Ah, thanks. It looks like only a few query types actually return an initial result set: between, min, max, and order_by/limit ( http://rethinkdb.com/docs/changefeeds/python/ )

Is there a way to get an entire table as the initial result set before getting update diffs? Something like:

  r.table("users").between(-Infinity, Infinity).changes().run()  // Not actually valid