So it should be no surprise to anyone that 8th edition is very different from previous iterations of the game, and this is especially true for Tau. Many of their core mechanics (JSJ moves, Markerlights, etc) were significantly changed or removed and this has a lot of Tau players crying doom and gloom- but I’m here to tell you that it’s not half as bad as people would have you believe; in fact, Tau are doing quite well in the new edition. Check the Tactics Corner for more great articles.
The Hype
If you pay any attention to the word about Tau on the internet, likely you know what everyone is saying: Tau are over. The faction is busted. Everything is bad and worthless and nothing we have is good. Every special ability has been taken away, every weapon is overpriced, and every unit is trivial to kill. Without the jump-shoot-jump moves on our jetpacks, the whole army gets assaulted on turn 1 and never gets to fire a shot. And it’s impossible to first, and you’ll always lose at Kill Points, and about a hundred other problems besides.
The reality is a lot more complicated than that, obviously. Yes, a lot of Tau units have been made more expensive- especially the ubiquitous Riptides and Broadsides of last edition, but also many others. But it’s worth remembering that a lot of things got more expensive in the new editions, so that should come as little surprise. We’ve lost the raw power of using Markerlights to enhance a single unit to absurd levels of deadliness with its guns, but they can now be more useful in buffing the army as a whole- and since many factions lost their buffs entirely, Markerlights are a big deal.
Core Competencies
Tau are still good at what Tau have always been good at- shooting hard and avoiding close combat. The ways they do these things have changed, but those facts still remain largely unchanged. However, where Tau have lost some of their strengths in terms of being able to eliminate virtually any single unit they please with a volley of fire, they have gained significantly in another important area- survivability, not to mention huge upgrades in utility thanks to newly-improved Support Systems. But let’s go through things piece-by-piece, to examine the hows and the whys of it all.
The statlines are most Tau guns are still second to none in a lot of respects; Railguns are purely superior to their equivalents in other armies such as Lances or Lascannons, and they still have abundant (and efficient) access to medium-strength weapons like Missiles and Ion as well to handle other classes of targets. Add in the massed S5 available to their infantry and drones, mortal wounds off of Seekers/Destroyers, and just generally-good numbers on a lot of guns and you have a strong starting place.
Now, Tau Ballistic Skill certainly leaves something to be desired, but that isn’t universal; there are BS3+ and even BS2+ units with very effective shooting available many places in the codex, even discounting the potential bonuses from Markerlights and Support Systems. Yes, some of our platforms are sadly not as accurate as we might like, but every codex has units that are lacking in it; the trick is, you don’t have to use those units if you’re playing competitively. And the codices published so far, as well as the FAQs, have given strong evidence that GW is willing to reprice units that are clearly underperforming, so I think we can expect some of the more lackluster choices to get some improvements once Tau have a proper book released.
Moving onward, another advantage Tau have is mobility. Their battlesuits have higher movement values than units in most other codices (ranging from 8″ to 12″ in most cases), and their vehicles typically have numbers that are on the high side as well. More importantly, however, is the Fly keyword that is almost universal to Tau’s larger units; this not only gives them an advantage in moving about the battlefield (by letting you ignore terrain and units as well as get into the upper levels of ruins and whatnot), but more critically it lets you escape from combat virtually without penalty. Opponents that attempt to do something clever with a charge and lock your units in melee will find that Tau are quite happy to simply walk away from things without a care in the world, even when you completely surround them with models.
I can’t overemphasize how important this is in the new edition. No more do you have to worry about getting “lucky” and having something stay locked in combat with the enemy- now, you can simply disengage at will, with any unit, and take your normal shooting phase against the enemy as you please. So long as your models don’t all die off (which we’ll get to in a moment), being charged by the enemy is no longer the end of a Tau gunline; indeed, in a lot of cases all it does is put them directly in front of your strongest weapons.
We mentioned surviving a charge a moment ago; previously this might be a very dicey problem for some Tau, and often even more so when it came to ranged firepower. Many battlesuits were extremely squishy for their cost/damage output and might dash off the table following a single bad morale check (another area where Tau suffered.) Now, however, Tau can boast some of the most resilient heavy shooting platforms in the game thanks to the Savior Protocols rule. Savior Protocols essentially allows you to use any drone squad within 3″ of a battlesuit or infantry unit to take wounds for them- so not only will losing some drones not cause your Crisis to flee off the table, but several squads can potentially all use the same “pool” of drones to keep themselves alive. At eight points a pop for the drones, this is a pretty fantastic way to buy extra wounds for most units out there, and it gets more efficient the larger your units are. (Watch an opponent try to shoot a Tau’nar to death only to see drones repeatedly commit suicide in its stead and you will quickly understand the definition of frustration.) Combined with the general increases in suits’ profiles (Toughness, Wounds, etc) and you have units that can hold up against a pretty shocking amount of enemy firepower in many cases, regardless of whether it comes from shooting, melee, or psychic powers.
Last of all, we have the new Support Systems. Now, many players have glossed over these, but the truth is they can be extremely relevant to a unit’s role because many of them give extremely strong bonuses that other armies would have to take a psyker for or otherwise rely on some sort of random die roll. Being able to move and fire without penalty, improving the AP of all your weapons, adding bonuses to hit against Fly units, and taking free shots at reserve units are all things that can seriously effect a game, and they are mostly available for a fairly trivial number of points. Especially on the larger suits that get multiple support systems without needing to give up weapons, Support Systems can completely change how a model functions and should be given serious consideration.
The Bad and the Ugly
Now, I’ve been pretty positive about things so far, but I don’t want to sugar-coat the truth, either: some parts of 8th Edition are not great for Tau. The loss of allies outside of one’s own race means that Tau are stuck doing it for themselves, and with lackluster troop units and no psykers that can be a serious problem. The various Tau monsters are also a lot more fragile (in the absence of drones, anyways) due to alterations in how weapons and wounds work. And the modicum of melee that Tau possessed through its various big suits has been completely dragged under, leaving them with no realistic way to function in close combat against anything but the most trivial of opponents. They also lack the effective chaff units to absorb Smite spam from enemies as well as tools for getting around armies that abuse characters, both of which are serious problems against the top-tier lists right now.
So Tau aren’t doing fantastic so far; they have gotten some decent placings at larger events, but I think from the looks so far they are panning out to be an upper-mid tier combatant in the scheme of things. But that is about where they were last edition as well- Tau often made appearances in the upper rankings of major tournaments, but very rarely managed to win them outright (despite constant screaming about how Riptides were ruining the game.) Tau players are going to have to adapt their strategies to how things work these days, but shouldn’t feel like they are shooting themselves in the foot by choosing to stick with the faction, as it has a lot to offer even beyond the ubiquitous Commander spam.
Tau also lack artillery other other, similar long-range weapons that ignore line of sight; in fact, though they possess some of the longest-range weapons in the game in the form of various types of railgun, in general Tau are outranged by most Imperial shooting armies because the majority of their firepower is only effective in the 18″-36″ bracket, whereas other armies can often function at 48″ and thus take better advantage of some of the more distant deployment types.
Last but not least, Tau armies generally end up with a large number of units in them that can make going first a problem; they are not the worst in this respect, but with typical Tau armies coming in with 15+ deployments there are plenty of armies that can easily go ahead of them. With alpha strikes being such a critical part of the game, this can sometimes be an issue, so always build with the potential for getting second turn in mind.
In Short
So, I’ve talked a lot about generalities for the Tau so far, but let’s finish things up with some specifics. This is my shortlist of go-to Tau units in various roles; while it’s not an exhaustive list of everything that I ever use, if you find yourself struggling to compete in your local meta it may be useful as a starting point for piecing together an army and/or filling a particular role in your force.
- Commander/Coldstar Commander (our most efficient anti-tank shooting platform, very mobile)
- Cadre Fireblade/Darkstrider (very cheap slot-fillers, provide solid utility to many units)
- Tactical Drones (Gun variant is great anti-infantry, Marker are tough and mobile ML support; both protect more important units)
- Longstrike (accurate generalist shooting, gives out a buff; makes other Hammerheads viable)
- Stormsurge (extremely resilient fire and assault magnet, utility platform)
- Y’varha (fast-moving high-damage battlesuit for hard targets)
- Kroot (counter-deployment/anti-assault trick)
- Hazard Suits (excellent anti-horde with Burst/Gun Drones, another cheap Manta Strike option)
- Stealth Suits (sets up shenanigans, surprisingly resilient); Pathfinders (efficient Markerlights, counter-deployment)
- Devilfish (speedy and resilient transport/anti-assault tool)
- Tau’nar (currently banned by ITC, but a powerful and nigh-invulnerable shooting platform, especially against other heavy targets.)
- Tidewall Droneport (brings a source of cheap and accurate Markerlights, protects our infantry)
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Great write up! Tau were the first army I picked up for 40K when they were first released but I’ve never really played them properly, 8th has got me interested in them again though.
I do think people over play Tau weakness, but I think that’s kind of inevitable in the semantics of competitive circles. If it’s not high tier it’s trash, things can’t just be ‘good but not the best’, which is fine and makes perfect sense in competitive focused discussion but I do think it leads to some hyperbole. Also I guess we’re all still coming off of 7th where the divide between top tier and ‘just fine’ was a lot wider.
Really interested to see Tau stratagems and Sept tactics in the codex, definitely an army that situational and unit focused stratagems will serve well I think.
Good write-up. The Tau index sort of falls into three categories
1. Things with good BS or which auto-hit. These can actually do damage
2. Things which perform some niche role other than doing damage which are worth having – such as Stealth Suits for deployment tricks, kroot for disposable screens, drones for jumping in front of lascannon shots aimed at your big suits
3. Everything else, which you will not take in competitive lists because they just do not work very well.
The problem with most of the index is that it is highly dependent on markerlights and they are just not dependable. They are fragile so only a foolish Tau player would expect to see more than one turn of use out of them. They also struggle in exactly the situation where they are needed the most – against armies with widespread -1 penalty to Tau Ballistic Skill. Expensive elite Tau units cannot afford to shoot like Orks.
You can certainly win games with Tau but with such a limited selection of actually competitive units it does tend towards a bit of a boring mono-build for tournament play. It is not a disaster but it is a bit of a shame.
A lot of good points BUT…
I really don’t think that pointing to a few successful tournament lists is helping make your point about Tau. Most of the successful tournament Tau lists I’ve seen relies on spamming Commanders and drones. If you need to spam one of the broken units in your army to remain competitive, that’s not a good indication at all.
I’ve also found that the increase in suit toughness/wounds really doesn’t matter all that often. Sure, that extra T on Crisis suits helps against bolt guns, but any sensible opponent won’t be shooting them with bolt guns, they’ll be shooting them with lascannons (or some near-equivalent) which usually wound the same regardless of the extra toughness, can now cut straight though cover, and have the potential to do more damage. Savior Protocols is the saving grace of suits.
Regarding Fly vs JSJ. A good Tau player would very rarely let their suits get caught in assault, now it’s easy for a dedicated assault unit to catch suits. And that’s what matters. Sure, you can walk away when weaker infantry units catch you in assault, but it’s just so much easier for assault units to catch you and wipe you out in one round.
Don’t even get me started on the markerlight table.
Virtually all lists run multiple commanders, but many of the most successful ones have run 3-4 rather than the 8+ most people seem to think is “the only way to run Tau.” I suppose that depends on your definition of “spamming.”
>A good Tau player would very rarely let their suits get caught in assault
Given how fast units could be last edition, this was often a pipe dream in competitive play. You’re not going to escape from that Thunderwolf Star that moves 18″+ per turn; you CAN’T escape from the Barkstar that cover its entire deployment zone with models, because there’s literally nowhere to run to.
The key with Fly is having those drones around to soak the big hits, either in combat or from shooting. Let their Power Fist pulp two Gun Drones and then walk right out of combat.
Fair call, my definition of commander spam would be any more than two (low bar I know but you rarely saw more than that last edition).
High-end cheese like the thunderwolf star was always the rare exception rather than the rule. If you were facing a real cheese list last edition there was very little you could do, regardless of what faction you were playing.
Against a balanced or even moderately cheesy list, I rarely let my suits get caught in assault and I could always prioritize shooting at the units I knew could catch me. Dancing on that knife edge into and out of assault/gun range was fun and it rewarded skillful game play. Losing that is what pisses me off, not any perceived loss/gain in the power level of Tau.
Sure, gun drones are clutch for soaking those odd hits. But they’re still T4 S4+ models with mediocre leadership. All of my opponents so far have been smart enough to kill off the drones *before* charging in with power fists etc.
The end result is my suits getting caught and wiped in assault FAR more often this edition, and me feeling frustrated because I know that’s something I was able to avoid with skillful gameplay last edition.
A point in your favor is that, against non-assault units, my opponents often don’t even bother charging cause they know I’ll just walk out of it.
Be fair- last edition the minimum HQ requirements were much lower, so you very rarely saw any Tau army field more than one HQ of any type, period. And formations only exacerbated that tendency. But “spam” isn’t an absolute definition, and three isn’t a wholly unreasonable place to draw the bar- I just feel it’s lower than I would do.
In my experience, though, Thunderwolf Star was far from the exception- I mean, admittedly, I play at tournaments a lot, but even outside of that context there were large numbers of fast and powerful units that could close in with you quickly (Knights, bikes/jetbikes, transports, etc) such that a 6+2d6″ move would not reliably keep you out of combat for the duration of the game.
Killing the Gun Drones first is obviously the correct way to go about things- but that’s not trivial to do (six Gun Drones take 36 Bolter shots to bring down)and those are shots that aren’t going into your other units. I find that Crisis (and some other) suits dying is more an issue of them not being able to output enough firepower rather than them not being survivable/maneuverable enough- problems which seem unrelated but are actually strongly intertwined. The Y’varha, for example, does not have exceptional defenses but I find mine rarely die because it has sufficient firepower to wipe out nearby targets, whereas a unit of Crisis often does not.
I certainly feel your frustration with many of our units, but until the codex comes out it’s “play what ya got” unless you want to switch armies.
True, I guess it just stand out more now because the competitive lists I’ve seen seem to use multiple commanders to do a lot of the heavy lifting shooting-wise.
Your experience will probably be somewhat different to mine then, I’ve no interest in playing with/against cheese so most of my games are social against reasonable lists, with only a single tournament or two each year. Knights and bikes could be an issue yes, but like I said, unless they were spammed there’d would usually be few enough that you could pick them out and eliminate them before they got to you.
Yeah, I’d definitely agree with your points on the lack of firepower. Triple ion blasters is pretty much the only loadout I’ve found that deals a useful and reliable amount of damage. I guess it’s all related though – they might not need to do more damage if they still had JSJ and could escape out of assault range. *shrug* We’ll just have to wait and see what if (any changes) GW decides to make to crisis suits.
Pretty much, at least my vespid are seeing daylight for the first time in half a decade.
@Ethan,
What you describe here (stay out of melee range) is one of the main reasons so many non-Tau players voice their dislike of the Tau army.
To be frank – it wasn’t FUN to play against Tau.
First and last, this is a hobby. A spare time activity. And it should be fun for all involved.
The new gameplay introduced in 8th changed that.
The Tau is now more involved.
It helps to look at close combat as simply another way of inflicting wounds.
You can no longer get locked in combat – the Fly keyword is simply an alternative to being able to hit back.
Well 8th made a lot of our special abilities like shooting all weapons at any target core rules. Then they buffed up all the vehicles to the Riptide’s durability level (and then some) and then stacked on the nerfs and point increases.
Also the Tau players on ATT did the math and the Tau units went up more relative to others in 8th ie we got gutted so bad.
It is over outside of commander/drone spam lists until major sweeping changes come to the army. Inside the tournament meta Tau is a mid tier army at best. Outside of it it’s in the bottom tier for sure. Tau are done. Thanks for the “fair” balance changes I knew were way to much of an over nerf months ago.
Now with that out of the way. BUFFS when? I only have one 40k army and don’t even play in the ITC but because they had so much say in the over nerfing and gutting of the Tau I am here complaining.
Every Tau player in my (small) city has packed it in except the most casual of casual games with friends. Also if GW somehow sees this please don’t listen to the Tau haters out there who really really hate the Tau and let it bias their viewpoint. I think this is proof in the pudding of that.
Wait, what? lol, ITC is behind Tau getting changed in 8th ed?
What? haha, you’re kidding right?
For one, the author of this article has nothing to do with the ITC at all, lol. So I don’t know why you are casting stones at him.
For two, the ITC has no influence on 8th ed 40k.
For three, the times the ITC did actually weigh in on interpretations of Tau rulings back in 7th and 6th, we were accurate as to GW’s FAQs all but 1 time. Our instincts on the rules were overwhelmingly accurate. So we weren’t “out to get” Tau in any way, we were correctly interpreting what GW meant with their rules on that topic.
But hey, lol, continue on with these totally unfounded and frankly bizarre statements if you wish to, just please be aware they are not based in fact.
As for index Tau? I agree some of the units changed in a way that are not awesome, and many units are overpriced. I would love to see some positive changes come in that regard, too. Just bear in mind, the Index is not a finished product in the sense the Codexes are. They are meant to give you rules to get going in 8th ed until you get your Codex.
From what my little birdies have told me your a pretty harsh critic on the Tau during the 8th edition testing. Apparently there was a good chunk of testers who did not agree with your assessments but ultimately being FLG you had more sway with GW and got some changes pushed through that led us to the current state of the Tau balance problems. I suppose you will just write this off as simple gossip no doubt.
Also I believe you mentioned that you talked to GW about the changes you made in the ITC beforehand in 7th edition. You seemed very proud that they were taking what the ITC was doing and applying it to the faq. I’m pretty sure I can find the exact episode actually. It wasn’t them independently doing that the presence of frontline and their choices had a big impact on their choices. Only one thing didn’t turn out like you wanted it too.
I’ve been doing a lot of homework and keeping a lot of notes on your little inconsistencies that are really starting to add up.
Anyways you have a nice day now.
Lololol, OK, dude. You are flat out making things up, but, whatever.
For what it is worth, I am sorry that you are unhappy with the state of your army. I understand how that can feel. Hang in their for your Codex, I am willing to bet you will be very pleased with it.
I’ve seen where some of this stuff comes from.
On some discussions and corners of the internet, someone claims that “Reece has gone on the record to state Tau shouldn’t exist” as to why they think Tau got the balance changes it did.
So basically a couple people around the internet have been constantly injecting that claim into any Tau discussions. They claim to be veterans who are familiar with the ITC/tourney/whatever scene. The other people in those discussions end up buying into their stories cause they are naive and propagate the story forward. And it results into “Reece and FLG conspired to ruin Tau” spreading across the internet and as you can see start to pop up here.
If you care about stomping out those trolls and stopping them from spreading made up stories about you.
I guess you could drop a line or write out something like: “No I never said nor expressed any desire for the squatting of Tau. Any claims to the contrary are fictitious. Please stop making up s*** about me, please.”
Yeah, it is bizarre and totally unfounded. If I really was biased against anything in 8th it was Deathstars of any variety, which I railed against frequently, lol.
But yeah, if you point me in the right direction I would be happy to drop a line on the topic. It is so silly and totally false.
Sorry, a bunch of it is on Facebook and a bunch I don’t know where it originates from since I’m a poorly informed Tau newbie.
But here is an example of someone doing the above on Dakka, granted the post is from like July. It will give you a feel for what is going on.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/870/726989.page#9489332
On a sidenote, the biggest disappointment I have is that the Farsight Enclaves literally don’t exist. My Enclaves Riptide character can’t be even run as who he is. If you want something to push for on behalf of Tau… 😉
Anything you can tease us with? I guess the Tau Codex is far off and obviously you can’t break confidentiality. But any units we can look forward to becoming pretty solid or changes on the horizon?
Sadly I cannot say, sorry =( I wish I could as I agree, the Tau index is one of the less powerful (although as noted, it is winning in events leaning on some of the very good units).
But, as with every book, the effort is to make every unit good. And you can bank on the fact that the really lackluster units now were closely looked at for improvement.
Aw well, something to look forward to. Broadsides should be great cause they look great.
And hopefully Enclaves will be good too.
Thanks anyway
You got it. Sorry I couldn’t answer more questions for you.
You do realise that you sound like a conspiracy theorist right?
If anything it seems like FLG has become somewhat indebted to GW and take a lot of their direction from them. You are ignoring all of the instances where FLG has talked about units they think are too cheap or are not given useful rules and yet GW decided to ignore them. Are you saying that GW only listens to one group specifically about Tau in order to invalidate them as an army?
What would FLG possibly have to gain by doing that though?
FLG stands to gain nothing, actually the company and group as a whole stands to be hurt by his actions. Reecius himself is the one benefiting a lot. This is likely more personal motivation. We all have our biases, but Reecius has made it very clear he doesn’t like Tau over the years and prefers other armies. In numerous videos he complains about how great the Tau have stuff going back years and years, and then when an Imperial or other release comes out with some super powered OP stuff oh it’s okay. It’s a “little” strong, but as soon as Tau get something too good he automatically switches to the way too strong talk. Despite the fact that most ITC players will admit the Tau were not top dogs last edition but the very factions he was fine with being too strong.
He does call stuff from other factions too strong on occasion but it’s pretty fair to be honest and very rare. It’s only the Tau stuff that is always too strong and too good to him. Even years afterwards he will call out the Tau stuff as being way too strong on older episodes prior to 8th coming out when talking about the 7th ed meta.
When he started talking about Tau in 8th he said the Tau were super great and used crisis suits as an example. For gods sake you can find his words on GW’s preview of Tau rules prior to 8th. Right off the bat the very best of the Tau players and ITC players were extremely sceptical of his claims. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The very best of the Tau players knew the Tau were more or less done for and if it wasn’t for commanders being so good I guarantee you we wouldn’t be winning any games at all.
Even with just 4 commanders that’s nearly half of our list in points and the same type of army balance Nids had in 7e.
Go back and watch the old videos and you can find it.
This sort of underlying bias is pretty significant. Honestly I haven’t noticed him with it against any other faction which is pretty admirable, but he is very biased against the Tau.
Even if he has no secret goal to nerf the Tau his bias against them is not helping in his judgement of their rules. Now you have to see why I am sceptical when I hear he was one of the major 8th edition balance testing people.
I can’t begin to speculate on his personal motivation if he even has one. This is likely him being very biased. Actually in one of the AoS videos Pablo had some very interesting words to say about how you have a way with over hyping some things and how he disagrees with you on a lot of calls.
Now I can easily go and find all these podcasts again. I’ve got them all saved and it would only take some time to find the relevant quotes and sections from all of them.
Holy molly, bro.
OK, I am sure this all makes sense in your mind and doesn’t sound as bizarre to you as it does to me but you have your own unique perspective, so I can’t say what it is you see.
I cannot disclose how we play-test the game, but I assure you, I do not have as much influence as you think I do. Even if I had it out for Tau (which I ABSOLUTELY do not), I would not be able to override the other play-testers and GW. If I were so biased as you say (which I am not) it would be evident in me trying to submarine Tau. The others involved, all very bright and very knowledgeable of the game, would see my devious plot and prevent it from occurring. I would also probably lose my position as a tester.
Further, I have a vested interest in every single faction in the game being good, fun, and appealing. I may have those factions I prefer to play, as do we all, but we sell these models to survive. We want people to come to our events, including Tau players. Everything we’ve done with the ITC, event formats, etc. has been to achieve the goal of balance and making it as equally fun and fair for as many people as possible. I work against my own personal and professional goals to attack one group. It undermines everything we’ve worked so hard to build.
And you keep bringing up things I said in the past with Tau which were too powerful. But, again, we were RIGHT, lol. GW FAQd them and vindicated almost every rule interpretation we put forth apart from 1. How does that not count for something, hahaha? We were correct, it wasn’t a bias, it was accurate interpretations of the rules. Sheesh, lol. It just sucks that it came from us before GW, but that was in the bad old days when they didn’t FAQ things very often, forcing us to do things with the ITC.
It simply doesn’t make sense. You can choose not to believe what I am saying, but logically, it doesn’t add up. It doesn’t bear even the flimsiest scrutiny.
FWIW, I advocated quite strongly for Tau. You do not know what they looked like pre-play-testing. You do not know how much we may have helped. I cannot say, of course, but I assure you that we fought for them, and continue to do so. If you think they are bad currently, well, OK. That is a matter of perspective and not objectively quantifiable. I agree there is room for improvement in some areas but as play-testers we can only do so much. We do not write the rules but our goal is to make every unit in the game good, as much as is possible within our means to do so.
So, I would appreciate it if you would please stop constructing this fantasy in which I have some sort of evil, illogical agenda as it is groudless and quite simply false. I am sure you would not appreciate someone constructing some nonsensical story about you that was untrue, and then presented it to the world as factual. It’s a pretty crappy thing to do, honestly, and I do not appreciate it as I am sure you would not were the shoe on the other foot.
Anyway, I have indulged this long enough. I hope you can see things from my perspective and understand that I am on your side. If not? Well, I tried.
Holy crap, I feel like I fell asleep and missed 6-18 months of something trying to follow this.
I thought we agreed to blame everything on the US president, not Reecius?
lolol
I do see where the distrust of Reece comes from. You do say “everything is awesome” about, well … virtually everything. So when you say that about something (Tau or not) that most people have found to be less-than-awesome, it does sound like (at best) ignorance or (at worst) a lie.
To be fair, you are struggling against human psychology. These days, what people believe to true is apparently more important than what is actually true.
Also, saying that “I am willing to bet you will be very pleased with [the Tau codex]” is literally Trump-talk (i.e. promises with no factual basis that create unfulfillable hype). Best way to make people actually happy is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Personally, I have heard Reece say like 5 things ad nauseum this edition-
1- Your crappy (codex/unit) will be better in this edition
2- This edition will solve a lot of problems from 7th Edition
3- Wait until the codex for your army comes out before you crap all over it
4- Reece is optimistic that the broken parts of 8th will be addressed relatively rapidly as GW seems to be actively looking at it now.
I’m not sure any of that is wrong? At most Reece was optimistic and excited for this edition, and didn’t see coming the flier, character, and conscript issues that have come up so far. It sounds like Reece was much more worried about mortal wound spam (that hasn’t really dominated the meta yet.)
Well, if we saw certain things coming or not isn’t necessarily reflected in the rules. Frequently folks confuse play-testing with rules writing. We do not write the rules of the game, we provide feedback. We do straight up miss things sometimes though, not trying to sound like we’re perfect as we are not. However, things that seem obvious, or “how did you miss that?!” things are often a lot more complicated than they appear. And the bummer is, we can’t explain why. Oh well.
Smite Spam is extremely prevalent in the high level competitive meta, actually. It was top table at NOVA (although Andrew’s list got more attention for the masses of Conscripts, but did feature 5 smite slanging psykers).
But you are right, largely things that were bad are better now, which is great! Some of the index lists lag behind a bit, I agree, but as you noted, the game really blooms–so to speak–with the codexes. It is a bummer to wait, but they can’t release them all at once. They are coming out as quickly as they can, it is just a matter of time until everyone has a Dex.
Thanks for the support though, appreciate it.
Wrong is a relative term unfortunately. I’m not saying Reece is wrong on any of those things. And positivity is a good thing. I’m just saying that it creates distrust if the overwhelming positivity doesn’t match what some people are experiencing, that’s all.
I agree with that sentiment, but at least from my perspective, I have not been overwhelmingly positive to the point of absurdity. For example, we came out the gates day 1 saying Ritptides were very bad, possibly one of the worse units in the game. I think people simply focus on thins that reinforce their perceptions.
Have we been positive about 8th though, in general? Most definitely. That stems from a genuine enthusiasm in it though, not in accordance with some agenda. And, reality reflects that incredible popularity with the game in general terms, too. Individuals may have some beef with aspects of it, which happens (as unfortunate as that is) but we are actively working very hard to fix any deficiencies.
Perhaps, again a lot of this is relative to the individual and their local meta. I don’t think anyone disagrees with you regarding riptides haha. But there will be disagreements on other issues. E.g. sniper drones.
With Tau specifically I think there has also been a lot of discontent with how the faction plays now, not just about the perceived power change. E.g. a recurring theme I keep seeing on forums is people not enjoying how crisis teams basically have to drop-and-shoot instead of using the hit-and-run style tactics with JSJ.
Overall though, I think you guys have definitely done a great job and been very realistic about the pros and cons of this edition. And 8th, while still having flaws, is hands down better than 7th.
This is the kind of guy who probably believes lizard people are secretly taking over the earth.
Reading this sounds like a straight conspiracy theory cliche. Right down to anonymous sources, things they’ve “heard to be true,” and presenting opinions or unsubstantiated claims as “facts.”
lol, for real. This is some tinfoil hat stuff.
But, not to be a dick. I am sure the OP felt justified in saying these things, they’re just so totally fictional.
Ever since we ruled on some of the Tau stuff in 7th that was really contentious, there have been a group of Tau players that legitimately think we’re out to get them even though we were RIGHT on all of our calls but 1. It is so strange, like total cognitive dissonance.
To be fair though Reece you do keep crossing out the eyes on all those pictures of Shadowsun you have on the wall, which is a bit odd.
lolol, the jig is up! =P
Don’t be a sheep Threllen, if that’s your real name… Lizard people are taking over the planet, but they aen’t being secretive about it at all. It’s right out in the open if our media outlets would stop covering “fake news.”
@Jural
You’re right. They’re called the lizardmen and they’re the servants of the Old Ones. The true gods of our universe.
I swear the worst thing about the Tau are the other Tau players.
Of course it could be that you’re a false flag. You’re not really a Tau player just a hater trying to make us look bad.
I am sorry you feel that way dude but outside of tournament play I find Tau are absolutely fine. I have lost just one game with my Tau in 8th and that is because I brought a fluffy-as-anything list to a Konor game and my opponent brought their work-in-progress tournament list and his dice were hotter than hades.
In tournament play there are some combos in Imperial/Chaos soup that devalue to almost zilch some core Tau builds – like anything that needs markerlights to work. In that environment the variety of Tau builds is low and dropping. Even well known top Tau players with zero track record for spam are slowly heading in the direction of Commander Spam. This is a shame but honestly if you are a serious tournament player you either take what works or you are kidding yourself about being serious.
80% of a codex being unseen in tournaments is *normal* – it is a feature of tournaments rather than anything else. It happens in pretty much any game system.
One last thing I forgot to mention. The “pros” of the Tau sounds like a generic Tau hate bulletin point the other side thinly uses to try and show they are being “fair” in their arguments with Tau players at how their army is still really good. It read like a propaganda piece it was so stereotypical.
You know that Tau is one of the main armies I play, right? Do you think that I’m doing a hit piece on… myself?
Honestly- I think you hit the pros and cons right on the head. Maybe the pros aren’t as useful as they used to be in previous editions, and it may be harder to de with some of the cons…
Tiny non tau player voice here but our local tau players do very well in all game types. Been told that the internet is overreacting. One of them is on ATT and he gets told he must be wrong as he tries to calm things down.
Personally from what I’ve seen Tau players need to adjust to their army being radically different from what it was.
A voice of reason, lol. Tau are winning events, which isn’t the ultimate measure of anything, but they are hardly bad. Some of the units in the Index certainly are bad, the Riptide especially IMO. But the sky is not falling. I’ve seen a number of Tau player routinely performing very well. I think right now the viable options for them are just not as broad as we’d like.
Mmmm. Tau are doing _alright_ at events, I would say. They’ve won RTT- and GT-level events with reasonable regularity, so they’re certainly better off than Necrons, Eldar, and some of the other armies.
But, on the other hand, I think the evidence is clear that they can’t stand on the same ground as Imperial/Chaos armies. They simply don’t have the tools to deal with massed bodies, character abuse, a dozen or more Smites, and artillery all at once.
Tau _can_ perform reasonably well, but there are far, far too many units in the codex that are just complete zeros in competitive play. They’re not the only faction that needs help, but they’re certainly on the list.
They seem a bit like Nids used to be in 7th.
A handful of viable units and the rest are a bit trash.
They seem pretty fun to play though! They looked boring as hell in 7th, so at least that’s an improvement in some respect?
I think the issue is the imperial and chaos soup armies are better, just due to variety. Also, those have been the first books, so they’ve gotten a bump with strategems, etc.
Hopefully the codex evens things out for Tau. They can be competitive, but it’s a pretty narrow build.
I really don’t think winning tournaments should be the measure of how well balanced a faction is.
Maybe it’s different in the states, but my experience of tournaments has always been that factions with cheese and broken combinations win, not well-balanced ones.
I will agree and say Tau arnt over/done/dead but a lot of the previous play styles ARE.
Tau seems to be getting shoehorned into a stand and shoot army. Thats how a lot of Tau players ran thier army so a few adjustments and its good to go again. If you strayed from that play style your army got seriously knocked down.
Now suit lists drop and shoot instead of JSJ thats really static and boring play for some. Theres no real reason to take anything but marker drones for markerlights. Troop heavy lists seem to be gone (Sneaky kroot let me pour out a 40).
Will I dump a few hundred bucks into new models to make my list viable? probably not. it will sit on the shelf waiting for a full codex to see what happens.
I feel like the stormsurge is an underperformer because how quickly it can be shot down at range and has little to zero protection like savior protocols etc. It’s the best gun platform we have but it doesn’t last long enough to be useful.
The riptides are all over costed but benefit from savior protocols. I think yvhara is undercoated despite it’s uses.
Probably one of my biggest griefs is that markerlights just aren’t really worth taking. Our heavy units that would benefit from 3 hits are very expensive and not as worth Fielding, our assault don’t need it most the time.
I currently only play with one or two markerlights from a cadre fireblade.
As tournaments change I doubt we will see Tau take many places due to inability to do anything but remove big targets well and semi elite units
>because how quickly it can be shot down at range and has little to zero protection like savior protocols etc
This has not been my experience with it at all. A 4++ save, often with 6+ FNP, can shrug off an absurd number of wounds in most cases; I often end up having mine soak the entire enemy army’s shooting on turn 1 and still be alive. Critically, you only degrade to BS5+ no matter how many wounds you’ve taken, so with anchors planted (which you should’ve done turn 1 regardless) you’re still shooting as “normal” at that point.
I generally include 2-3 squads of Pathfinders and often one of the characters with a Markerlight; I don’t think it’s good to rely on them, but in the opening turn of the game the +1 to hit can be pretty big if you get it.
I feel like we might just be having different experiences, I really feel like it’s just not what it used to be, I am not saying it can’t take some shots, but it gets degraded. With our drops we have a harder time going first. If we could use savior protocols I would agree with using it.
If the Stormsurge has Savior Protocols that thing would be _crazy_ strong. It has arguably the most generous degradation profile on any unit in the game- losing one pip of BS (painful, but there are ways to compensate) and absolutely nothing else that matters.
I am pretty sure it degrades from 4-5-6
It will degrade to BS6+ but I find the last bit of degradation is often a bit overrated depending on the # of wounds a model has. Often at that point it is not long for the world anyway.
Although, in fairness, with 20 total wounds the Stormsurge hits its final degradation point at 5 remaining wounds which is a decent chunk.
I’d definitely agree with puppy here. That shield generator is worth it’s weight in gold on a stormsurge. I wouldn’t consider running a stormsurge without one. And those anchors make a HUGE difference, drop ’em and don’t move unless you desperately have to.
Yeah +1 to hit may not be as good as double shots, but it’s still really valuable. And the Shield (and ATS) are both absolute must-takes; there is never any excuse not to have them.
I do end up maneuvering my Stormsurges a fair bit, but jsut having the option of dropping anchors is huge.
“Yes, some of our platforms are sadly not as accurate as we might like, but every codex has units that are lacking in it; the trick is, you don’t have to use those units if you’re playing competitively.”
Problem is, those are like 80% of our index units.
Getting a 2″ increase to base speed does not nearly make up for the loss of jetpack moves.
Crisis suits, one of our most iconic units, are so horribly overcosted it’s pathetic.
The buffs from markerlights are not only generally-worse than the auras and special rules available to other armies, applying them is hindered by our bs BS and the units providing them not being characters.
Seeker missiles do a whopping 1 mortal wound, once, for 8 points, if you can hit, which will be at bs6+ unless there’s at least 2 markerlights on the target.
We’re supposed to be really good at shooting to make up for the fact we lack in every other phase of the game. But, right now the only units worth taking are commanders loaded with fusion blasters, longstrike buffing several railheads, gun drones for being our most efficient source of anti-infantry, stealth suits for infiltrate shenanigans, and kroot hounds which are the closest thing to conscripts/cultists we have; but without the army rules and stratagems to make them ass effective.
>Problem is, those are like 80% of our index units.
Yeah, I get that. But to be fair, 80% of the units in most codices aren’t usable in tournament play, either.
Also, Seeker Missiles are 5pts, not 8pts. The Skyray is hot garbage, but putting Seeker Missiles on other platforms (especially Hammerheads) is actually pretty good- 5pts for a mortal wound is a price any other army would be happy to pay.
I feel like if they did d3 it would work better and be more worthwhile or if the marker lights rather than let them shoot at bs it increased the one to D3 mortal and they always fire at bs
I think Seekers are fine as-is, but the Skyray itself is the real problem. As I said, 5pts for a mortal would is actually a really good price- on Hammerheads (especially with Longstrike) it’s excellent, and on Broadsides, Devilfish, and Piranhas it’s acceptable (leaving aside the issue of how good those platforms themselves are.)
If the Skyray had Destroyer Missiles instead and was the same cost, you could maybe make an argument for it. Also, if it got its damn Velocity Tracker back.
I agree on those sentiments or that it replinish an am each turn or had a big price cut
I don’t actually like using Railguns because of the crazy low rate of fire. One attack really leaves you open to one poor roll and you have a model’s primary damage output sitting there doing nothing. Longstrike’s Railgun hits on a 2+, and will wound on a 2+. If I am getting my probability right, Longstrike will only successfully wound a Monster/Vehicle with the signature Railgun ~69% of the time, and a normal Hammerhead, buffed by Longstrike, will successfully wound ~55% of the time.
Thanks to T’au’s love for templates in 7th, I believe a lot of T’au Models have turned into a High-Risk, High Reward model because we have a lot of weapons that deal 1dX Damage/Attacks. Sadly, this doesn’t pay-off as reliably a some people would like.
However, Saviour Protocols is an amazing mechanic, and the units that do perform well, perform really freaking well.
The key, I find, is that you shouldn’t think of the Railgun as a one-shot tank killer. It’s not; it really hasn’t been for a long time now. It’s a souped-up Lascannon, and for that it’s fine. The key is that you’re bringing it on a reasonably-survivable and highly accurate platform along with a bunch of anti-infantry shooting. Hammerheads are a hybrid Predator, in essence- they have a similar cost-per-firepower and toughness.
(Also, keep in mind a single Markerlight hit will significantly up the percentages you listed above, as will judicious use of command points. But your raw numbers are more or less correct, yes.)
A Hammerhead being a hybrid Predator is an apt description, where we are paying for the for the keyword “Fly” and an extra 2 wounds (And the Predator gets a Heavy 2 Lascannon).
Ignoring Forge World models, I think the difference between Strength 9 and Strength 10 weapons is hardly worth mentioning. The possibility of 1d3 Mortal wounds is nice but I would rather trade that in for more reliability.
I think the Hammerhead also suffers from being compared to a Commander. A Commander 2 Burst Cannons, 2 Fusion Blasters and is accompanied with 2 Shield Drones costs 17 points less than a Hammerhead with 2 Gun Drones. A Commander has about a 99% chance of getting one Fusion Blaster to successfully wound (I think), and still has a 2 Burst Cannons to dish out at BS 2+.
—–
As a by the by, with Reroll 1’s those chances to successfully wound go up to 81%/65%, and then spending an additional command point makes it 94%/86% for Longstrike/Hammerhead with Longstrike respectively.
Sorry, I did some bad math on the 99% Success rate; I think it is closer to 83%.
just my 2 cents from up here in Canada. been a tau player for years really enjoy the range. just went to a GT level event here in my province. 58 players not a single tau player. when I asked most of them just laughed about tau quite a few said they play tau but would not waste tourney time on them. so now I am building tau once more… new edition new mindset and tactics must come.. look hard at piranhas there is something there.
You left off they have low point options, in every force org, to fill out a detachment. You can build a battalion for about 750 points. I’m not saying it’s a good army, or that there’s many options to spend those CP, but it is an advantage.
Mmm. The hard one is Heavy Support, where you are forced to take either relatively-expensive choices (e.g. Hammerheads and Broadsides) or ineffective ones (e.g. Sniper Drones.) But Elites and Fast Attack I certainly agree, and Tau are also blessed with some very cheap and effective HQ options- in fact, a triumvirate of them in the Ethereal, Cadre Fireblade, and Darkstrider.
However, until we get a codex a battalion is all but wasted. You just can’t spend CP fast enough to make it worthwhile.
120 pts spent on 15 fire warriors to go with the 2-3 commanders you were going to use anyway isn’t a horrible way to get the 3cp from a battalion. A brigade would take a bit more doing, though. Off the top of my head:
2 commanders
Longstrike
3×5 fire warriors
3×10 kroot
3 firesight marksman
3×4 kroot hounds
3 railheads
comes to around 1450 pts, and you can ‘save’ a few points by swapping out the cheaper slot fillers for bigger options.
If the drones did mortal wounds like other rifles on a six I would totally pile em in
Tyranid are in a similar boat. I see all sorts of paths to making a CP strong list, but what would I even use them on??? When we see the stratagems for both armies, we will seriously re-think their power levels, I think.
(not to say I think Tyranid are in a bad place right now- they are really fun to play in 8th. Not sure they are tournamnent superstars though.)
Sniper drones, aren’t great but a min unit is 54 points. And you’re likely taking 1-2 heavy units anyway. So you can look at it as a CP tax to add 1-2 units and pick up a few CP. And by going to a battalion (opposed to say, a brigade, spearhead and outrider), you probably save an hq unit or two, likely about the same points as the sniper drones.
The tin foil hat suff in this thread is epic.
Its been since I was on the INAT rules group for all those years and had Stelek and friends railing on us that I’ve seen such random spewing of misinformation and assumption. lol
So much wrong.
No good infantry? Really? We have some of the stronger options.
Kroot as your go-to choice? They have nothing going for them.
Pass up on BS3+ units?
Completely overlooked units, such as Kroot hounds.
The author seems ignorant at best, outright stupid at worst.
Tau are not as effective as they used to be. Rightly or wrongly Reecius is percieved as the reason for this.
I can tell you in Southern California his name is literally used as a put down. I can see both sided of the issue here and I have played tau for nearly a decades and wn almost all of the models with the exception of forgeworld kroot.
I will address the issues in this order . The perception of reece from tau players
and the tau army as a whole.
There was a batrep in early 8th edition tau vs orks I believe. In my gaming group, its referenced as a joke, many of the players in my group have met and played with reece personally while I have not. I have no opinion of the man myself but I can tell you that “username thedeadlycurtian” is far from an outlier. MANY tau players logically deduce that reece did and currently do not like tau. It is not an army he likes. Reece was a playtester for 8th. Ergo he is the reason that tau are terrible and let us acknowledge that the army IS terrible.
These accusations will only increase in intensity, people do talk outside this forum. I only found it because I googled “tau in 8th edition”
The fact is many players outside this forum DO feel that he is to blame, like I said rightly or wrongly he is percieved as the reason tau are a terrible army right now and lets not lie to each other here. They ARE a terrible army right now.
Point two
Tau have three excellent units this edition, everything else is suboptimal. When reece himself claims they “do well” in tournaments he isn’t referencing the elephant in the room. ITs because crisis commanders are spammed above all else. Now spamming has and always will be an issue in Warhammer there are few ways around it. But previously tau had few bad units. Now nearly everything is bad. I wont go into semantics unless I have to here but the army is in the same position tyranids and orks were in 6-7th edition.
Le sigh. So annoying.
I appreciate the measured response but this is so absurd. I have spent hours of my life fighting for Tau to be a better faction in this edition and I am sure that it will go unthanked, lol. The truly awesome part of this whole deal is that I ethically and legally cannot disclose what I (and the other play testers) have done on the behalf of Tau players. We are on your team, despite these unfair perceptions to the contrary.
The funny thing is, again, all of these “nerfs” we perpetrated against Tau in 7th ed were CORRECT. lol, that is the part that is so annoying, we were right, they weren’t actually nerfs, just sensible and accurate interpretations of poorly worded rules. Everyone seems to gloss over that part as this has become not about me as a person but me as an idea that represents something that these individuals do not like. However, I am a person and if the shoe were on the other foot, any of these individuals would likely not enjoy the view from where I am standing.
I think the reason it turned into this silly bugaboo is because Tau got so much stuff at once when this thing flared up. While we treated all armies fairly in our attempt to normalize rules, Tau got all of that attention at the same time and so it felt disproportionate. We’ve gotten angry emails from players of every faction at one time or another, but the limitations we put in place that affected others were spread out. And ultimately, again, we were vindicated in these decisions by GW and evidenced by the growing popularity of the format we produced. It worked because a majority of people liked it. Again, that fact seems to be lost on some people.
At any rate, it is what it is. Yes, Tau are not very good right now in index 40k taken as a whole, they are certainly not the worst index IMO, and yes, they can win but they do lean on a handful of units to do so as I have said numerous times. And again, the Tau community does not know what their index looked like BEFORE play testing and feedback. And, unfortunately, I cannot say. So I stand here and take it on the chin, unjustly. There is so much you all do not know about the situation. To say any one person is to “blame” for anything is formulating an opinion based in ignorance. I understand how that can come to be, but it is simply inaccurate. I do not (nor do any of the play-testers) have as much influence as it appears some folks think I do. We do not write the rules, we provide feedback. And even if I did wield this much power, there is simply no logical reason for me to torpedo any one faction as it directly works against my own interests. If anyone were to stop and consider it for even a few minutes logically, that fact would become evident.
Oh well. If some people wish to forumlate an opinion of me based on speculation and zero meaningful facts, that is their choice. I will continue to advocate for every faction being fun, effective and fair (including Tau), giving of my time to do so despite a few people thinking I am some evil mastermind. Ultimately we want the game to be awesome for everyone, and in what limited influence we have to make that happen, I will do my part, even if the people I am trying to help condemn me for doing so.
I completely understand where you are coming from. You are receiving treatment similar to Matt Ward many years ago. Where a book and army has issues and because you are the most visible person you MUST be the source of the problem.
I can only imagine how terrible the Tau were pre- Index. The GW contact I have told me that playtesting this edition was exhausting. I have no opinion, there are no facts to support either case. The Tau community has no facts to support their case, and you legally are not allowed to provide evidence to support your case either. This causes malignant thoughts to fester.
I am sorry that people perceive you this way. This is one of the downsides to being famous and important. People blame you for their problems whether you caused them or not.
I am optimistic that the Tau index will be improved with the release of “chapter approved” in December, and the Codex might be incredible.
Well, I appreciate the words. If you would be so kind, let your circles know that I am on their side and even if that falls on deaf ears, the other testers are most assuredly on their side and they outnumber me, lol.
People like to blame you for a lot, and most of it propagates itself on forums and other places. Including Dakka Dakka.
Eh, it is what it is. I suppose it comes with the territory. Luckily it is not true and I do what I am capable of doing to try and make the game fun and fair and each army good. If folks don’t believe that, they don’t. I can’t waste time worrying about it.
I can’t even go on Dakkadakka any more. Too much whiny stupidity. No actual tactical discussion–just “waah, conscripts! Waah, Reece is the tau hating devil! Waah, AM is so broken!!!”
The shit’s stupid, yo.
I’m curious.
From a faction identity standpoint, what do you think Tau represent? In that, what in your ideal state of balance is the Tau identity, and what Tau would be best at?
Tau represents the imperium weakening as they have crushed countless other small empires in the past the fact that they can’t destroy this one says something not about the tau but about the imperium
Tau firepower should be perceived as powerful and accurate presently it is neither
Accurate high strength firepower capable of removing the unit