd to 7th. Look how it ended.

You try to balance towards the middle, not towards the top.

I don't think IG are on the top. Imperium Soup arguably is, but not IG.

 meleti wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

The goal isn't to bring everyone up to IG and Ynarri you know.

Why not?

Because thats powercreep and a arms race that nobody likes. We had it from 3rd to 7th. Look how it ended.

You try to balance towards the middle, not towards the top.

I don't think IG are on the top. Imperium Soup arguably is, but not IG.

A large number of people would disagree with that statement, but that's for another (already done) thread.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

The goal isn't to bring everyone up to IG and Ynarri you know.

Why not?

Because thats powercreep and a arms race that nobody likes. We had it from 3rd to 7th. Look how it ended.

You try to balance towards the middle, not towards the top.

I don't think IG are on the top. Imperium Soup arguably is, but not IG.

A large number of people would disagree with that statement, but that's for another (already done) thread.

On a side note, how many actual pure IG armies are out there topping tournaments? Not much, they are mostly there to fill troop slots and generate command points.

As for Tau I really think its (still) a problem that the focus of the army itself has changed and how they should be played is leaving the classic suitstravaganza of the olden days and coming more to a combined arms approach. I.E. tau now need a robust center of fire warriors (your swiss army knife, S5 is the gold standard this edition), they need kroot to act as chaff, and they need to leverage their fast units such as pirahnas and stealth suits to take objectives, and heavy units need to be able to tackle the hardier units out there. As stated before suits seem to be more "suited" to acting as a scalpel to remove hard to kill and strategically important units. As for the Stormsurge, i'm seeing it as something that can anchor a gunline. Its big gun takes out tanks and its rocket pods are ideally suited for clearing out infantry that ventures too close. Also the loss of traditional markerlights is hard to get around but the benefits of the current model still can bear fruit. The rerolling 1s is fairly powerful and you should be spreading that around to take advantage.

Actually the "focus" on suits got shoehorned in later. Tau were originally meant to be a combined arms faction with an infantry core backed up by suits and tanks but gradual lazy game design, marketing to push suits as the tau "thing" and badly pointed units made them super suit heavy for a while. When i started tau in 3rd edition I used tonplay a very combined arms force. I still get annoyed kroot arent a viable melee unit. They should never have been made a meatshield unit but a weak defense medium offense melee unit to.counterattack enemies.charging fw or attack enemies in dense terrain. Im also a bit gutted the army's mobility hasnt increased a bit to allow redeployments and outflanks as opposed to slow movinf gunlines but Im glad that 8th encourages a more combined arms feel to the tau. Dont get me wrong i own about 15-20 crisis suits plus commanders,and 4 broadsides (used to have more) so im sad the crisis and broadsides are overcosted or lacklustre, but overall im a fan of the codex. Especially how the strategems affect play

Also super glad the army hasnt turned out to be "top tier" i win button level. Id rather play a weaker faction that requires thought and tactics to win than an easy mode facrion that gives my opponent a boring once sided gane as I slaughter him

Bobug wrote:
Actually the "focus" on suits got shoehorned in later. Tau were originally meant to be a combined arms faction with an infantry core backed up by suits and tanks but gradual lazy game design, marketing to push suits as the tau "thing" and badly pointed units made them super suit heavy for a while. When i started tau in 3rd edition I used tonplay a very combined arms force. I still get annoyed kroot arent a viable melee unit. They should never have been made a meatshield unit but a weak defense medium offense melee unit to.counterattack enemies.charging fw or attack enemies in dense terrain. Im also a bit gutted the army's mobility hasnt increased a bit to allow redeployments and outflanks as opposed to slow movinf gunlines but Im glad that 8th encourages a more combined arms feel to the tau. Dont get me wrong i own about 15-20 crisis suits plus commanders,and 4 broadsides (used to have more) so im sad the crisis and broadsides are overcosted or lacklustre, but overall im a fan of the codex. Especially how the strategems affect play

Also super glad the army hasnt turned out to be "top tier" i win button level. Id rather play a weaker faction that requires thought and tactics to win than an easy mode facrion that gives my opponent a boring once sided gane as I slaughter him

As someone who also started in the wee old days when Tau came out I agree that was their initial design focus, I was more angling that toward the younglings who think the army has only ever been about suits, since many of them have only ever known suit focused Tau. I too miss the nice bonus to attacks the old kroot guns gave, they were practically Orks that shot better when they came out!

Yeah right! My reaction when the 6th ed coxex came out was "what the hell have they done with kroot?" Str3 must be a typo..
I liked that kroot his harder due to str4 but orks were tougher with a lower strength. Kindof a yin yang

You make a fair point. Those who want to play tau as gundam ala 6th and 7th are out of luck

Back in my day, Tau broadsides actually had proper railguns twinlinked.
And scared the snot out of armour non of you youngsters and your super suits back then.