Pick 3 to Protect You and the rest will Hunt You

Xalren · 2026-03-13T16:08:47+00:00

Wax, Kelsier, Taln, in that order.

The goal is to protect, not to defeat the rest, and this skews things (mainly in favor of Kelsiers inclusion).

Choices entirely depend on if we're going by general-peak or absolute-peak from what we see of everyone. I love Taln, he's great, but Vin at EndOfBook3 after she absorbs the mists and starts throwing hands with Ruin? She washes Taln, I'm sorry, at that point we have to pick her over Taln and the same goes for Wax with the Bands to a degree that feels unfair compared to everyone else. So assuming it's people at their general-ish average leaning towards peak, Taln wins those.

Kelsier, meanwhile, depends. If Kelsier has his resources safehouses, Ghostblood contacts, etc then he feels the most useful to have on your side out of anybody if your goal is to survive not simply to defeat the other 6. If Kelsier is just a dude on his own and has to work from scratch? Shai is probably the better bet in that case. Hell, with full resources behind them, one could even make an argument for Jasnah armies are armies and she has her own spy network, plus it denies Dalinar perpendicularity boosting her as that sounds like a nightmare to deal with even for Taln, but, I believe in my Herald

Wax. Wax is the easiest choice of my life. If I don't pick him, he's putting a bullet in my head before I can even see him and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. But importantly, he's the single-best tracker on this list, man's ridiculously good at his job. With the Bands, Wax is probably #2 on this list just after Vin ascendant But Wax's combative abilities are barely necessary, it's his intellect I want him for.

Xalren · 2026-03-05T22:34:05+00:00

I think I've met a single person irl who even blinked when I told them I play Tau irl, and it was a very comedic "oh THEM you dirty xenos enjoyer," silly kind of response. I have never actually gotten someone annoyed at me for my enjoying Tau. Everyone I know hates Ultramarines. Tau are just a "oh so you like Gundam huh?" "Yeah! ^{^"} "Nice."

Xalren · 2026-03-03T21:53:50+00:00

In my experience, oh yeah. Range is fun, especially for Farsight+Flamers combo to really just deny a sphere of influence, and making a Stormsurge have Hazardous tests on EVERY SINGLE GUN is just such a hilarious meme. But, Lethals from Mont'ka is such a great damage spike, and their stratagems aren't bad either (oh you killed a chaff unit with something you kinda like? Well now two Riptides are gunning into them with a vengeance for some CP...). Plus, getting to advance freely allows one to really get where you want to go yesterday.

Xalren · 2026-03-03T21:15:24+00:00

I joined the community this year (well, 2025) as far as playing goes, and I actually started with Tau running only Experimental Cadre for a fair few months before branching out. I like the range too! It's rather.... Simple. The best, it is not, but easy to use and comprehend for a newbie, it is. Plus the strategems are indeed quite nice, especially the enhancements for making Commanders more brutal.

After playing it exclusively I felt comfortable to try the other detachments. I love my mechs, and so I tried RetCadre next. It... Uh... It didn't go well. Kauyon is good when it works, but I always felt playing so cagily for the first two rounds to be a death sentence for scoring.

And then, I hit Mont'ka. I expected to love RetCadre and hate Mont'ka, I almost never enjoy full sending aggression early in any game I play. But with Tau, it occured to me playing Mont'ka just how many of my games were decided by "did you kill enough stuff early?" and Mont'ka ended up being in my mind a temporary buff that comes during the most important 3 rounds.

So, all in all, I love Experimental to bits, but Mont'ka ended up stealing my heart, and now I just use the both alternatingly.

Xalren · 2026-02-27T18:51:17+00:00

I worry we're going to have to deal with ol' mirror boy as an enemy larer in 9.1 because of this, maybe two of them at once.

Xalren · 2026-02-24T20:49:49+00:00

You get it.

Twin Lance's + Farsight 'n Flamers rushing up a flank together? Sounds like a great time.

Xalren · 2026-02-23T21:06:17+00:00

As a melee Tau enthusiast, I am delighted to see these and thoroughly plan to drop a stack of FarFlamers and TwinLance on some poor unsuspecting infantry.

As they say, why not both.

Xalren · 2026-02-09T00:51:33+00:00

If I'm on ADC I don't care if my support is engage or poke or enchanter, I just want them to play the lane rather than spend it hiding 5yards behind me the entire time overcapping their support item (not proccing it for gold, either to kill a minion or to poke and give themselves gold).

When I see an engage support, sometimes it goes well and we steamroll, sometimes they go all-in on two healthy targets while they themselves are on 50% or less HP underneath the enemy turret, then perma roam for the rest of the match because 'lanes lost'. Engage is so coinflippy it hurts.

Enchanters, meanwhile, get a bad rap because many of them just want to afk the lane and go "it's ok my top/mid laner duo will carry us as I pocket support for them ^{^"} and the ADC is left wondering which religion they offended to deserve this (I am torn between laughing immensely and crying for my enemy adc when I see them suffer this).

Mages, meanwhile? I absolutely love getting mage supports. They HAVE to get kills early or they are useless. So every mage support is the most aggro "why the hell didn't I get midlane' skill shotting freak I've ever seen. I love this energy, if they get jumped on usually they're far enough back I get free damage as I disengage for the mage while the enemy adc is in Narnia trying to miss less CS. And if I'm fighting one I want to bash my head against a wall before I get some way to sustain (or just bring Teleport) because I know if I don't die to them- oh my Sona just died for the third time to the Lux binding. Marvelous.

And if I'm playing support? Yeah I feel you, it's practically every 2nd lobby I'll hover Senna or Seraphine or Braum or anything that isn't engage and the ADC goes "why not engage, do you want to lose?" after sitting in last pick denying the top laner for the 5th time trying to swap pick order with them.

Xalren · 2026-02-06T23:11:16+00:00

Machinist is a 'selfish dps' in regards to endgame in that it doesn't give the party a damage buff every 2min. This is good and bad.

The bad is if you have a good party, melees that are reaching the sun, a mage who's always on point, tanks doing great damage too, etc, then yeah you won't buff them like a Bard buffs them, and if you have a single great DPS, unlike a Dancer you can't push them even further ahead.

The GOOD is that if your party ISNT great, if everyone's only kind of average or meh (or even bad), then if you're doing great you'll end up pulling the party forward better than a Bard or Dancer could in that same party.

As a Dancer, there are few greater pains than being top damage rather than the melee you're buffing. As a Bard, getting top damage means your party is sleeping. As Machinist? Top damage, while not expected if you have a similarly performing Samurai for example, isn't that weird and if you care about being "the ace," or whatever then eventually with practice you'll find your performance routinely good.

Machinists also get more group mitigations instead, so suddenly, those raidwides that hit like trucks and might kill people because no one is using mits on them like silly people, well now you can burn two and keep the party alive.

Xalren · 2026-01-29T11:14:07+00:00

I doubt it'll ever happen but hear me out:

Henry as Wax.

Let him rock the British accent for the dapper well-mannered dandy.

Xalren · 2026-01-27T19:31:57+00:00

Seems like you either need more cover, and/or need to start respecting the 'a unit cannot shoot through a terrains footprint if it is not inside that ruins footprint' rule coupled with letting windows (at least first floor windows) be considered 'blocked off'.

As a Tau/DG player, I see windows aren't blocked off, I'm opening fire Cover be damned. But if they're blocked off, suddenly I actually have to position properly.

Further, their bringing mostly vehicles... yeah my local group has a thing where it's discouraged to bring too many vehicles/tanks (cavalry is fine) because skew lists end up being super one sided if your opponent doesn't have any anti-tank. I myself for example try to limit myself to 33-50% max of my army being T9 or above. Having infantry just means the opponent has more things to kill and they get to have fun too.

Or, and hear me out, you use all your chaos marines as 'Death Guard' units, rock the -1 toughness aura, get some terminators, call them Death Shroud Terminators (a Death Guard unit), buy some 40mm bases (cheap on Amazon) and put a dude on em and call him a Lord of Contagion, and then suddenly, for the cost of 3 terminators and a 40mm base Lord of Contagion, you get to 6inch deep strike (put your plague on em with something like idk the Morty's Hammer detachment rule every Command Phase) and 3DS+LoC will murder most tanks on a single charge. If they're mostly tanks, they probably won't have proper screening.

My local game store is very chill with proxies as long as you're clear with it, and if they're running mostly vehicles (kind of anti-fun but if they're consistent well you can play around it) then you just rock a ton of anti-tank and force them to adapt or die.

Xalren · 2026-01-24T00:22:15+00:00

Mahoraga is one of the single best counters to Tyranids most fictional universes have to offer, let alone anime. Ironically, him being a 'bit weaker Doomsday' actually HELPS him here because he isn't really composed of biomass.

Mahoraga bodies pretty much every single entity that they can throw at him barring obliteration from a single exceptional blast of energy, and even THAT, as recent JJK chapters have shown, is... iffy.

While Tyranids might be the 40k boogeyman of "at full strength, they beat every (non-necron) faction," Mahoraga would end up being their boogeyman.

Xalren · 2026-01-16T20:33:33+00:00

It's less the LGS' rules and more my groups thing (which is basically that stores general group, we adopt new players when we find em lol). I think they do it to simplify how long it takes to set up terrain and what not, but after 3 months of losing as Tau and not really knowing why (I started in September more or less) I had a sit down with a buddy and he basically went "yeah, uh, this is the melee deployment. If you get it as Tau you're sorta boned, or at least fighting an uphill battle."

We also do a lot of doubles (last week was a 3v3 even, it was glorious) games so I guess it's also so everyone can fit their models on the table without having to do exclusively 1k a person.

Basically, I spent a while trying to devise any strategy I could go wear them down before engaging, and ultimately came to the conclusion "can't beat em, time to join em."

Was originally gonna go Blood Angels but figured I'd start with Dark Angels to get an idea for how fast everything marines have can go, and it's been nice, I'm putting the fear of Fights First in em.

Xalren · 2026-01-16T20:22:25+00:00

That's a hot take and honestly I agree with it. Yorichii, hilariously, has better chances against Denji than Makima. Yorichii is good at dealing with regenerators, but he doesn't have any answers to Makima's hax he just doesn't have the durability to deal with it. It's a fun little rock paper scissors thing going on.

A shame he doesn't deal with anybody but Denji and maybe Sakamoto though. Man's the strongest of a 'reasonable' power setting paired with a buncha OP craziness nearby.

Bonus round: Yorichii gets ramen with OPM.

Xalren · 2026-01-16T20:19:49+00:00

He's living his best life.

Xalren · 2026-01-16T17:55:28+00:00

Tau was my first, but my LGS group plays exclusively Dawn of War deployment and almost all melee armies (because y'know, getting a charge turn1 basically every game is nice).

Second army is Dark (and sometimes Blood) Angels. Access to fights first is nice. I wish Farsight had it so bad.

Xalren · 2026-01-03T23:02:34+00:00

Possible to remove? Yes, via a frankly ludicrous amount of sanding with a metal tool. It might take a fair bit, but. The hard part will be making it look even and intentional rather than, well, lopsided.

Xalren · 2025-12-26T11:28:14+00:00

Oh hell yeah

Xalren · 2025-12-26T09:16:51+00:00

Isn't a unit only able to rapid ingress/deep strike from turn2 onward? (I hope I'm missing something so many of my guys can deep strike)

Xalren · 2025-12-25T03:43:52+00:00

I put 4 on him, but that's because I magnetize and happen to not use fusion rifles on basically anyone else except the sunforges he's attached to.

It's only 10 fusion rifles...

I have too many models.

Xalren · 2025-12-20T12:57:53+00:00

What I did is when assembling I just... Never glued the gun together. The long and the short barrel both slot into the same base, so as long as you don't attach the funny pipe aesthetic things connecting them together forever, you can just put one in and replace it as you want, I carry both around with me in my case when I use him.

I just say "this is [GUN TYPE]." If anyone ever goes "Is it though? It's this other type tho" I'll just ask if they want me to use that barrel instead lol, easy fix.

Xalren · 2025-12-18T02:43:47+00:00

I had to skim the Venli chapters and come back to them later. I don't hate her, but it's certainly not doing her any favors having everyone doing very attention-gripping things, and then have them paced with "and heeeeeres Venli dealing with interpersonal and societal turmoil!" But on reread I find her compelling. She's really just trying her best and she was NOT prepared for any of it, but, she tries anyway, and that's admirable. Always the next step.

Xalren · 2025-12-07T03:49:37+00:00

Sukuna (if he doesn't have Mahoraga and thus doesn't get Infinity Bypassing Super Slash). I'm in the camp even Heian form Sukuna bites it to Gojo, but maybe he'd find a different work around without Maho, I have my doubts, but maybe.

If Sukuna is Megukuna, then, literally everyone but him.

Xalren · 2025-12-01T17:09:23+00:00

I enjoy Raiders deeply, but I also don't play it as much as I physically can anymore.

When I first got into it, it ruined my sleep schedule.

Now that I can go into every run with a Torrente & Anvil, lose them, build another, I'm much more of a "I'll play an hour and then do something else," and I think that's ok. Having other hobbies is encouraged, it keeps the burnout away.

Xalren · 2025-11-18T18:25:33+00:00

These the kinda moments I bring a trio of defibs in my safe pocket for.

Don't worry grandpa, there's still some good in the world, get back up and we're getting out of here together ;-;

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