Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
Now, in 6th Ed., 'competitive 40K' is dead. This isn't one guy in one tournament beating his small pond meta. This 'Eldar/Tau problem' is global, it's everywhere. It's not anecdotal anymore. It's proven facts. Torrent of Fire shows it unequivocally. Unless you play Eldar or Tau, you can not win a tournament. Period. If you don't like Eldar or Tau, fine. Play the 'meta-buster', there's always one. Guess what, the meta-buster is also Eldar or Tau. Fun, right?
I think you're neglecting the screamer star build as a meta buster since Tau have nothing to really deal with that reliably and even Eldar have issues.

I will admit that Tau and Eldar are power codexes but I don't see how it's that different from when the Grey Knights were winning everywhere with with guaranteed 24" assaults on the first turn that would kill somewhere along the lines of 17 marines at I5 with no armor saves. It was a niche build but it was still frighteningly powerful.

I've played Tau for about 3 years now and I like the new codex but I still have some things I'm not happy about with it. Stealth Suits never see the table (made MUCH worse for the riptide), Vespids are pretty terrible, Fast Attack is dead outside of pathfinders for markerlights, still horribly limited in troops (seriously, make pathfinders troops move stealth suits to fast attack), Missile broadsides are absolutely better than rail rifle broadsides except vs. AV 14 so good luck buying new models. I enjoy the back story of the army and their whole theme and story (minus the new farsight dex, it took an attack of the stupid with suddenly demons and a life-stealing sword). I can see where Tau are powerful and the whole "bandwagon" cry annoys me since I saw GW go from one power codex to another where you could watch a Grey Knight player's army progression from Blue to Red/Grey to Metallic as they won through each change and it was still "fine and competitive" even if some armies were just "Play this exact build and hope you roll well" through the whole edition (of which Tau and Eldar both kinda fit in).

I know we all want to have our perfectly balanced game where everyone is on perfectly even footing but then you're just playing Chess. I mean look at Cryx in warmachine, Legion in Hordes, Germans in Flames of War, and High Elves in Warhammer Fantasy. Every large scale wargame has it's power armies that just trash the rest. I wish they could really nail the balance on them but it just won't happen. I feel that 40K is a better game than Warmachine as it lacks the "Gotcha!" element where one model literally can lose you the game and the imbalance between resources favors one system over the other. Also I've never felt completely helpless against a 40K army, I knew there were games I was going to lose but I always felt I could go for something to salvage points.

I guess this is getting a bit long but my basic point is that no game system is balanced for perfect competitive tournament play by virtue of Asymmetrical armies. Every game has always had an element of "pay to win" with buying the Meta leader or breaker and the current cycle has just agitated that to a much higher degree. It's regrettable to me that I got caught as a "Win at all costs player' by those who don't know me by virtue of the current meta (I don't allow take backs in tournaments but I'll let you fix mistakes in casual games and even throw the odd bone through playing in odd/mistaken ways). If you object to the tournament scene then you can still play for fun, if you don't like playing certain people then don't. I know "forging the narrative" has been mocked by the community but I'll give GW credit for coming out and saying "Here's our official rules but if you want to use their framework and play your own game with odd rules or scenarios then do it. It's a game, have fun."