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My stompa + brigade fought in a 2k game vs 2 riptides, a storm surge and a ghostkeel supported by markerlights/warriors.

First game i managed to kill the ghostkeel turn 1 thanks to cunning but brutal then the stompa took 40 wounds (so close to surviving to turn 2!) second game it did 5 wounds to the storm surge then died (again in turn 1).

At least game 2 i managed to luck out on a few objectives for a respectable showing.

That’s not so much because Tau are great, and more cause Stompas suck.

 iGuy91 wrote:
Its mostly because to be honest, they only have one busted model, with one busted rule.

Thats the shield drone turning 6 damage into 1 damage, which it then has a FNP against. The rest of the army is good to poor in quality.

Change the shield drones, and you'd never see Tau on a competitive table again. Not saying thats what should happen, but thats why nobody is complaining.

Well lets be clear on this, most bodyguard type rules do the same thing, transfer damage across to a different unit as a single mortal wound. We've had shield drones without FnP earlier in the edition and they didn't work as they died the same as other drones without offering anything in return.

The difference is that Shield Drones can be taken en mass due to being 10pts and available from a variety of sources, unlike say Sslyth, Tyrant Guard or even Crisis Bodyguards.

I quite like Apocalypses system for drones, where the Shield Drone would give +1 to saves, though I'm not sure that would be good in 40K where the Riptide can get a 3++ already.

Most Bodyguard type rules do NOT convert 6 damage to 1.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Most Bodyguard type rules do NOT convert 6 damage to 1.

And most 300 point, shooting-only BS4+ models do not only have T7 and 14 wounds with an ability to trade 1 wound to work properly.

Tau aren't top meta. They just happen to be scissors to a lot of paper that is in the upper crust of the meta.

Like, hand me an Imperial Guard, Ork, CSM or Tyranid player and I'll beat him 99/100 times with my Tau. In fact, I'd bet good money that the most vocal Tau haters belong to these factions. Here's a tip, Einstein; bring a different faction! (Or if you're CSM, swarm with bikes)

Hand me a Death Guard player and I'll shake his hand and forfeit before deployment.

While other good armies like Drukhari are a coin flip, while the Iron Hands and Eldar flyer spam has the advantage over Tau.

Tau's accumulated hate probably has something to do with never having had a trash codex either. Tau have always been at least decent. And probably will always be. But Tau have never been OP.

LOL at Orkz and Tyranids being included in "upper crust of the meta".

I, actually, go about 50/50 with my local Tau player (I play Orkz). Though the end results tend to be very skewed in that he either completely stomps me, or I do the same to him. Very seldomly do we have "close games".

 flandarz wrote:
LOL at Orkz and Tyranids being included in "upper crust of the meta".

Read again. Never did I say they were. The second sentence is unattached to the first. It might be worded poorly, just assumed people would realize what I meant.

Your first statement implies that Tau do well against the top meta Factions. Your second statement states some armies that you, personally, do really well against using Tau. The implication being that the listed armies are examples of "upper crust" armies.

I think all of you hit the nail on the head. Tau really do only have 1 good build, which means a lot of people haven’t had the “pleasure” of facing Tau at their worst.

The reason I made this thread is because playing that 1 list is actually less enjoyable to me then facing most types of marine list. And frankly while it is only 1 list that list has proven itself to be completely OP. Yes stats show Tau as a whole aren’t doing as well as marines, but the players who aren’t using that 1 list severely take down that win percentage (whereas even the worst marine players can still win quite few games.) The Atlanta GT was just won by Tau, meaning Tau have won the last 2 huge events.

Yeah I get they have a nice win rate against marines, but remembered there are still 75% non-marine lists at events, meaning Tau players still have to beat non-marine players at top tables to win.

I agree the Tau book as a whole needs reworking, but in the short term drones really need some kind of nerf, or Tau are going to hurt 40k as whole.

Nerf drones to anything but oblivion, and you won't have changed the best build, you'll only have made it somewhat worse and every OTHER build (which is already not in a good place) even worse than before - that increases the chance you'll see the build you dislike playing against (being the only vaguely viable build among absolute gak, rather than being the only competitive build amongst less-than-efficient kinda gak), it doesn't decrease it.

Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

Martel732 wrote:
Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

If that was aimed at me, I was responding specifically to the following:

I agree the Tau book as a whole needs reworking, but in the short term drones really need some kind of nerf, or Tau are going to hurt 40k as whole.

But yes, making everything viable and reintroducing synergy to the T'au that isn't "Big Battlesuit + Drone + Commander" is a great approach. ONLY then would a nerfing of drones make any sense for balanced T'au gameplay.

I am going to add to the sentiment that the competitive Tau list takes more skill than people think.

My Tau list is quite different from the standard competitive castle list (I have 4 shield drones total, 6 if you count Shadowsun's unique ones, no broadsides, no riptides) and I still do quite well in my local meta. I run an infantry skew list focused on board control, with a pair of Ghostkeels for heavy hitting--even with so few drones the -2 to hit and 4++ make them quite survivable vs. entire armies worth of anti-tank.

Contrast this with a newer guy who I have played against, who also runs Tau, and has a pretty meta castle built, 2 riptides, 2 broadsides, uses all the buffs, 20+ shield drones, etc. When we played each other a couple weeks ago, I had a dominating victory over him. Why? A couple of reasons, first, because I took control of the board while he tried castling up, and he could not score as well. Secondly, because knowing how to arrange all the pieces of the castle and have them all support each other and fit is trickier than you might think. As it was the first turn for each of us was basically clearing out shield drones, but since he had so many units he needed to protect with them, I was able to eat away at his hitters while he had a bunch of shield drones too far away to save them, once I cleared out one end of the drones.

It was just a comment in general.

Martel732 wrote:
Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

I don't think that'd really work, since all non-Drone Bodyguard rules allow the unit being protected to make their save before the damage starts getting allocated to the Bodyguards.

This means the Riptide is least affected by getting to take his 3+ Invuln before putting wounds onto the Drones, while the fragile Crisis Suits wind up getting shoved further into irrelevance.

Or at least make the drones have to be between the firer and the target.

The easiest thing is to just make it like Grot Shields. Drop Shield Drones to 3ppm, give them the Troop role, and you gotta pop a Stratagem to make them eat (un-FnPable) damage.

 flandarz wrote:
The easiest thing is to just make it like Grot Shields. Drop Shield Drones to 3ppm, give them the Troop role, and you gotta pop a Stratagem to make them eat (un-FnPable) damage.

That would just encourage more castling for the T'au player, as they shove their entire army around the one mega blob of Drones.

T'au are supposed to be a mobile shooting army, gunlines are IG's thing. As broken as as Saviour Protocols are and as much as they need to be changed, making it so they promote gunlines even more is not the way to do it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Or at least make the drones have to be between the firer and the target.

This I can agree with

Grot Shields can only protect a single unit, so while you certainly COULD hide behind a blob of Drones, as soon as your opponent decides to shoot a different unit than the one you're protecting...

Like, why do you think you don't see Orkz hiding their whole army behind blobs of Gretchin? The basic use of Grot Shields is to defend a single unit you don't want to die. The rest of your army still has to figure out their own way to not getting blasted to pieces.

MalfunctBot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

I don't think that'd really work, since all non-Drone Bodyguard rules allow the unit being protected to make their save before the damage starts getting allocated to the Bodyguards.

This means the Riptide is least affected by getting to take his 3+ Invuln before putting wounds onto the Drones, while the fragile Crisis Suits wind up getting shoved further into irrelevance.

Yeah, I don't think this is the way. I think you need some way to allow high damage shots to still get thru while not allowing the big units like riptides to get their saves first.

What about this kind of a system?

"Savior protocols: when a friendly Tau unit is successfully wounded while within 3" of a model with this rule, that model may choose to voluntarily suffer a mortal wound. If that would reduce the maximum damage dealt by that attack to 0, the attack sequence ends. If not, the model takes a saving throw as normal. If the saving throw is failed the damage caused by the attack is reduced by the number of mortal wounds that were taken because of the Savior Protocols rule."

the_scotsman wrote:

MalfunctBot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

I don't think that'd really work, since all non-Drone Bodyguard rules allow the unit being protected to make their save before the damage starts getting allocated to the Bodyguards.

This means the Riptide is least affected by getting to take his 3+ Invuln before putting wounds onto the Drones, while the fragile Crisis Suits wind up getting shoved further into irrelevance.

Yeah, I don't think this is the way. I think you need some way to allow high damage shots to still get thru while not allowing the big units like riptides to get their saves first.

What about this kind of a system?

"Savior protocols: when a friendly Tau unit is successfully wounded while within 3" of a model with this rule, that model may choose to voluntarily suffer a mortal wound. If that would reduce the maximum damage dealt by that attack to 0, the attack sequence ends. If not, the model takes a saving throw as normal. If the saving throw is failed the damage caused by the attack is reduced by the number of mortal wounds that were taken because of the Savior Protocols rule."

Worded kinda poorly, and there's en edge case where it breaks the game (d6 damage weapon, you take, say, 3 mortals on a Drone. They roll a 2 for damage-do you heal one wound?) but conceptually much better. Just needs cleaning up.

Tau need more high tech gak. Like options for suits to get negs to hit and maybe even ignore LoS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And suits need that rule that marine eliminators got.

How to fix Shield Drones? Easy! Take them away as a unit and have them as an upgrade with a limit of 4-5 for said unit.

The issue is that you can take them as a unit that can saviour protocol multiple units. If you limit their number then they won't be too much of an issue anymore, just more of a mild inconvenience.

To me I wish GW would focus more on the "Empire" Part of the T'au. They have always been a collection of aliens, and I would love to see that better represented in their codex. Kroot, Vespids, Demiurg, Human separatists, etc. The Fire Warriors and Gundams and pretty much done now. Remade and updated so I would love for them to focus on the other aspects of the Emipre now imo.

The Warp Forge wrote:How to fix Shield Drones? Easy! Take them away as a unit and have them as an upgrade with a limit of 4-5 for said unit.

It's been a long while, but wasn't this exactly how drones used to work back in 3rd/4th Ed? IIRC you could take a drone controller as a piece of wargear, then add drones to the unit?

MalfunctBot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

I don't think that'd really work, since all non-Drone Bodyguard rules allow the unit being protected to make their save before the damage starts getting allocated to the Bodyguards.

This means the Riptide is least affected by getting to take his 3+ Invuln before putting wounds onto the Drones, while the fragile Crisis Suits wind up getting shoved further into irrelevance.

What if it were such that hits scored on the guarded unit get allocated to the drones instead? (Really I think it's a little odd that that's not how bodyguard rules work in the first place)

Shield drones were the first thing I noticed that made me raise a brow from Tau. They are a bit over the top, use them as bodyguards sure, makes sense, but they are so good at the job its a bit crazy.

Having them eat, high damage shots meant for something/someone else is a bit nuts to me when it feels like they just pull a cartoon and swallow the shots, then burp up the smoke.

 flandarz wrote:
Grot Shields can only protect a single unit, so while you certainly COULD hide behind a blob of Drones, as soon as your opponent decides to shoot a different unit than the one you're protecting...

Like, why do you think you don't see Orkz hiding their whole army behind blobs of Gretchin? The basic use of Grot Shields is to defend a single unit you don't want to die. The rest of your army still has to figure out their own way to not getting blasted to pieces.

I thought Grot Shields could take wounds for any unit and not just one in particular. My mistake, I've only played Orks once this Edition.

The problem is T'au units don't have any other ways to not get blasted to pieces. If T'au still had their mobility and movement tricks we could atleast try to stay out of our opponents reach and dance in and out of LoS to try and protect ourselves, but since we got turned into Guard/Admech 2.0 thats not really an option anymore. The reason you barely ever see any T'au vehicles hit the table is because all they have to protect themselves is T7 and a 3+ armour save, which isn't good enough this Edition.

If that's how Saviour Protocols got changed I can see the T'au meta swap to just running Tau'nar lists, since that thing can benefit from Saviour Protocols for some reason.

Or they'll just swarm the objectives with 300 3pt Troop Shield Drones to a level that puts Plaugebearer spam to shame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:

MalfunctBot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

I don't think that'd really work, since all non-Drone Bodyguard rules allow the unit being protected to make their save before the damage starts getting allocated to the Bodyguards.

This means the Riptide is least affected by getting to take his 3+ Invuln before putting wounds onto the Drones, while the fragile Crisis Suits wind up getting shoved further into irrelevance.

What if it were such that hits scored on the guarded unit get allocated to the drones instead? (Really I think it's a little odd that that's not how bodyguard rules work in the first place)

To be fair that wouldn't be too much better, since then the Drone gets its 4+ Invuln to eat the shot instead of the 5+ FNP, and wounding on the Drones toughness instead of the Battlesuits isn't a big enough benefit to compensate.

 JNAProductions wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

MalfunctBot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Make drones like regular bodyguards. Make other units better.

I don't think that'd really work, since all non-Drone Bodyguard rules allow the unit being protected to make their save before the damage starts getting allocated to the Bodyguards.

This means the Riptide is least affected by getting to take his 3+ Invuln before putting wounds onto the Drones, while the fragile Crisis Suits wind up getting shoved further into irrelevance.

Yeah, I don't think this is the way. I think you need some way to allow high damage shots to still get thru while not allowing the big units like riptides to get their saves first.

What about this kind of a system?

"Savior protocols: when a friendly Tau unit is successfully wounded while within 3" of a model with this rule, that model may choose to voluntarily suffer a mortal wound. If that would reduce the maximum damage dealt by that attack to 0, the attack sequence ends. If not, the model takes a saving throw as normal. If the saving throw is failed the damage caused by the attack is reduced by the number of mortal wounds that were taken because of the Savior Protocols rule."

Worded kinda poorly, and there's en edge case where it breaks the game (d6 damage weapon, you take, say, 3 mortals on a Drone. They roll a 2 for damage-do you heal one wound?) but conceptually much better. Just needs cleaning up.

Sure, it'd need tweaking. And obviously if you roll below the number of drones sacrificed you just lose 0 wounds.

 catbarf wrote:

The Warp Forge wrote:How to fix Shield Drones? Easy! Take them away as a unit and have them as an upgrade with a limit of 4-5 for said unit.

It's been a long while, but wasn't this exactly how drones used to work back in 3rd/4th Ed? IIRC you could take a drone controller as a piece of wargear, then add drones to the unit?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is how it works now, except that once the unit hits the ground, the different models function as their own discrete units on the field, ex: if you take a Strike team with a Gun Drone and a Guardian Drone, the Gun Drone and the Guardian drone can go off after deployment and do their own things?

And careful about your wish; taken as a tactical drone unit, the unit can number up to 12 models. However if it is taken as an upgrade to a crisis suit numbering 9 models, you can end up with 18 shield drones acting as their own 'unit'.

It`s easy actually. If you deploy well Tao will not shoot you out of the board turn 1, they don`t negate modifiers, don`t deploy units out of their deployment zone. So you have feeling you still have a chance, with SM good sooty armies just wipe you for 1-2 turns and its over.
Many people are stopping going to tournaments because SM are just stupid.