Those tests are not valid as they involved a Reaver sitting in the open and sustaining at the Manta. In game when a Reaver is badly damaged it will run and hide. It can also get -1 to hit from cover. You did not take advantage of any of these. You rarely marshaled. The ability to do all these things is what makes a Reaver more survivable than a Manta. And remember it took the Manta about 10 turns to do enough damage to kill the Reaver. Also in one of those tests you made me reroll the Mantas saves when it failed 5 of them. Claiming it wasn't statistically valid. I maintain in games you are every so often going to loose the manta to 2 activations of shooting and likewise it will very very occasionally survive 3 turns of Revanants (sorry can't spell this) sustaining at it.

Then it won't be shooting at all and it'll be finished off quite quickly. :-)


Actually I marshalled in the back half of both tests to raise shields or drop BM's (Because a Reaver breaks quicker than a Manta, you didn't have to marshall so much).

You can't marshall a Reaver all the time because then your to-hit stat drops to 4's and 6's, instead of 2's and 4's. You're barely going to scratch a Manta when Marshalling.


6 the first time, 4 the second time.

And the Reaver didn't kill the Manta at all...


I also made you re-roll a set of saves when you passed an absurdly high number as well.



Oh yeah, it actually did that at the weekend didn't it. :-)

Statistically, it should take a little over 3 points of damage per turn from a pair of sustaining Revenants (As long as you don't take a critical hit). It only takes a little good luck to stay alive, then.

In fact, due to the Manta's 5+/5+ against MW hits versus a Reaver's single 4+, I think a Reaver would die quicker than a Manta to a Revanant formation's firepower too. Due to 5+/5+ being 5% better than a single 4+, and the Manta having 8DC...

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A small note of corre3ction on one of your points E&C:

A Manta has 8DC to outnumber with in Engagements (No other 650pt War Engine has so many DC).

May i draw your attention to the Gargant which is 650 pts and has 8 DC.

On a personal note I'd choose a Reaver over a Manta any day of the week. Although I'd also choose a Reaver over a gargant or a revenant pair too, so take from that what you will.

Oh yeah. :-)

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Not if there are other changes made to the list to make it balanced... What can I say, the Tau really should be better at FF Engagements.
-2 to Tau calling Engagements would shape the armies play perfectly.
Old news I know but then we do seem to be turning into a broken record again.
Everyone's views should be repeated if anyone's views are going to be repeated.

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Well, you know I disagree as I think that'd make them even more powerful on the defensive than their already-potent Overwatch abilities make them, and personally I doubt I'll be dissuaded unless I see the Tau losing the majority of their games (And currently the converse is true, Ryan in my group is on a 6 game winning streak, and Yme-Loc reports that I'm the only one who's managed to beat his Tau under 6.x).

Got in any Tau playtests under 6.3 yet, Onyx?

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E&C: Those test are in no way valid tests of its survivability in games. That will only come from more playtests.

Onyx: Your FF solution would need to raise the points of Tau formations exponentially. FW's would have to cost more that tactical marines per base. At the moment Tau formations have had their shooting and ranges increased to compensate for a slightly stunted engagement ability. Pulse rifles for example in 40kid only have a slightly longer range than bolters which don't give marines a shot at all. This is true throughout the list. If they had FF4+ they would be the best infantry in the game by a long way. -2 to engage isn't a penalty as most opponents will have to engage them. They would be able to double remove 25% of the formation from shooting and then beat just about any other infantry formation in the game in an engagement. If you want to see FF4+ in the Tau list then the entire list would need a complete rewrite.

Agreed, they were artificial tests that only attempted to demonstrate the Manta's superiority to the Reaver in a specific artificial contex; More games it is!


Agreed.

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Well E&C, if you remember, I did also suggest that the Fire Warriors would lose one of their ranged attacks to compensate for the accurate FF stats. Not quite as game breaking after that, more just actually representative of fluff established abilities.
Guys, if there was a will to get the list finished with accurate stats (there have been many posts agreeing that some of the FF stats are artificially nerfed), there would be a way to make it happen. I don't claim to have all the answers but I know that a Krootox Herd should not be better in a FF engagement that Crisis Suits or Fire Warriors.

This is my problem at the moment - the present Tau list may work well and be balanced, I just don't feel that it truely represents a Tau army as it should be and that has really effected my enjoyment of the army list.

No, sorry Ben, I haven't been able to get any games with 6.3. As I'm currently running a 13 week campaign to get new players into Epic and organising a 1 day tourney for October, my hands are a bit full at the moment. I have had the pleasure of seeing numerous players pulling out their old Epic armies and enjoying playing EA. Hopefully I'm doing enough to to make Epic Armageddon a more popular game here in Western Australia.

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Onyx, the only real advice I have for you is that if the current list really doesn't work for you, generate your own version and playtest it. Chroma put together a FF based Tau list in 2008 (or early 2009) and I played a couple of games with it. It played ok, can't remember what issues (or not) this list had.

I think the general consensus amongst the community was to create a list that plays differently to other lists and to be honest the Tau list does.

The FF stats were indeed artificially nerfed. This was done so to distance the tau from assault/engangements even more. To compensate they were given ranged weapon stats for their basic weapons, and are the ONLY army to have this. Removal of this and boasting their FF stat would just make them into marines rather thann being a bit unique.



This could be argued by that they don't get into protracted FF and instead only make surgical strikes. Whilst they are in a FF, several members of the squad are planning/clearing out a redeployment strategy to get them out of the present danger and to allow them to perform a strike. It seems much more Tau like to fall back from and oncoming force and call in CAS rather than engage in a protracted firefight. Much less loss of life from ML and CAS and for Tau, lives are valuable.

Except the ranged weaponry has been nerfed recently too so the ability to win by shooting has been terribly cut. So now we have a list that performs under par-to barely average in assaults - both offensive and defensive (unless on overwatch); and performs under par when it shoots due to the ML adjustments (except Broadsides which seem to be the one saving grace in the list - and usually the main target for opponents) - none of this applies on Sustain, but then no army really has issues when sustaining, do they?

I've tried assaults with Fire Warriors. It can work but not decisively I find. You generally have to make them a maximum size formation to have an impact on troops with any save(even unarmoured in woods etc) which gets extremely expensive.

I've tried shooting "assaults" with FWs with similar results. Having to double to bring maximum firepower to bear means you need to get into 15cm range, which means your shooting stat only stays the same if you have a ML unit within range of the target. Any armour saves by the opposition greatly reduce the effectiveness and that is only if the entire formation can lay fire on the enemy - which invariably doesn't happen because you don't always have all troops able to make it to shoot, even on a double. Trying to utilise the Tau "surgical strike" theory doesn't work because at the end you're simply out of position and highly susceptible to counter attacks which generally break your formation or smash it so badly that it can't recover due to weak C&C.

Wasn't the nerf to ranged weaponry coincided with a +1 to hit from ML? (really struggling as to when certain rules came in :S... wish i'd stayed a bit more involved)

Most of my formations contain ML anyway, and many of the lists portrayed on here seem to aswell so it really seems a bit of a moot point to drop the nerf the stats for a +1 ML...

KivArn, thanks for your input.
During a playtest game, several months ago, a Fire Fight Engagement took place between a Manta, Fire Warrior Cadre, Crisis Suit Cadre and Hammerheads (a full load that was being transported in the Manta) and 2 Land Raider Crusaders, 4 Tactical Marine stands and lots of supporting formations. The Tau were all but exterminated (as expected) for the loss of 1 Land Raider Crusader and 1 tactical stand.

We ran the numbers straight after the event and everything was as close to being statistically accurate as possible (the only real annomaly was the Marine Supreme Commander making his Inv Save roll). At the Tau supposed best range (it has been mentioned by others that know the Tau far better than me that they should be death incarnate at fire fight range) they were thrashed but they did almost no damage in return. This isn't good enough but if thats the list that players here think is fun then that's the list we will get.

Was the engagement I've described accurate to established Tau fluff?
There have been a few changes made to the Manta which are definitely needed but why stop at getting the Manta right when with a little will, we could get the whole list right. Doesn't anyone else think it's crazy that the Krootox Herd has a better fire fight than Fire Warriors and Crisis Suits...
There's no point in creating a list that's different from all other lists if it doesn't truly represent the Tau.

I don't mean to be disrespectful but there are several posts here saying that with my idea, Fire Warriors would become Marines...
CC 4+ compared to 6+
Armour save 4+ compared to 5+
ATSKNF compared to -2 to call an Engagement action
1x 45cm ranged shot at AP5+/AT6+ compared to 1x 30cm ranged shot at AP4+
5+ Strategy rating compared to 3+
1+ Intiative compared to 2+

Having 1 stat shared between the 2 different units really doesn't make them the same and the proposed activation modifier to calling an Engagement would help shape the Tau's play far more than nerfed stats.
Activation modifiers work perfectly with Orks and they could work just as well with the Tau.

Just because Tau don't want to risk close combat, this doesn't mean that they should be so easily pushed around by enemy Fire Fight Engagements. The way to deal with the Tau has always been the same, get up close and personal and beat them to death. Anything else is trying to beat the Tau at what they are best at.

I apologise to those that have read all this before.

Cheers,
Steve.

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This doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

This same debate over FF values has been going on for as long as the first list was done. I think it has been the only think that Jervis straight away shot down when we were altering the lists.

It may portray the tau accurately from a fluff perspective, it's all to do with how you spin it. The enemy may simply be just too close for the tau to be effective, all their strategies just don't work effectively at that short a range.

However, there may be other ways to boost the FF without upping the FF value. possibly giving FW+DF/HH smallarms extra attack (+1/2) and MW to crisis suits (the former isn't really ideal, just a suggestion of an alternative). The manta on the other hand, really ought to have a higher FF

To be honest i have no preference either way for FF atm, we weren't allowed to up it and so just had to deal with it and so i never really thought about it above and beyond the first wave of talks


sorry, should have been more specific...
I'm think more that FW would become similar to Marines. Especially mech vs mech,
Both do well in engagements - (hadn't really though of the -2 to engagement action - actually quite like that idea
Both have armour (unlike guard?)
Both have ranged AP/AT
Both have a very good chance of activating


as said above, quite like the -ve to engagement



How about reintroducing a special rule that was in the very first list, (the only list i can actually find one of my computers atm - so I can't see when it was lost)

Defensive Fire, basically it gives the formation a free round of firing (though you cannot call support/co-ordinate fire) against the oncoming force akin to overwatch.

This would have drastically changed the outcome of the assault you outlined above. Does this represent tau's style of combat somewhat more accurately? As the enemy close on their position they can use there tactics to eliminate much of the approaching forces before getting beaten and close quarter fighting.