Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to regale you with words from someone with miniature models older than you, if you were born after 1979!
In the last couple of weeks, even days, we have seen a lot of information and releases about current and upcoming armies. As a result, I have seen a lot of fans of these armies react in different ways. I noticed a very marked difference in how one set of fans reacted to their army news when compared to another set of fans, so I want to just point them both out and give my take on these groups.
The first group of fans I want to discuss are the Sisters of Battle players. They have been waiting for a long time. Their first codex was way back in 2nd edition. The thing about their codex, unfortunately, was that 3rd edition came out soon after. It wasn’t until 4th edition that they were included in the Witchhunters Codex and they have waited for a proper codex since then. Well the wait is over.
With the announcement of plastic Sisters of Battle for 2019, I was curious about how the fans of the army would react. After visiting a few groups and fansites, I was pleasantly surprised. actually expected there to be a lot of negativity, not about the announcement, but about the fact that they were going to take so long or that they would be one of the last codexes to come out.
I did see some negativity. It was mainly focused on the possibility that some of the aesthetics wouldn’t change to better represent the current social climate, or that there will be so many new players joining the ranks, that it will upset the hipster Sisters players. If this is the extent of the complaints then I hope that is all they find wrong with the codex. Sure, there were a few people that were fairly negative after the announcement, but there was way more positive comments and support for Games Workshop. In the current internet climate, where negativity is king, this is a nice thing to see. Unlike the other fanbase I’m going to talk about.
Even before the T’au codex released, this group was going down the slope of negativity at about a 89degree incline. Even before the codex was released, someone had already written up a draft letter to send to Games Workshop to complain about it. Really?!?! How sad must your life be to already be down on a codex you have not completely seen yet? I understand the T’au community being upset as to limitation of commanders, but what did you expect? You knew this was going to happen as we have seen in the past Games Workshop make adjustments, in Match Play, to help balance the game. There have been army adjustments made to other armies after their codexes had been released, so this move shouldn’t really surprise anyone.
I can’t even go into the depths I really want to about the Tin Foil Hat Brigade(TM) that T’au players have against certain individuals. To think that certain people have such an influence over Games Workshop is asinine and makes me question their intelligence. As one of the people who helped Games Workshop with their Forgeworld FAQ, I can tell you they definitely do what they want, in the end. This is just the tip of the iceberg or negativity. Thanks to 7th edition, they have a sense of entitlement and longing for the good old days that surpasses even the Chaos players and the 3.5 codex.
That’s not to say all T’au players are like that. there are a small number that have remained positive through all this. They try to enlighten and educate those that have gone down the path of negativity. Even when others try to keep them down, they continue to try to bring the conversation to a more constructive level. These are the people that bring the groups back from the edge and give me some sliver of hope. I look forward to seeing how they make the codex work for them as they progress with the new codex.
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I like to think of myself as a moderate negative tau fan 😛
I’m mostly just disappointed at all the things that needed fixing and didn’t get it. Mainly crisis suits and special weapon costs. And yeah, I’m pretty salty about options in the tau dex that are weaker/more restricted than equivalent options in other dexes (russes and fire prisms shooting twice, but not hammerheads; relic melee weapons being limited on number of attacks per turn; as two examples). Nobody wants to go back to the days of “Tau* are splashed everywhere ruining the game”, least of all me. I just feel like the army I love didn’t get nearly as much attention as the other codexes that have come out for 8th.
*read: Riptide Wing
I’m still going to play with my tau, even if I have to drastically rework my list (within my budget >.>) but it’s hard to fight the melancholy.
Don’t know where else to put this, but I want to see an exhibition match:
++Astra Militarum Brigade++
090 Company Commander x3
240 Infantry Squad 6×10
060 Platoon Commander x3
135 Scout Sentinels x3: multilasers
099 Heavy Weapons Teams 3×3: mortars
=624 pts
VS
++T’au Empire Brigade++
126 Cadre Fireblade x3
210 Fire Warrior Strike/Breacher Teams 6×5
075 Firesight Marksman x3
048 Kroot Hounds 3×4
162 Sniper Drones 3×3
=621 pts
Full access to relics, stratagems, subfaction traits, etc. Just nothing that would cost additional points.
Lets see some carnage!
This is certainly not true for all fans but in general, anyone who stuck with Sisters didn’t do it because they were any good in just about ever. While a lot of Tau players are used to just shooting things off the table. I don’t even think those loudest players are the tournament players who are used to having to extreme meta switches but the store and garage kings. With maybe some crossover between them and tournament gatekeepers.
The problem/feature of Tau for the past couple editions is that their “gatekeeper” tournament status which most of the Tau community didn’t get, so anything you had to say about Tau being OP, broken, needing fix, etc was met with “they’re not winning any tournaments/at any top tables!” That’s only because the even more broken Death Stars were a thing. Meanwhile, Tau could utterly destroy any army which wasn’t running a DS. Their complaints about the clarification on Focus Fire (which the community hilariously/pathologically blamed on FLG) were that they needed it to kill Death Stars. But Death Stars weren’t/aren’t a thing in most garages and FLGSs, so anyone *except* top level cheese armies were extremely frustrated/terrified of them. Shoot you off the table when you arrive, when they shoot, and when you charge… but hey, they’re bad at melee!
Anyway, I think a lot of the complaining, etc is just due to not understanding how good the army was (IMHO) when you controlled for Death Stars. No idea how it will do now, but going to play a (reasonable) Tau player at 3pm today. He’s mostly said Crisis suits are largely unplayable (and I tend to agree) but is otherwise optimistic.
Crisis suits are a niche unit in the codex, they have a role in some very specific army builds. That will make crisis-wing players sad but it always happens with a codex drop that some things get better and others do not, the level of reaction to it is ridiculous.
75% of any codex will be marginal for tournament play[1], exactly which 75% varies between codex releases and sometimes with meta shifts. If people are tournament players they need to put their big boy trousers on and accept this as a fact of life, if they are not tournament players then what does it matter if a unit is fractionally inefficient in casual or narrative games anyway?
[1] Arguably another 25% is perfectly viable but is so heavily dismissed by the internet know-alls that nobody actually puts in the work to learn how to use them effectively.
Sisters were a top tier army in 5th edition, arguably one of the strongest in the game.
Been playing Sisters since the Witch Hunters codex and, ‘in a year’ is a hell of a lot better than, ‘maybe never’ 😛
Hi Adam
I assume you were referring to the “Reece is a GW shill conspiring to sell fire warriors boxes boxes” garbage that was being floated on the dedicated Tau forums after Reece had the audacity to write a tactica on his own army list that didn’t have suits? It sure feels like some folks have lost their grip.
Yeah, anyone believing that really needs to get outside a bit more often.
do i believe he wrote this article (that i never read) because he is a GW shill, ofcourse not. But dont forget what his job is, selling warhammer. Like every other person i meet in any aspect of my life, expert or not, i take everything im told with a grain of salt.
Critical thinking is always a good approach. I have believed in the past that Corporate GW had somtimes wielded a heavy hand in regard to the direction of Game Design, but they make so many quick faq changes now, some that would impact sales negatively, that I think they are genuinely interested in improving the game and allowing that to drive sales.
As a Canadian, GW doesent even let 3rd party discount retailers sell to me, so I admit that that part does not enter my mind, but I have only met Reece once, and most of what I know of him is based of his Internet presence, but the guy has always repped infantry armies : footdar, veterans, junkcrons, ork boys, scouts, brigades – and I would think if his tactica were sales driven he’d want to sell some big $ kits with only single numbers of each weapon type, rather then a kit that you can max a brigades troop slots with 3 boxes! ( Not suggesting you were insinuating this, just showing why I don’t believe the narrative of some of these forum threads ). I just find the new vitriol the general 40k Internet is developing for Reece and Frontline seems widely misplaced as Frontline’s positive approach has stayed true
lol, I can neither confirm nor deny to whom I am talking about 😉
This actually started way back when Coordinated Firepower was voted on
I just went back and read those comments. It seems in two and a half years he has gone from writing biased poll questions because of his anti-tau agenda to now participating in a buffing tau units for profit conspiracy. Quite a 180. ?
I hate hipster Sisters players diluting my faction. I was into Sisters before it was mainstream.
??
I feel the scroll of truth meme should have been worked into this article someplace Adam. Tsk Tsk Tsk. 😉
I don’t expect GW to modify the Sisters aesthetics. Celestine, Greyfax and other recently released female models have had nice feminine figures, not to mention stuff like Daughters of Khaine, which they aren’t afraid of giving some spotlight to.
I agree. I don’t expect too much change, no matter how much certain groups will want them to
As a Tau player I sadly have to agree with you about the Tau fanbase – or at least the hugely over-vocal part of it that draws attention. I love my Tau but being associated by some of these people in any way is just embarrassing.
Tau can be a frustrating army to play against if they are played well and can dictate the pace of the battle. When you add in the bad reputation Tau players are getting from this loud minority it just creates a bad atmosphere. The codex is no more perfect than any other codex but that is not a problem for any reasonable player, the only problem I have arises from the unreasonable voices on forums etc.
I agree with everything you just said.
“I can’t even go into the depths I really want to about the Tin Foil Hat Brigade(TM) that T’au players have against certain individuals. To think that certain people have such an influence over Games Workshop is asinine and makes me question their intelligence.”
So you have a problem with a group of people, and the way to resolve that problem is to go fetch a soapbox and rattle off ad-hominems to a completely unrelated group of people?
“Even when others try to keep them down, they continue to try to bring the conversation to a more constructive level. These are the people that bring the groups back from the edge and give me some sliver of hope.”
So it’s the job of other people to try and encourage positivity in the hobby, rather than yours (as someone with a radio platform that could reach lots of people). I can’t help but think this article comes off as overly sanctimonious – you’re not going to convert any of the terrible evil *wrong* Tau players by publically announcing that you question their intelligence, and it doesn’t make you look like the sane voice of reason; it’s just promoting the split in the community. Instead, I’d advocate just being a better hobbyist, and encouraging others to do the same.
“So you have a problem with a group of people, and the way to resolve that problem is to go fetch a soapbox and rattle off ad-hominems to a completely unrelated group of people?”
Yes
“So it’s the job of other people to try and encourage positivity in the hobby, rather than yours (as someone with a radio platform that could reach lots of people)”
Yes
” I can’t help but think this article comes off as overly sanctimonious – you’re not going to convert any of the terrible evil *wrong* Tau players by publically announcing that you question their intelligence, and it doesn’t make you look like the sane voice of reason;”
I’m not trying to convert anyone and I have never been accused of being sane
“Instead, I’d advocate just being a better hobbyist, and encouraging others to do the same.”
Which you just did
Adam is not sane, none of us accuse him of it, please don’t give him ideas regarding his state of sanity. It’s dangerous to those of us who know him in real life. Thank you.
I don’t get the upset at the commander limitations. If someone said to me I could either only have one SS/TH Jump Pack Captain per detachment or they could steeply increase his price or weaken his stats, I would gladly take the first. I’d say the same thing about two Talons Winged Demon Prince. I like the way these things play, I like having one dude that’s really threatening.If they’re highly powered I’d rather take one badass than multiple wimps or have them pointed out of high optimization. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯