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 ClockworkZion wrote:


One thought that crosses my mind as a general counter play strategy is the secondary for holding table quarters. It seems like a good counter play to a center table castle. Stay out of Line of Sight, claim all four corners because the opponent is clustered in the middle and run up your points every turn.

Don't think that would work well in the 4 Pillars mission, which is the only one we've seen so far. You'd get a max 15VP for the quadrants secondary, meanwhile your opponent would get 45VP for the primaries which are all near~ish the centre and another 15VP from the holding the centre secondary.

 Asmodai wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:


One thought that crosses my mind as a general counter play strategy is the secondary for holding table quarters. It seems like a good counter play to a center table castle. Stay out of Line of Sight, claim all four corners because the opponent is clustered in the middle and run up your points every turn.

Don't think that would work well in the 4 Pillars mission, which is the only one we've seen so far. You'd get a max 15VP for the quadrants secondary, meanwhile your opponent would get 45VP for the primaries which are all near~ish the centre and another 15VP from the holding the centre secondary.

4 Pillars is a mission for 500 point games. And those pillars are 12" from the center.

If they are going to force a playstyle where wiping out as much of the opponent’s army as possible isn’t the singular highest priority anymore, then I hope they at the very least make the imposed objectives not feel as arbitrary and meaningless as the random tactical objectives of previous editions.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Which equates a deadlier game with no need to try and counter play. In 8th, if your Devastator Plasma Cannon needed to move and you had two targets, an Eldar flier with -3 to hit already next to you with 3 wounds left, and a Wave Serpent that is just now in range, you might not choose to move so you can have a better chance to kill the flier, ergo you actually have a choice to make. Under 9th, you have literally no reason not to move and get a chance to kill the Flier and knock a couple of wounds off the Serpent. You have no reason to not just move with your Heavy Weapons against Stygies, Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, etc, which means you miss the point of Heavy Weapons: moving them should be an actual consequence and now it really isn't against several armies and units.

Sure, and I would agree there in that sense, but we can have the same problem just in different ways, If you're BS4+ instead of 3+ you already really don't have a choice as you literally cannot hit the Eldar flier for instance. Trying to make it scaleable within a D6 design space, where the starting point for a base hit probability is broadly right in the middle of the range, it's way too easy for a couple modifiers to have a dramatically outsized impact. Unless GW want to start increasing everyone's base to-hit rolls to give more room for granularity, this is GW's EZ solution to the problem of people not wanting to play games where they literally can't hit their opponents and not wanting it to be "fishing for sixes". It's not an elegant solution, but when tactical granularity is too coarse for how people want the game to play and nobody wants to adjust the stats to address it, there's only so much one can do.

But the way Siegler plays is the way every T'au player of basic competency plays. Tau are short range - you'd have to have a very poor understanding of the faction to think sitting back in a corner and shooting was a good idea.

What Siegler does better than everybody is the details, not the big picture. Everyone who plays T'au competitively plays by moving to the center of the board and controlling it.

Holding table quarters doesn't work. You don't get enough points from secondaries, if you're losing the primary every turn you're losing the game every time. And with the new table size, the T'au castle can hit essentially every point on the board from the center that isn't blocked by LOS, as well as having decent non-LOS capability as well.

I'm not saying T'au are going to be unbeatable or anything in 9th, but your suggestions for how to deal with them simply don't work against a competent player. Unless there are some big, big reveals about the way combat works in 9th, the only way to fight a T'au castle is going to be the same non-interactive style you had in 8th where you slowly feed your units to the castle in order to hold more and hope to run down the clock.

I can say with 100% certanty thar Seigler's playstyle is not the only "competent" way to play Tau.

Look, I always have the right to be wrong, but I don't buy the claims as presented. Day One FAQs will matter a lot too.

I guess we have different standards of competency.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Which equates a deadlier game with no need to try and counter play. In 8th, if your Devastator Plasma Cannon needed to move and you had two targets, an Eldar flier with -3 to hit already next to you with 3 wounds left, and a Wave Serpent that is just now in range, you might not choose to move so you can have a better chance to kill the flier, ergo you actually have a choice to make. Under 9th, you have literally no reason not to move and get a chance to kill the Flier and knock a couple of wounds off the Serpent. You have no reason to not just move with your Heavy Weapons against Stygies, Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, etc, which means you miss the point of Heavy Weapons: moving them should be an actual consequence and now it really isn't against several armies and units.

Sure, and I would agree there in that sense, but we can have the same problem just in different ways, If you're BS4+ instead of 3+ you already really don't have a choice as you literally cannot hit the Eldar flier for instance. Trying to make it scaleable within a D6 design space, where the starting point for a base hit probability is broadly right in the middle of the range, it's way too easy for a couple modifiers to have a dramatically outsized impact. Unless GW want to start increasing everyone's base to-hit rolls to give more room for granularity, this is GW's EZ solution to the problem of people not wanting to play games where they literally can't hit their opponents and not wanting it to be "fishing for sixes". It's not an elegant solution, but when tactical granularity is too coarse for how people want the game to play and nobody wants to adjust the stats to address it, there's only so much one can do.

Which basically translates to "we don't want to think about it".

yukishiro1 wrote:
I guess we have different standards of competency.

I just don't buy into claims that there is only one way to run an army well.

Tri-riptide drone spam is not even competitive agaisnt possesed bombs, grey knights paladins, tzeentch daemon prince mortal wound bombs, or space marines with centurions and aggressors that eat drones for breakfast.

Pure commander and hammerhead lists (With 8 hammerheads, literally full tanks), piranha spam with seeker missiles, broadsides and stormsurges, etc... all have seen play and victories, and are right now much better at playing the objetives than tau-castle.

I don't know what kind of lists will see play now that CA and WTC will be basically ITC 2.0. But the "tau meta" is much different in WTC and CA than on ITC.

The only thing I know is that anti-tau tears taste glorious. They taste as good as tau-player tears when those players disregard all the codex as uncompetitive unless they are a drone or a riptide.

I would very much like you to be right re: other T'au lists being viable in 9th, especially if combined with a nerf to drone spam. Though right now it looks like drone spam is stronger than ever, given that the multi-charge change removed one of the main weaknesses.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I would very much like you to be right re: other T'au lists being viable in 9th, especially if combined with a nerf to drone spam. Though right now it looks like drone spam is stronger than ever, given that the multi-charge change removed one of the main weaknesses.

I see this get posted occasionally in different groups, but it doesn't really reflect how tau are played. Most riptide/drone spam lists have the drones out of LOS to prevent a player shooting the much easier to wound drones. Often this also means the first charge target is the riptide and not the drones.

From the same tau leak today we saw the fly doesn't automatically let you shoot when you fall back, which if that also effects vehicles and monsters is a large change towards weakening taus defense against assault.

Quick rules question because I'm genuinely curious. And I have a point to make as well.

Does FTGG kick in if a Tau unit cannot fire OW due to an enemy unit's ability?

Daemons and Inquisitors can shut down OW so if FTGG doesn't take place than Tau castles aren't all that scary.

Not to mention it's too early to state that Tau will be able to play missions like they do now because we don't know all of the missions provided by GW, and all future 9th ed missions to come.

I love the exclamation that "anyone can play a net 40k list as well as the best player in the world". It reminds me of MtG. I so often see people copy a deck off the web that was used by a tournament winner, spend huge money on the cards and then get their asses handed to them by a person with a starter deck.

Having the tools to win a game doesn't mean you will win, you have to know how to use that tool.

Competent =/= master. Bobby Fisher was the greatest chess player in the world for a while but he wasn't the ONLY competent one. The 2nd and 3rd and maybe even the 100th greatest players in the world at that time would be considered by the world at large as "competent'.

Yes, you can FTGG even if the unit being charged is already in combat.

blaktoof wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
I would very much like you to be right re: other T'au lists being viable in 9th, especially if combined with a nerf to drone spam. Though right now it looks like drone spam is stronger than ever, given that the multi-charge change removed one of the main weaknesses.

I see this get posted occasionally in different groups, but it doesn't really reflect how tau are played. Most riptide/drone spam lists have the drones out of LOS to prevent a player shooting the much easier to wound drones. Often this also means the first charge target is the riptide and not the drones.

From the same tau leak today we saw the fly doesn't automatically let you shoot when you fall back, which if that also effects vehicles and monsters is a large change towards weakening taus defense against assault.

That is true for list of 20-30 shield drones. But when you bring 50 + you don’t hide them anymore

blaktoof wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
I would very much like you to be right re: other T'au lists being viable in 9th, especially if combined with a nerf to drone spam. Though right now it looks like drone spam is stronger than ever, given that the multi-charge change removed one of the main weaknesses.

I see this get posted occasionally in different groups, but it doesn't really reflect how tau are played. Most riptide/drone spam lists have the drones out of LOS to prevent a player shooting the much easier to wound drones. Often this also means the first charge target is the riptide and not the drones.

From the same tau leak today we saw the fly doesn't automatically let you shoot when you fall back, which if that also effects vehicles and monsters is a large change towards weakening taus defense against assault.

Why would you be putting drones out of LOS and exposing your riptide against a melee army? That seems like a really basic mistake to make. Half the value of the drones is their strength as a screen.

Of course we still don't know how the Fall Back rule works, so this talk of Fly units not being able to shoot, whilst nice, doesn't change the fact that if Fall Back remains as is it's still a major problem for assault armies.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Doesnt that like completely remove the entire purpose of the Inceptors in the Deathwatch? Or ya know their whole purpose in general?

I'd rather one unit lose its functionality (that can be rewritten) than Fly + Fall Back remain as it is.

 Kanluwen wrote:
...he's not really "embodying" anything other than an old guy trying to keep others from having fun.

*snickers*

We know Falling Back is still in the game, question is in what form.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Of course we still don't know how the Fall Back rule works, so this talk of Fly units not being able to shoot, whilst nice, doesn't change the fact that if Fall Back remains as is it's still a major problem for assault armies.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Doesnt that like completely remove the entire purpose of the Inceptors in the Deathwatch? Or ya know their whole purpose in general?

I'd rather one unit lose its functionality (that can be rewritten) than Fly + Fall Back remain as it is.

 Kanluwen wrote:
...he's not really "embodying" anything other than an old guy trying to keep others from having fun.

*snickers*

Fair enough. Im sure something will be done. They wouldnt over look something when it comes to the Deathwatch would they?

jivardi wrote:
Quick rules question because I'm genuinely curious. And I have a point to make as well.

Does FTGG kick in if a Tau unit cannot fire OW due to an enemy unit's ability?

Daemons and Inquisitors can shut down OW so if FTGG doesn't take place than Tau castles aren't all that scary.

Not to mention it's too early to state that Tau will be able to play missions like they do now because we don't know all of the missions provided by GW, and all future 9th ed missions to come.

I love the exclamation that "anyone can play a net 40k list as well as the best player in the world". It reminds me of MtG. I so often see people copy a deck off the web that was used by a tournament winner, spend huge money on the cards and then get their asses handed to them by a person with a starter deck.

Having the tools to win a game doesn't mean you will win, you have to know how to use that tool.

Competent =/= master. Bobby Fisher was the greatest chess player in the world for a while but he wasn't the ONLY competent one. The 2nd and 3rd and maybe even the 100th greatest players in the world at that time would be considered by the world at large as "competent'.

Agreed. And that's one problem with netlists that people who use them don't really get, it seems. Oftentimes, I find that people who have played an army for a while will play it better, even if it's not optimized, versus someone who has a netlist who doesn't know all of the intracacies of it. A master of a less-optimized list can beat a competent netlister because of experience and understanding what each and every one of their units do.

 puma713 wrote:

jivardi wrote:
Quick rules question because I'm genuinely curious. And I have a point to make as well.

Does FTGG kick in if a Tau unit cannot fire OW due to an enemy unit's ability?

Daemons and Inquisitors can shut down OW so if FTGG doesn't take place than Tau castles aren't all that scary.

Not to mention it's too early to state that Tau will be able to play missions like they do now because we don't know all of the missions provided by GW, and all future 9th ed missions to come.

I love the exclamation that "anyone can play a net 40k list as well as the best player in the world". It reminds me of MtG. I so often see people copy a deck off the web that was used by a tournament winner, spend huge money on the cards and then get their asses handed to them by a person with a starter deck.

Having the tools to win a game doesn't mean you will win, you have to know how to use that tool.

Competent =/= master. Bobby Fisher was the greatest chess player in the world for a while but he wasn't the ONLY competent one. The 2nd and 3rd and maybe even the 100th greatest players in the world at that time would be considered by the world at large as "competent'.

Agreed. And that's one problem with netlists that people who use them don't really get, it seems. Oftentimes, I find that people who have played an army for a while will play it better, even if it's not optimized, versus someone who has a netlist who doesn't know all of the intracacies of it. A master of a less-optimized list can beat a competent netlister because of experience and understanding what each and every one of their units do.

Which only reinforces my point: no army can be defined by how it plays at top tables alone, and making sweeping statements about how "competent" list building works is laughable.

There is more than one way to skin a Gyrinx after all.

It's why only balancing based on what is seen at high level play doesn't work. It fails to identify the things that aren't working, or the things that work in other metas outsode of something like LVO.

I'm jut glad to see cover getting some new rules. I'd like to see some more types of cover and terrain advantages.

yukishiro1 wrote:
But the way Siegler plays is the way every T'au player of basic competency plays. Tau are short range - you'd have to have a very poor understanding of the faction to think sitting back in a corner and shooting was a good idea.

What Siegler does better than everybody is the details, not the big picture. Everyone who plays T'au competitively plays by moving to the center of the board and controlling it.

Holding table quarters doesn't work. You don't get enough points from secondaries, if you're losing the primary every turn you're losing the game every time. And with the new table size, the T'au castle can hit essentially every point on the board from the center that isn't blocked by LOS, as well as having decent non-LOS capability as well.

I'm not saying T'au are going to be unbeatable or anything in 9th, but your suggestions for how to deal with them simply don't work against a competent player. Unless there are some big, big reveals about the way combat works in 9th, the only way to fight a T'au castle is going to be the same non-interactive style you had in 8th where you slowly feed your units to the castle in order to hold more and hope to run down the clock.

Tau are not remotely short range. All the parts of a tau castle are long range. Heck you easily get 18 plus rapid fire pulse carbines. Riptides aren't short range. Pulse rifles aren't. Broadsides (when they are in vogue) aren't. Commanders aren't in any real way when you can move one 20 inches.

Tau move to the middle of the board to lock the board down and play keep away from objectives. If you stay in the corner shooting, the a tarpit army can aggress and lock you into that corner to prevent you from scoring. Going midfield allows your to squat your castle on where objective tend to be concentrated. The castle is not and was never a short range list. By this metric, space marines are short range.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 puma713 wrote:

jivardi wrote:
Quick rules question because I'm genuinely curious. And I have a point to make as well.

Does FTGG kick in if a Tau unit cannot fire OW due to an enemy unit's ability?

Daemons and Inquisitors can shut down OW so if FTGG doesn't take place than Tau castles aren't all that scary.

Not to mention it's too early to state that Tau will be able to play missions like they do now because we don't know all of the missions provided by GW, and all future 9th ed missions to come.

I love the exclamation that "anyone can play a net 40k list as well as the best player in the world". It reminds me of MtG. I so often see people copy a deck off the web that was used by a tournament winner, spend huge money on the cards and then get their asses handed to them by a person with a starter deck.

Having the tools to win a game doesn't mean you will win, you have to know how to use that tool.

Competent =/= master. Bobby Fisher was the greatest chess player in the world for a while but he wasn't the ONLY competent one. The 2nd and 3rd and maybe even the 100th greatest players in the world at that time would be considered by the world at large as "competent'.

Agreed. And that's one problem with netlists that people who use them don't really get, it seems. Oftentimes, I find that people who have played an army for a while will play it better, even if it's not optimized, versus someone who has a netlist who doesn't know all of the intracacies of it. A master of a less-optimized list can beat a competent netlister because of experience and understanding what each and every one of their units do.

Which only reinforces my point: no army can be defined by how it plays at top tables alone, and making sweeping statements about how "competent" list building works is laughable.

There is more than one way to skin a Gyrinx after all.

It's why only balancing based on what is seen at high level play doesn't work. It fails to identify the things that aren't working, or the things that work in other metas outsode of something like LVO.

I don't know how or why you seem to aggressively miss the point really. It's like you hear the word competitive and you shut literally everything else about an argument out.

The problem with competitive tau ISN'T THAT THEY ARE COMPETITIVE! Get it? Got it? Understand?

It's that competitive tau play in a non interactive way and provide poor game experiences for opponents and the players of the army itself. GW shouldn't make an army that can realistically play in this manner, it is bad for the game. Get it?

What people want is for tau to have a playstyle that is good that ISN'T reliant on avoiding interacting with the opponents army and entire phases of the game. This would be nothing but a boon for the game and for tau players.

Tau are short range. Arguing anything else is insanity. I regularly outranged the entire Tau alpha strike in majors and the ETC tournaments in 8th. The 9th edition small board will do wonders in adressing that issue, but I feel their competitiveness will still come down to the points cost lottery like everyone else.

In fact, outside a very specific tournament rule set and more importantly the tournament meta where others brought lascannons (instead of Invictors and Impulsors and max indirect) and then ran into shield drones, and a specific player, Tau really weren’t competitive at all in 8th. Barely a top 8 faction in the game.

 Therion wrote:
Tau are short range. Arguing anything else is insanity. I regularly outranged the entire Tau alpha strike in majors and the ETC tournaments. The 9th edition small board will do wonders in adressing that issue, but I feel their competitiveness will still come down to the points cost lottery like everyone else.

I don't see how an army whose threat range revolves around 36 inches is in any way short.

stratigo wrote:

 Therion wrote:
Tau are short range. Arguing anything else is insanity. I regularly outranged the entire Tau alpha strike in majors and the ETC tournaments. The 9th edition small board will do wonders in adressing that issue, but I feel their competitiveness will still come down to the points cost lottery like everyone else.

I don't see how an army whose threat range revolves around 36 inches is in any way short.

But it is. In three of the deployments you can outrange their entire army, and in the rest you can choose what gets shot, and even that gets shot from movement / mont’ka and not kayuon.

 Therion wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 Therion wrote:
Tau are short range. Arguing anything else is insanity. I regularly outranged the entire Tau alpha strike in majors and the ETC tournaments. The 9th edition small board will do wonders in adressing that issue, but I feel their competitiveness will still come down to the points cost lottery like everyone else.

I don't see how an army whose threat range revolves around 36 inches is in any way short.

But it is. In three of the deployments you can outrange their entire army, and in the rest you can choose what gets shot, and even that gets shot from movement / mont’ka and not kayuon.

It's a mid range shooting army, a short range shooting army would be Necrons who need to get within 24" for most of their weapons (not including DDA's obviously) and Drukhari, who need to be within 18" or less for their poison shooting to be effective.

 Imateria wrote:

 Therion wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 Therion wrote:
Tau are short range. Arguing anything else is insanity. I regularly outranged the entire Tau alpha strike in majors and the ETC tournaments. The 9th edition small board will do wonders in adressing that issue, but I feel their competitiveness will still come down to the points cost lottery like everyone else.

I don't see how an army whose threat range revolves around 36 inches is in any way short.

But it is. In three of the deployments you can outrange their entire army, and in the rest you can choose what gets shot, and even that gets shot from movement / mont’ka and not kayuon.

It's a mid range shooting army, a short range shooting army would be Necrons who need to get within 24" for most of their weapons (not including DDA's obviously) and Drukhari, who need to be within 18" or less for their poison shooting to be effective.

Well that’s semantics. I call any army that can have it’s 1a opener neutered by redline deployments a short range army.

stratigo wrote:

The problem with competitive tau ISN'T THAT THEY ARE COMPETITIVE! Get it? Got it? Understand?

It's that competitive tau play in a non interactive way and provide poor game experiences for opponents and the players of the army itself. GW shouldn't make an army that can realistically play in this manner, it is bad for the game. Get it?

What people want is for tau to have a playstyle that is good that ISN'T reliant on avoiding interacting with the opponents army and entire phases of the game. This would be nothing but a boon for the game and for tau players.

Your opinion. Some could say t1 charges you can't prevent at all is boring uninteracting game. Are you advocating removing them?

A bit cheeky of me but been out the loop a while and trying to catch up with news on 9th edition.

Just wondering if there has been any mention on the rule of 3? I can imagine it would stay in place as it's effective at stopping spam, but at the same time my Tempestus and Guard would love to be able to take a few more officers.