It is an interesting observation and certainly something to keep an eye on - so of course thanks for making it. But epic is almost always about objectives - so if a list is balanced in achieving them then that has to be the main concern.

Also the amount of kills a list achieves can vary considerably between different army builds for the same list and is dependant on lots of factors - including who and what armies you are playing, terrain, objective placement etc

Correct

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I'm always surprised at the view by some that "It has to be made now, now, now!! It's good enough. Let's not bother anymore."


Of course Ryan, I understand this. This isn't the intent of my posts here. The intent is to show that while the Tau are capable of winning, they don't seem to do it with any aplomb. I've played the Tau for years now - just like you have - and in almost every case the Tau have only ever seemed to "eek" out a win when the "depending factors" that Yme-loc mentions fall in place for them. Sure, I'm happy they can win, that's great. The problem I see is that the "depending factors" shouldn't be the reason they're winning. They should be able to deal with different factors and still win.

Ok, so if we're not following the idea they shoot stuff to death? Then what do they do exactly? They're not an engagement army. If now we're saying that they aren't a "shooty death" list - one that I figured the Tau were all about -well now I'm confused about their exact style/direction.

I dunno, do I have my wires crossed? I was lead to believe the whole process of the E-series & 5+ series lists were to increase their shooting to a point where they could win "shooting engagements." Is this wrong?

Edit - Ok just to be clear, I'm happy the Tau can win. I'm happy it's at that level. I just like discussion around points that occur to me so that they can be brought to light. I'm not trying to effluent-disturb here. I truly am curious.

Tau shooting is very good. They pack more fire power than any other army and this is reflected in the current list. The problem is that a shooting action is no where near as effective as an engagement in killing enemy units. Engagements don't suffer -1 to hit from cover or from doubling and you quite often kill more units from assault resolution than from the engagement itself. However, a shooting action has considerably more range and much less risk as your opponent doesn't fire back as part of the action. We shouldn't be (and it is my understanding that we weren't) trying to increase the killing potential of Tau shooting so that it is vaguely equivalent to engagements. That I'm sure would lead to a list where fire warrior formations would cost about 600 points each.

The playstyle style the E series at least was attempting to achieve was similar to how the Tau operate in BFG. Tau formations don't have the sheer killing potential of formations in other lists and are therefore are forced to operate in concert with each other to achieve the same effects. To balance this most Tau formations were given a slight discount so as to give the army about a 1.2-1 activation advantage in most builds. If for examples fire warriors were in the Eldar or Guard list they would be worth more than 225 points.

In the last few weeks, Tau have placed 3rd and 1st at two tournaments on opposite sides of the globe, so they're probably not under-powered, IMO! At least at the present time they seem to be doing okay.

That they may have a bit of a weakness in VP's if the game is a draw is not a huge issue I think... Dark Eldar have a similar weakness in VP draws and yet are regarded as one of the most balanced community developed lists, for example.


The Tau list had been in development for something like seven years.
It had seen 3 different editions of Warhammer 40,000.

It was time to draw a line under it and lock down the list as finished, barring any important developments (Balance concerns).

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The lack of killing/VP is only an issue in 2 cases...

If the army produce a significant number of draws (as of yet, no where near enough tournament results - also current tournament results will be biased while people get used to the new army)

Non tournament scenarios - at this point the list balances are invalidated anyway as you're no longer looking at completing the objectives - what the lists were balanced for... so you can adjust as necessary yourself here dependant on what scenario/conditions etc you may have (you may well end up doing this anyway - having imbalanced forces etc etc etc...)

In my experience the incidence of draws vs. Tau is actually pretty low.

Now Tyranids, they have an abnormally high number of draws (Something like 50%+ of games). That's a list with real issues.

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Just providing some perspective here - there were only 6 people in the tournament and half of them were either playing new armies, had played less than 10 games totals, or had not played in a while. So probably not one to count as Tau being well up there on a tournament front as yet....

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Not one to count them as terrible either though.

Honestly, the fact that the Tau list is now being accepted for tournaments at all is a huge leap forward from where we were even a year ago.

Is the list perfect? Certainly not, but nor are any lists. There does come a time when you just have to let it sit for a while.

IMO that a tau army could finish in the top 3 in two tournaments is pretty indicative that the shooting power is spot on power wise - what other list could do that well without, presumably, initiating any engagements at all?

From memory at ITB shining spears, storm serpent, void spinner, vampire, land speeders, devastators, KoS, big blitz brigade and a blitz brigade were all wiped out in one shot. Tacticals, scouts, devastators, blitz brigade, scouts, devastators, tacticals were all reduced from full strength to 1 to 2 units in 1 shot. Perhaps most impressively was enough shooting power to wipe out a big warband with transport - though this took a few different formations.

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I'm loving this. A fair few more examples and rather than this talk of being underpowered, we may just see a need for a reduction in their power - something I have been in favour for for a while now.

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They've been in the tournament scene for what, 3 months now and seen 2/3 tournaments in that time...

People who haven't playtested tau will be surprised by their raw firepower and will have to adapt playstyles (just as you would against AMTL or nids, or anyone new really )

Can we try to not overhaul the entire list until they rack up a decent amount of valid data. I think we're currently in the realms of eating goat decreases your chance of being murdered...

N at that Australian tournament that the Tau won. I Was also playing Tau and got owned in over half my games!

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That's because your skimmers were low on power fuels. As I remember, they could not even make it up a ramp without some effort

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What would you change and why?