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Now this is going to probably get some anger on me but i can't help but after hearing all these stories in lore about ethereals being out in the open and getting sniped and causing an entire army to lose morale and run away. I'm not saying this should be as devastating to tau players, but when tau are doing well they absolutely should have some visible weaknesses. I don't even mind if you have to put an ethereal in a squad or in a transport but they should have the very real possibility of dying.

Tau have in many areas negated being significantly weak in melee and it's only fair they have some weaknesses somewhere in their army and not every faction has access to psychic powers to deal with tau. It was bad enough when tau could shoot into melee with like crisis suits or all battle suits. What's even the point of melee against them anymore? I mean when i played dark eldar our weakness was generally being squishy and falling to a stiff breeze, no psychic powers and in general being over-looked by the design team. Maybe i'm just salty after playing against tau in 7th and 9th and hearing they were also really strong in 6th?

So in short give tau some weaknesses even if it's something that can make them significantly stronger if left un-checked.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Now this is going to probably get some anger on me but i can't help but after hearing all these stories in lore about ethereals being out in the open and getting sniped and causing an entire army to lose morale and run away. I'm not saying this should be as devastating to tau players, but when tau are doing well they absolutely should have some visible weaknesses. I don't even mind if you have to put an ethereal in a squad or in a transport but they should have the very real possibility of dying.

Tau have in many areas negated being significantly weak in melee and it's only fair they have some weaknesses somewhere in their army and not every faction has access to psychic powers to deal with tau. It was bad enough when tau could shoot into melee with like crisis suits or all battle suits. What's even the point of melee against them anymore? I mean when i played dark eldar our weakness was generally being squishy and falling to a stiff breeze, no psychic powers and in general being over-looked by the design team. Maybe i'm just salty after playing against tau in 7th and 9th and hearing they were also really strong in 6th?

So in short give tau some weaknesses even if it's something that can make them significantly stronger if left un-checked.

At first I was all opposed because not all Tau use Ethereals and I am sure plenty of armies go to war without Ethereals. That being said I do think there have been some interesting weaknesses with the WHFB Hierophant of Tomb Kings and the Vampire Counts general.

I think the silly part of this post is suggesting it as a balancing measure when Tau are strong, you should never change rules because they are strong, just change points costs if that is the case. You should only change rules to make the game more fun, like if it feels unsatisfying to get gunned down in melee against a tank with your thunder hammer Terminators.

What about armies that don’t have Precision shooting?
What about the Farsighted Enclaves?
And what makes you feel like Tau aren’t balanced right now?

 JNAProductions wrote:
What about armies that don’t have Precision shooting?
What about the Farsighted Enclaves?
And what makes you feel like Tau aren’t balanced right now?

Armies that don't have precision shooting can try to send in some more suicide units to kill off the etheral wherever they are even if they're in a troop transport of some kind.

The farsight enclaves won't be effected by this but they won't get auxiliary forces like kroot or vespid and will not be buffed or negated by an etheral since they don't use them and so it evens out. Meanwhile vespid and kroot make up some vulnerabilities for tau in melee much like how Sisters of Silence handled psychic units for Custodes and how mortal wounds used to really hurt custodes a while back.

I can't say what tau are like now since i haven't played recently but my recent secondhand experience was watching a tau player kill off like at least 50% of his opponent's army turn one and overall winning on score by the end. In 7th edition playing against tau as dark eldar was an uphill battle like no other and my 4 member archon party posse still kill one stormsurge at the cost of most of my army in a couple turns. 6, 7th and 9th have been pretty broken for tau in certain respects when they get a good codex.

Anyway i don't know fully how we'll implement this. Maybe they'll fail some morale checks with a negative modifier and need to fall back instead of shoot for a round (in an attempt to re-group), maybe they become unable to do anything or act in any way, perhaps it'll work like tyranid synapse link except in a large area of effect that hits most tau anywhere except far flung ones that fly out or deep strike too far away. I plan for losing an ethereal to cause panic in all the ranks except for kroot who are just mercenaries anyway and likely not controlled too hard by ethereals. Vespids might be effected due to the little helmets they were given but hard to say. This then forces normal Tau forces to either really protect their ethereal or to have some auxiliaries to protect them if an etheral should super unfortunately die.

Tau don't always break and run when the Ethereal gets killed, sometimes they go absolutely nuts aggressive.

Well as i said it can be like tyranid synapse then in a way. There was a point where they just instinctually attack the closest target or something. Maybe it depends how well you pass or fail the morale check.

 Da Boss wrote:
Tau don't always break and run when the Ethereal gets killed, sometimes they go absolutely nuts aggressive.

Which is why they need to stay away from tall buildings. At least for some editions…

 Da Boss wrote:
Tau don't always break and run when the Ethereal gets killed, sometimes they go absolutely nuts aggressive.

Bring back depressed Ethereals!

If an army is OP, then shoving in a mandatory bad unit is a terrible way to balance said army.

That said, big, gimmickky army weaknesses can be cool if done well. I wouldn't mind seeing a (careful and considered) return of things like instinctive behavior for nids, phase out for 'crons, wraithsight as a downside for eldar wraith units, etc.

I can't say what tau are like now since i haven't played recently but my recent secondhand experience was watching a tau player kill off like at least 50% of his opponent's army turn one and overall winning on score by the end. In 7th edition playing against tau as dark eldar was an uphill battle like no other and my 4 member archon party posse still kill one stormsurge at the cost of most of my army in a couple turns. 6, 7th and 9th have been pretty broken for tau in certain respects when they get a good codex.

Tau are actually in a somewhat healthy place right now. They have a robust enough list of options that they're not stuck being a non-interactive gunline any more. 10th's mission design means they have to send stuff out into no man's land if they want to win the game, and even their more annoying units/tactics have reasonable counters.

And speaking as a dark eldar player who was around in 7th, while 7th edition tau were disgustingly non-interactive, the 7th edition dark eldar codex was *not* helping matters. We basically existed to be a taxi service for other space elves that edition.

So in short, no I don't think mandatory ethereal taxes are a good way of addressing the balance issues that don't really exist in 10th edition. I also don't think that drukhari should be forced to field a mandatory haemonculus as punishment for the army being OP on release in 9th edition.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
That said, big, gimmickky army weaknesses can be cool if done well. I wouldn't mind seeing a (careful and considered) return of things like instinctive behavior for nids, phase out for 'crons, wraithsight as a downside for eldar wraith units, etc.

Phase Out I get. Wraithsight I get.

But Instinctive Behavior? That never really made sense, for two reasons.

1) Synapse blankets the whole planet when Nids invade. There's not going to be anywhere not in Synapse range.
2) Gants and Gaunts don't even have stomachs-they're literally bioweapons who cannot survive long term. And that's true of other organisms as well-even IF they were without Synapse, they wouldn't eat themselves (which was a thing in past editions) because they literally cannot even eat. I could see, if Synapse was artificially suppressed, their tactics getting considerably worse, but they'd still be fighting the enemy.

I'd probably tweak the specifics of Instinctive Behavior rather than porting them forward directly. I just liked the idea of bugs feeling a bit less clever/coordinated when they didn't have a "wifi tower" right next to them to provide more quick/precise directions.

Although thinking on it, the current synapse rules actually do a pretty decent job with this. Hit a bit less hard and fail battleshock significantly more often when outside of synapse.

As i said i personally think it wouldn't be the worst thing if done correctly. Tau have: drones, battlesuit support systems, auxiliaries, mobility and firepower and even shoot into melee now. I'm not saying they need this but they need some visible weakness like how skaven in old whfb had low armor, generally poor melee, no cavalry and no really fast units. When tau can shoot into melee with most of their suits the "melee is their weakness" thing goes away. Not to mention not everybody has access to psychic powers.

Maybe i'm just salty because dark eldar being hit and run when imperial guard could sometimes match their speed is just absurd esp. with one gun-line army going against dudes with paper armor.

Once again i haven't played 40k in a while since maybe early 10th ed. 40k is way too expensive these days.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
As i said i personally think it wouldn't be the worst thing if done correctly. Tau have: drones, battlesuit support systems, auxiliaries, mobility and firepower and even shoot into melee now. I'm not saying they need this but they need some visible weakness like how skaven in old whfb had low armor, generally poor melee, no cavalry and no really fast units. When tau can shoot into melee with most of their suits the "melee is their weakness" thing goes away. Not to mention not everybody has access to psychic powers.

Maybe i'm just salty because dark eldar being hit and run when imperial guard could sometimes match their speed is just absurd esp. with one gun-line army going against dudes with paper armor.

Once again i haven't played 40k in a while since maybe early 10th ed. 40k is way too expensive these days.

If you don't know what the current edition is like, I would advise learning more before looking to tinker with it.
Especially when the intent is to radically change what's required in a faction.

Maybe i'm just salty because dark eldar being hit and run when imperial guard could sometimes match their speed is just absurd esp. with one gun-line army going against dudes with paper armor.

It sounds like salt. And salt is the unofficial fourth pillar of the hobby, so I don't say that as a criticism! But as JNA suggested, you might want to be a bit more in the loop before trying to balance an edition you don't play.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
As i said i personally think it wouldn't be the worst thing if done correctly. Tau have: drones, battlesuit support systems, auxiliaries, mobility and firepower and even shoot into melee now. I'm not saying they need this but they need some visible weakness like how skaven in old whfb had low armor, generally poor melee, no cavalry and no really fast units. When tau can shoot into melee with most of their suits the "melee is their weakness" thing goes away. Not to mention not everybody has access to psychic powers.

I've actually been playing tau a lot lately (mostly against, occassionally with), and they definitely still have their weaknesses. They don't automatically fold up when you poke them in melee the way they used to, but the way modern 40k missions work means they have to constantly be sending units out into no man's land if they want to score points. And probably giving up shooting on a couple additional units to do actions and score secondaries. So they're a shooty army in an edition where going pure gunline isn't really an option, and that means most armies end up being more comfortable doing board control than the tau themselves are.

And while the suits specifically (not the various infantry units they probably still need for scoring purposes) do get to shoot in melee now, they're generally doing so with a to-hit penalty. Or if they don't want to be stuck in melee with your beatstick units, they're falling. At which point, most units either only allow *some* of the falling back unit to shoot, or they gave up a wargear slot to pull that trick off. There are a handful of annoying units (riptides get to ignore modifiers making them relatively comfortable chilling in melee while they keep shooting), but every faction has some annoying units.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
As i said i personally think it wouldn't be the worst thing if done correctly. Tau have: drones, battlesuit support systems, auxiliaries, mobility and firepower and even shoot into melee now. I'm not saying they need this but they need some visible weakness like how skaven in old whfb had low armor, generally poor melee, no cavalry and no really fast units. When tau can shoot into melee with most of their suits the "melee is their weakness" thing goes away. Not to mention not everybody has access to psychic powers.

Maybe i'm just salty because dark eldar being hit and run when imperial guard could sometimes match their speed is just absurd esp. with one gun-line army going against dudes with paper armor.

Once again i haven't played 40k in a while since maybe early 10th ed. 40k is way too expensive these days.

If you don't know what the current edition is like, I would advise learning more before looking to tinker with it.
Especially when the intent is to radically change what's required in a faction.

Exactly this. Anecdote from a single game you saw does not call for a rebalance.

If you look at competitive Tau right now, they're actually not doing all that great. They do have a 49% average win rate, which is right in the sweet spot, but that's being propped up by how great Kroot are. Kroot Hunting Pack is sitting with an average 62% win rate, which is helping prop up those numbers. If there is anywhere that Tau needs a nerf, it's to Kroot (and I say that as a die hard Kroot fan who also plays semi-competitively.)