40K: New Tau Shake Up the Meta
Hi everyone it’s your ever friendly neighborhood Black Blow Fly swinging by to spread some more holiday cheer for the new xenos – Tau Style!
Bright red is always a very popular Christmas color ! I am going to dive straight into this army essay so be prepared and hold on tight if you love your little puny T3 aliens.
Tau are one of the two most hated armies from sixth edition right up their with good old Eldar. I still remember Taudar which still makes me want to head butt concrete walls when I reminisce about it. Let’s put Eldar and Tau side by side in seventh edition with all their new shiny rules. I will tell you right off the bat I like the new Tau now. I’m not going to waste much of your time discussing a certain formation – it’s been discussed to death already and will continue to be so until next the big thing comes out.
Tau Rising, but…
I feel that not having any battle brothers, the best and most intense builds will be as a pure army. Personally I find the new Stormsurge to be an absolutely amazing model just for the sake of the look and feel it brings to the table. I can tell you right now Tau are going to be popular again but I think they have their work cut out for them versus the other top races… It won’t be as easy as you might think. As heavily favored as seventh edition is towards pure shooty it can really help to be diversified.
Seventh edition was heavily impacted by the Maelstrom missions which favor highly mobile survivable armies. We still have to wait and see what the new Farsight Enclave brings to the table but Crisis Suits alone are not going to match up well versus things like Gladius Strike Force. I’m not in any way saying Tau won’t be a top tier army… My point is Tau will heavily rely upon synergy between units within their own race and must be very well coordinated… More so than ever before.
Will Tau change the meta – YES !!! Eldar jetbike spam and FMC flying circus are both soon to be going the way of the dodo bird… Neither can survive that amount of heavy fire power with all the special rules that negate their survivability. Personally I think this is a great thing for the game as it will clean up some of the mess that is seventh edition.
It’s still too early to say what will be the most dominant Tau builds and as mentioned above we need to see what the new Farsight Enclave brings. I am not totally sold on the Hunter Cadre because it’s looking like that formation will be reigned in… 40k has never been more self policed by the players than it is right now which is a direct product of the sloppy state of the rules. This is actually a really good thing for the community as we must all be involved in the meta more than ever before.
The Usual Suspects
Here are the armies that I think will match up well versus the new Tau in alphabetical order:
— Eldar
— Necrons
— Space Marines
It’s really very simple and Tau are the new kids on the block again. Space Marines in particular will probably be the biggest challenge as the Astartes have the widest assortment of powerful Battle Brother allies to draw from collectively – yes they can definitely out synergize the Greater Good. Eldar will also be a big problem as they are much more mobile and have just as much fire power plus the pointy eared don’t really need any allies.
Tau has been one of the most up and down armies ever if you stop to think about it and from what I can see they have the same old weaknesses as ever… Not that highly mobile and overall very weak in melee. Personally I see a unit such as a squadron of Riptides being one of their strongest units.
I have had the opportunity to play several games versus the new Tau with both my Ravenwing and White Scars – Space Marine biker armies can still contend with them plus the latter got a huge boost from the new Kauyon campaign book which is actually quite ironic.
You can check out my written battle reports over at my 40k blog:
So how will the new Tau adapt and overcome their pitfalls ? It’s all about synergy, not blasting one enemy unit off the table. If you focus on one enemy unit per turn everything else will be encroaching into your space too quickly… Yes you can eliminate a super enemy unit in one turn but really you will see many strong armies going also towards a more overall synergistic multi build rather than relying upon a deathstar to counter Tau which will be another big factor to affect the meta.
So in conclusion I see the new Tau making the existing top tier armies stronger since players will accordingly adjust to offset the new metric plus GW is actively giving them new tools to do so.
What do you predict will be the most competitive builds for the new Tau ?
