Taurific or Taurible

[Admiral-Badruck]

I love Tau almost as much as I hate Ultra marines and Commissar Yarick

the old current dex is 'bad' in 5th ed or is it... what can Tau do to get back in to 5th ed...

[Primarch]

The Tau dex isnt that bad. There are no broken units and everything does what it is meant to do very well. I think that if you know what you are doing with them and you know what army you are facing, then Tau can do very well. Like Eldar, they seem to have a difficult time with a Take-all-comers style list.

[Admiral-Badruck]

are there any other kinds of lists... not point in making an army that will only kill one type of army...

[Primarch]

If you are playing a one off game and you know what you are playing against, Tau can be pretty good.

A take all comers list is good for a tournament, but most people dont just play the same list week in and week out.

[Admiral-Badruck]

I guess that make sense but for me I will hopefully Keep my opponents on his toes by showing up with any of my 5 or six armies... but what kills Marines kills tau just as easy and in most cases it kills Tau even easier... and thats what make Tau weak useless really... but if some one can prove me wrong...

[me_in_japan]

I reckon Tau would rock in Kill Team. I havent made up a list yet, but the possibilities are...tasty.

In regular 40k they can be outdone by most other armies. Speaking as an eldar player, things like a seer council would butcher tau horribly. 6 S5 AP4 flame templates? thatll destroy most anything in a tau army. Battle suits? charge em with your wounds-on-a-2+ witchblade. Sure they get saves, but against 18 of those 2+ wounds, your bsuits are gonna be gone. Tanks? again, S9 witchblades. kroot? flame em. Scorpions would chop em up, harleys would annoy the hell out of them by being impossible to shoot until theyre 15" away, by which point its too late, and dark reapers would...well, youd need a spade to clean up the mess...

[Admiral-Badruck]

And if you did not know you were going to me up against the Tau it would not have made a difference seeing as all that stuff works fairly well against Marines as well...

[me_in_japan]

Eldar need to custom build their army to take on most anyone, with the notable exception of the Tau. Thats pretty much the Tau's problem. Its not that they cant kill folks. they can, just not as well as anyone else. And folks can kill em with most anything that can kill marines. Since most armies you face are marines, people build marine killing army. A marine-killing army is a Tau-slaughtering army. All the Tau's supposed hi-tech special stuff pales compared with other armies.

e.g. Battle suits. wow. scary. 3+ armour saves. most players' (i.e. marine players) entire army gets that.
Battle suit guns: um. plasma guns, melta guns. yeah, most other armies get those, too.
stealth suits - not terrible, but not as good as harlequins. And a key difference is: the enemy WANT to be close to stealth suits. There's no decision making for the enemy. Harleys, otoh, beg the question "do i get close enough to shoot em and risk the charge, or stand back and hope i can spot em?"
Sniper teams: seriously, they need to take up a heavy support choice to get AP3 guns. yeesh. And they call this a shooty army...
Vespid - ugly. crap in H2H (for an elite unit). short ranged gun that will kill a few marines then see the vespid butched by the return fire/charge. Compare with assault marines with a coupla melta guns.
Piranha - actually quite good. Not great, but not bad either.
Devilfish - OK. good capacity. poor guns (compared to e.g. land raiders, wave serpents, heck, even IG get better transports)
drones - a good "annoyance" unit. But you cant build an army out of "annoyance" units.
Broadsides - if they get lucky, they could kill a tank. The problem is that theyre way mucho expensive and go down real easy to anything tailored to kill terminators (plasma, melta, lascannon.) As one of the few viable threats in a tau army, theyre gonna attract a lot of incoming fire. Without an invul save, theyre in deep poo. Compare with a dreadnaught or wraithlord, cos thats about what a broadside costs (if you give it the aforementioned prerequisite invul save)

I could go on, but the point is: Anything Tau can do, someone else can do it better. They need more cool techy stuff that other people dont get. They also need some kind of CC unit. or a special shoot-at-chargers rule. or something. i dunno...

[Admiral-Badruck]

Fire Warriors are great troops ... but with the only thing needed to do is charge them you can wreck them any time... and there is not much the Tau can do about it...

[Primarch]

If it can kill a marine, it can kill darn near anything in the game, not just Tau.
The pulse rifle is still the best standard infantry gun in the game, its just a shame the guy wielding it is a bit of a softy who despite all his training in ONLY using guns is no better than Johnny Guardsman (who knows how to use a knife to boot).
I've had enough losses against Tau to say that they can do very well with the right units, a good player behind them and the right situation. At the same time, I've tabled them numerous times (maybe more than any other opponent) so there is definitely a weakness in the army.
And Tau should never, ever, and just to make this totally clear EVER be fielded in Apocalypse unless they have forgeworld back up. And no, I dont mean the suitcase.