First of all I like the models of the rail weapons. It is huge, “looks” powerful, and “should” only ever need one shot to take down anything. Unfortunately even a lowly rhino will take multiple shot to consistently destroy it. So with that I want is to make a special rule for rail weapons, “Rail”.

Rail: On a roll of 6 to armor penetration, the shot automatically penetrates and has a +1 modifier in the damage table (stacks with other modifiers, so basically a +3 being AP1 too). Also, on a roll of 6 to wound roll, the shot automatically wounds the target and has the Instant Death rule.

Now that might hopefully see the rise of use of rail weaponry on the table top. We might actually see people running rail rifles on their pathfinders (probably give stealth suits an option to take rail rifles too) and actually have them “decide” to either go HYMP or HRR. I am also thinking of giving the Railgun on the hammerhead a better Rail rule, possibly on a roll of 5+ instead of a 6 and twin-linked. Let me know what you guys think.

Honestly, they just need a special rule saying they get to re roll on the vehicle damage table. That and maybe change HRR's to rapid fire or heavy 2.

I might be mistaken, but aren't railguns S10 Ap1? As in, they're literally the strongest weapon possible in the game. Or am I mistaken?

On an expensive platform, and being a single shot direct fire weapon. The direct fire is what hurts it the most IMO. Maybe twin-linking would help?

How bout ordnance 1. Roll 2d6 pick the highest for armor pen.

That's a pretty good idea. Fits with the theme of the weapon too.

They'd have to snap fire everything else, but I don't imagine burst cannons are useful against similar targets.

Not to mention they have a 18" range.

Swap the type to Ordnance and you are done.

Special rule: Rail.

Rail weapons get an additional +1 to the penetration roll above and beyond the bonus from their AP. Additionally, any penetrating hit from a rail weapon causes D3 HP damage, not just one, in addition to any other HP damage caused by the hit.

This gives rail weapons additional efficacy against super heavies. The rail gun on the hammerhead should be last word in killing super heavies. Period.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Swap the type to Ordnance and you are done.

No, no that's too weak.

Also, bring back pseudo-fast for Tau vehicles.

Ap 1 gives +2 on the damage roll, that's really freaking good.

D3 hull points on any penetrating hit would be crazy OP.

Hey. Make them a D weapon.

I mean come on what are you actually complaining over? The most powerful gun stats the rules allow are not good enough? Rhino? Shoot pulse rifles! Use the Rail gun on AV 14! No way should one weapon dominate in penetration AND volume of fire.

On a 5 or 6 it kabooms anything. 4 5 or 6 opentopped. Leave it at that.

I do believe just adding ordnance to the shot is not sufficient and dealing an extra D3 HP damage is OP (basically a D weapon). Though I like the idea of making HRR rapid fire and could potentially have a good combo with the plasma secondary weapons. Also, make the railgun on a hammerhead twin-linked. After some more thought how about this.

Rail: Add the difference from your armor penetration roll (D6 + S) and the AV of the vehicle to the damage table (Stacks with other modifiers).

So basically an armor penetration roll of 4 (14) against a rhino (AV 11) will yield a +3 modifier on the damage table. This will give the Railgun good chances to 1 shot low AV vehicles and a slightly better chance to 1 shot a land raider. I mean the railgun was meant to hunt titans…

 TheSilo wrote:
Ap 1 gives +2 on the damage roll, that's really freaking good.

D3 hull points on any penetrating hit would be crazy OP.

Not really. Just appropriate. It's compensation for being a one-shot weapon. The thing probably could kill an Imperial tank behind the first one if the rules were detailed enough.

The +2 from AP 1 now requires a "5" on the to get an explodes. That's unacceptable for a one shot weapon like this. As for the HRR, it's hard enough to penetrate with Str 8. Powerful weapons that mimic modern weapons that are actually in use in the real world should be far more effective than the fantasical gobbledegook that the Imperium fields.

Tautastic wrote:

Rail: Add the difference from your armor penetration roll (D6 + S) and the AV of the vehicle to the damage table (Stacks with other modifiers)

That was what the rules used to be in 2nd ... no-one took vehicles.. they nerfed the over kill spills over in vehicle damage roll.

... for a reason...

The answer (for the sake of sanity) is "NOOO!"

Your ideas seem to be a) make them melta and str 10 or b) break the entire raison d'etre of 7th ed vehicle dmg or c) give them moar shots.. this is a crazy crazy crazy ruleschat

A single weapon only available to one faction on one tank is not why vehicles were bad in 2nd.

Giving the rail gun on the hammerhead D3 HP damage on a pen and extra +1 to the result table actually might make it so you see one sometimes instead of just Riptides and Broadsides as far as the eye can see.

For kicks, I'd make it ignore Knights' shields as well. Because knights deserve it, and watching them get shot apart from 60" away by a half-way realistic weapon makes me smile.

Tau Rail weapons seem powerful enough as is, the reason for being single shot and using the Ballistic Skill to hit seems to be the one thing keeping them balanced.

and yeah, I think S10 AP1 is plenty strong enough.

 Cothonian wrote:
Tau Rail weapons seem powerful enough as is, the reason for being single shot and using the Ballistic Skill to hit seems to be the one thing keeping them balanced.

and yeah, I think S10 AP1 is plenty strong enough.

But it's actually terrible for a one shot weapon. I haven't seen one used since 6th dropped because they are inferior to everything else in the book.

" to be the one thing keeping them balanced"

No, ROF 1 is what is making it bad, not balanced. Low ROF is the devil in 6/7th ed 40K.

Martel732 wrote:

The +2 from AP 1 now requires a "5" on the to get an explodes. That's unacceptable for a one shot weapon like this.

Why is it unacceptable? in 5 turn game it will statistically (if left un hindered to shoot) strip 2 hull points with dmg table rolls overwhelmingly likely (assuming 4 hits) and blow one vehicle up. Not bad.

ConanMan wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

The +2 from AP 1 now requires a "5" on the to get an explodes. That's unacceptable for a one shot weapon like this.

Why is it unacceptable? in 5 turn game it will statistically (if left un hindered to shoot) strip 2 hull points with dmg table rolls overwhelmingly likely (assuming 4 hits) and blow one vehicle up. Not bad.

For the cost of the tank, and for giving up a heavy slot, that is a terrible outcome. You could have had missile sides and fragged four vehicles.

 Cothonian wrote:
Tau Rail weapons seem powerful enough as is, the reason for being single shot and using the Ballistic Skill to hit seems to be the one thing keeping them balanced.

and yeah, I think S10 AP1 is plenty strong enough.

I'd rather be able to take three lascannons on a tank like IoM players can rather than a single railgun and the difference is only 1 to both Str and Ap, so by is that balanced whilst a hammerhead with better damage is imbalanced?

Non-fast tri-las preds aren't very good, either, though. The marine tri-las pred and the hammerhead both are pitiful compared to missile sides.

What horror would it unleash to give the railgun a 50/50 to blow up a vehicle and deal D3 HP damage instead of one on a pen? How are the Tau going to cheese this? Maybe superheavies would have to pay attention to something other than the ubiquitous suicide melta team?

Martel732 wrote:
Non-fast tri-las preds aren't very good, either, though. The marine tri-las pred and the hammerhead both are pitiful compared to missile sides.

I know, but I'd still rather have a tri-las pred due to weight of fire.

SGTPozy wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Non-fast tri-las preds aren't very good, either, though. The marine tri-las pred and the hammerhead both are pitiful compared to missile sides.

I know, but I'd still rather have a tri-las pred due to weight of fire.

I suppose, even though the Hammerhead has better firepower on the move. And better upgrades.

Martel732 wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Non-fast tri-las preds aren't very good, either, though. The marine tri-las pred and the hammerhead both are pitiful compared to missile sides.

I know, but I'd still rather have a tri-las pred due to weight of fire.

I suppose, even though the Hammerhead has better firepower on the move. And better upgrades.

I guess, but if you had three lascannons you wouldn't want to move it. What better upgrades? Do you mean disruption pods as they will hurt the hammerhead if it does jink.

"I guess, but if you had three lascannons you wouldn't want to move it"

But you see, opponents know this. So they will try to move THEIR stuff to where you have to move to get a shot again. See where I'm going with this? That's why the BA tri-las pred is so much better.

Martel732 wrote:
"I guess, but if you had three lascannons you wouldn't want to move it"

But you see, opponents know this. So they will try to move THEIR stuff to where you have to move to get a shot again. See where I'm going with this? That's why the BA tri-las pred is so much better.

Just ally one in then; it isn't as if you aren't battle brothers...

SGTPozy wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"I guess, but if you had three lascannons you wouldn't want to move it"

But you see, opponents know this. So they will try to move THEIR stuff to where you have to move to get a shot again. See where I'm going with this? That's why the BA tri-las pred is so much better.

Just ally one in then; it isn't as if you aren't battle brothers...

Don't own the models. I, like many other IoM players, only have one faction and the ally rules don't help us at all. Allying also increases the troop tax.

Isn't the BA model the exact same though? Just paint it red to make it go faster (are BA Orks? ) and just take some cheap scouts and use them to hold an objective.

All this requires is a repaint of your models.

<sniff> I wish my Tau and/or Tyranids had a battle brother (other than themselves).

SGTPozy wrote:
Isn't the BA model the exact same though? Just paint it red to make it go faster (are BA Orks? ) and just take some cheap scouts and use them to hold an objective.

All this requires is a repaint of your models.

<sniff> I wish my Tau and/or Tyranids had a battle brother (other than themselves).

I play BA, so I don't need to repaint. But all my units come from that book. So C:SM goodies for me. None of those are repaints.

How much is the tri-las pred BA then? Measure it in blacksun filters please.

Forget exactly right now. I wanna say 13 or 14 meltaguns.

SGTPozy wrote:
How much is the tri-las pred BA then? Measure it in blacksun filters please.

Rules cannot be copyrighted. Just say the amount of points.

The forum requests (or perhaps requires?) that we do not.

The triple lc BA predator costs some amount of points.

Twitter allows a certain number of characters.

I'm not saying the two are the same, but I'm not saying they're different.

Point is, the hammerhead is cheaper with better armor and jink but the predator has a better loadout with TWL LC and two LC sponsons. The hammerhead ain't exactly crowding out much in the Tau heavy support since riptides are Elites and I haven't seen broadsides on the table in a long while. The predator is competing with land raiders.

The difference is that knights laugh at the tri-las predator, whereas they should have to take the railgun Hammerhead seriously.

Martel732 wrote:
The difference is that knights laugh at the tri-las predator, whereas they should have to take the railgun Hammerhead seriously.

Couple things:

- On a 5 or 6 with the railgun on the damage table they lose D3 ADDITIONAL hull points. So you're knocking out 2-4 hull points there, that's quite a threat.

- An imperial knight costs fully 3x as much as a hammerhead. Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range. You want railguns to be even better, and pose a frightening threat against something that costs three times as much.

- Imperial Knights shouldn't even be in 40k, so I'm not too concerned about how things are or aren't effective against them.

"An imperial knight costs fully 3x as much as a hammerhead. Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range. You want railguns to be even better, and pose a frightening threat against something that costs three times as much."

American anti-tank guns cost much less than a third of a Panther or Tiger tank, but could threaten them for sure.

The Rail Hammerhead is just a logical hard counter for the Imperial Knight to me.

 TheSilo wrote:
Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range.

Why are we assuming that the two units get into a 1v1 shooting match and ignoring the knight's speed advantage and melee power, as well as the knight's ability to ignore the Hammerhead and kill the rest of your army?

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheSilo wrote:
Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range.

Why are we assuming that the two units get into a 1v1 shooting match and ignoring the knight's speed advantage and melee power, as well as the knight's ability to ignore the Hammerhead and kill the rest of your army?

Because he's arguing that the hammerhead should be able to solo an imperial knight.

Yup. That's what hard counters are. Specialists than can destroy a much more expensive unit of a certain niche.

Martel732 wrote:
Yup. That's what hard counters are. Specialists than can destroy a much more expensive unit of a certain niche.

Then pay the points and take Longstrike.

Make the Railgun a Beam weapon. Any unit under the line suffers a hit.

What you really need is to make that 1 shot more reliable.

Kill Longstrike (gloriously) - make his XV02 Pilot Battlesuit not experimental, allow all tanks(HH and Skyray, maybe Devilfish too) to get the upgrade, up the points, get rid of some long strike special rules...Or keep him and his specific rules and add this.
- This lets games workshop still sell the Longstrike model, but they throw in a few more arms and heads on a sprue so you can model them differently. - everyone would by 3-4 of these rather than 1.

50 pts more you get the Veteran tank commander upgrade - adds a veteran tank commander to your Hammerhead who wears the battlesuit
Gives the model:
BS 5
Tank Hunter
Overwatch and Supporting Fire - keep rule that allows multiple overwatch per phase
Blacksun filter

Also - up the tank cost to 150 base but change the gun to:
Primary weapon with Armorbane which allows - roll 3d6 and pick the two highest for armor pen
- I only say this because the Necron ghost arc is now primary weapon with 2 firing modes.

Kitted out with Spines, Pod, submunitions it's a 225pt tank.

 TheSilo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yup. That's what hard counters are. Specialists than can destroy a much more expensive unit of a certain niche.

Then pay the points and take Longstrike.

Nah, Longstrike should be even better than what I listed. And he's not really good enough as currently implemented. Modern armor is incredibly lethal.

Ferros wrote:
Make the Railgun a Beam weapon. Any unit under the line suffers a hit.

I like this. Fluff wise it makes sense. Quote from the codex -

It fired a form of ultra-high velocity projectile. I saw one of our tanks after having been hit by it. There was a small hole punched in either flank - one the projectile's entry point, the other its exit. The tiny munition had passed through the vehicle with such speed that everything within the hull not welded down had been sucked out through the exit hole. Including the crew. We never identified their bodies, for all that remained of them was a red stain upon the ground, extending some twenty metres from the wreck.

It should keep punching through all objects, maybe borrow rules similar to the apoc? blast - decreasing strength or range the more stuff it plows through.

Naaris wrote:

Ferros wrote:
Make the Railgun a Beam weapon. Any unit under the line suffers a hit.

I like this. Fluff wise it makes sense. Quote from the codex -

It fired a form of ultra-high velocity projectile. I saw one of our tanks after having been hit by it. There was a small hole punched in either flank - one the projectile's entry point, the other its exit. The tiny munition had passed through the vehicle with such speed that everything within the hull not welded down had been sucked out through the exit hole. Including the crew. We never identified their bodies, for all that remained of them was a red stain upon the ground, extending some twenty metres from the wreck.

It should keep punching through all objects, maybe borrow rules similar to the apoc? blast - decreasing strength or range the more stuff it plows through.

Or like bolt throwers in fantasy where the strength (and possibly ap) get reduced by one when they pierce additional ranks.

-1 str maybe? Some re-pricing might be in order, but it's a good idea. And it would make HRRs actually useful.

The Astra Militarum bunker-buster shell is R48", S10, AP1, Heavy 1, Armourbane(!) and Blast(!!). Replace the Blast with 24" range, and there you go: the super-railgun everyone is wishing for.

A Medusa with BBS is 140 points, while a Hammerhead is 125. The Hammerhead has +1 BS, +1 FA, +2 SA and is a Skimmer - that should be roughly +65 points, meaning that a Hammerhead with the super-railgun would be ~190 points. Sounds about right.

But that shell still has a terrible chance of actually taking out a tank or doing meaningful damage to a superheavy. I think D3 HP on a pen fits a railgun to a T.

There's a couple of problems with rail weaponry.

1) Low rate of fire.- When dreadnoughts and carnifex were the biggest target you would come across, having a single high strength shot counted for much more. However now we have 6 wound MCs and superheavies in normal games the standard rail weapons often struggle to be relevant.

2) Improved vehicle damage table - the low number of shots is made worse by the fact that the damage table will only offer a 33% chance to destroy a pen'd vehicle. With the chance to get that important 'explodes' result diminished, railguns are more likely to need to glance a vehicle down. Their low number of shots makes them inefficient in this role.

To improve them I wouldn't want them to be firing more shots. It wouldn't fit the fluff, and there is enough high AP rapid fire guns in the game at the moment as it is.
Vs multi wound targets I wouldn't mind seeing multiple wounds per hit, but D3 seems a bit too much. letting them cause 2 wounds on a 4+ would be more agreeable to me.

Penetrating shots would also be nice, but would be more difficult to apply to 40k than with bolt throwers in WFB

Vs vehicles would it be too much to simply let them re-roll the damage table?

Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Martel732 wrote:
Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Because not everything in the game is a super heavy.

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Because not everything in the game is a super heavy.

So? The rail gun on that thing should be able to one shot a predator no problem. That's the entire point of the weapon system. Not to pray for "5"s. Any less capable, and I'm going with the high yield missilesides.

Martel732 wrote:
But that shell still has a terrible chance of actually taking out a tank or doing meaningful damage to a superheavy. I think D3 HP on a pen fits a railgun to a T.

According to its fluff, the railgun's big strength is piercing armor, and with 10+2D6 armor penetration and AP1, that's as good as it can get.

Martel732 wrote:

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Because not everything in the game is a super heavy.

So? The rail gun on that thing should be able to one shot a predator no problem. That's the entire point of the weapon system. Not to pray for "5"s. Any less capable, and I'm going with the high yield missilesides.

I never said D3 HP when shooting at armour. I said multiple wounds vs models with a toughness value. Look again.

Vs vehicles I suggested letting railguns re-roll the damage table result. Like an offensive version of the venerable rule.

Lance

Then take broadsides, half the price of the hammerhead, and more likely to hit. Take two and you're at S8 but now you've got two shots at BS 4.5

"So don't take it" is not a way to fix anything. At that point I could just make my armies entirely composed of different types of riptides.

Haven't fielded my railhead yet, but Ordinance sounds like exactly what the weapons are.

Give the railgun a networked markerlight and odanance, then nerf missilesides. This way you get a small offensive buff, another weapon to lose if you get weapon destroyed, and a markerlight to either give yourself a buff or spread it around. As for the last bit, missilesides are taken not because other options are bad, but because they are so strong. Trust me, as a Grey knights and tyranids player I would kill for the railgun as is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Alternatively, let the railgun fire regardless of los or cover at the cost of 1-2 marker tokens on the target. this represents its ability to fire right through terrain so long as the target location is known.

Hey look sgtpozy, a Xenos 'buff me thread'! Clearly this means all Xenos players want their codices buffed, right?

As for th actual thread, the large rail guns on a hammerhead should have an extra special rule vs super heavy vehicles. Maybe an automatic extra d3 hullpoints vs super heavies?

Alternatively, you could simply drop the points cost of a hammerhead. Of course, having a cheap av13 skimmer that can score (obsec or not) is the elders thing!

Problem for rail guns is that deep strike meltas and missile sides exist, making them redundant. Like shooting terminators in the wake of sternguard, or dev cents. They aren't the only answer to enemy armor at long range anymore, and they aren't nearly efficient enough for their cost.

How to fix rail weapons:

Broadside railgun goes back to STR 10 AP 1 like it used to be.

Hammerhead railgun is STR D AP 1.

Manta/Tigershark railguns are STR D AP 1, and when firing without skyfire you draw an infinite-length line and continue to hit units until you roll a 1 on the destroyer table.

The obvious answer is to powercreep everything.

Introduce AV20, increase S scale from 1-10 + D to 1-20 + D.

Every weapon is at least a small blast.

Every weapon rolls at least 1 die per 5 points

Every Vehicle is Fast and can flat out and shoot and deepstrike

 chrisrawr wrote:
The obvious answer is to powercreep everything.

Introduce AV20, increase S scale from 1-10 + D to 1-20 + D.

Every weapon is at least a small blast.

Every weapon rolls at least 1 die per 5 points

Every Vehicle is Fast and can flat out and shoot and deepstrike

But leave termies as is.

 koooaei wrote:

 chrisrawr wrote:
The obvious answer is to powercreep everything.

Introduce AV20, increase S scale from 1-10 + D to 1-20 + D.

Every weapon is at least a small blast.

Every weapon rolls at least 1 die per 5 points

Every Vehicle is Fast and can flat out and shoot and deepstrike

But leave termies as is.

2+ save marine? How can you improve it? Would be unbalanced!

I've never understood the whole "infinite line" idea with Railguns. Have you seen what happens when a Railgun slug hits its target? The slug more or less disintegrates from the impact, if anything blast seems more fitting.

It's based on this one story (the only story that really talks about the damage rail-gun rounds do) that had a railgun rounds piercing completely through a vehicle with such speed that is actually sucked the the crew and anything else that wasn't nailed down through the exist hole, leaving a long gory splatter on the ground.

 koooaei wrote:

 chrisrawr wrote:
The obvious answer is to powercreep everything.

Introduce AV20, increase S scale from 1-10 + D to 1-20 + D.

Every weapon is at least a small blast.

Every weapon rolls at least 1 die per 5 points

Every Vehicle is Fast and can flat out and shoot and deepstrike

But leave termies as is.

I'm glad someone in this thread is speaking sense.

We must have some balance.

How to fix rail cannons:
Cut price in half
Make them D weapons
Put them on transports
Blast version also D weapon
Get 4+ for damage results
Ignor cover

Now im off to the "how to fix Wraith Knights thread"

Not that Eldar aren't OP, but their cheap AV13 is 2500 points. Not cheap. Nothing else they have is over av12, and many of their superheavies are av11.

Don't want to derail the thread, just wanted to clear up a factual inaccuracy. Agree with the sentiment expressed, though.

On topic, just how much of a buff do people think the Railhead, Rail sides, and Rail Rifles really need?

Rail rifles are fine.
With broadsides, just decrease the base broadside (or make the HRRs back to being just rail guns), and make the HYMP cost more.
With the hammerhead, maybe give it a "rail cannon" (as opposed to the rail gun it has now) that is ordnance, and possibly and extra +1 on the damage table.


Some re-pricing might need to be looked at though.

How would this look:
Railhead: Ordinance 1 S10 AP1
HRR broadsides: ordinance 1 S9 AP1
Rail Rifle Pathfinders: Ordinance 1 S6 AP1 Precision

HRR seems like it should be possible to pen AV14, but not as likely as a Railgun.
Rail Rifle Pathfinders seem like 'anti-material rifles', that can pierce a tank, or take an individual's head off. With its torso being turned to too.

Another thought:
Instead of direct-fire, scatter the impact 2d6 like a blast, then draw a 12" line directly away from the model. Models in that line are hit as per Beam rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Not very knowledgeable about Tau yet. Still new to it.)

1 shot ordinance S 10 AP 1 is still less than a 33% of killing an enemy tank. This weapon needs a better chance than that. It's like modern armor.

It needs not to do more damage. On a pen even if it's just 33% kill, it's at least a likely cripple. Even on 1 it's a stun.

It needs to pen more often. Especially the HRR.
Give all rail weapons +2 to pen rolls. that way a hit will most likely pen, and do some damage.

 BoomWolf wrote:
It needs not to do more damage. On a pen even if it's just 33% kill, it's at least a likely cripple. Even on 1 it's a stun.

It needs to pen more often. Especially the HRR.
Give all rail weapons +2 to pen rolls. that way a hit will most likely pen, and do some damage.

I agree that S8 does not penetrate often enough.

The Railhead has only a 50% chance of crippling an enemy vehicle. Stun, shaken, and weapon destroyed have minimal effects. That's absurdly low for what the weapon is. The 7th edition vehicle table has really devalued AP 1/2 hits and now the preferred method of killing vehicles is now HP scrubbing. That's not acceptable for the rail head. Remember that this thing's competition are the missile sides. There are not many suggested upgrades on this thread that would make me pick a railhead over the missile sides. The potential to one shot Imperial Knights is an ability that would justify the rail head over missile sides. "Some damage" doesn't cut it with missile sides in the same slot. It needs to be horrific damage.

Truth be told, I'd probably give the railhead beast hunter as well. You are shooting the monster with a weapon whose barrel as long as the monster. Yeah, it's gonna one shot it.

S10AP1, 72" single shot, is obviously a specialist AV14 hunter on the same level as a Vanquisher. It should be going after very expensive targets like Land Raiders -- 2 Hammerheads vs 1 MM LR seems pretty fairly costed.

S8AP1, 60" single shot, is less of a dedicated anti-armour profile but its advantage is obviously range and not volume of fire. Knights are going to counter this advantage hard since they are so fast, and you're losing that range advantage. Then again, it seems like a decent weapon against AV10-12 flyers with the range and possible Skyfire buffs.

S6AP1, 30" rapid-fire, is pretty awesome for an infantry gun. Beware TEQs, MCs, and light vehicles! Great firepower but on a fragile infantry platform, so you can't just let them get shot to hell.

The bigger Railguns are specialist weapons, it's important to consider what they're good at. They are best used at extreme ranges (60"+) and have very specific targets they're good against to make their points back (leveraging that AP1). Knights close distance fast and are less vulnerable at range due to the Invul save. Rhinos are cheap MSU, it's better to just wreck them with high-volume, cheap S7 AP- fire. MCs don't give that 'explodes' AP1 bonus.

Most of the problem is probably the meta, you don't have the optimal ranges and targets the gun is built towards.

"S10AP1, 72" single shot, is obviously a specialist AV14 hunter on the same level as a Vanquisher. It should be going after very expensive targets like Land Raiders -- 2 Hammerheads vs 1 MM LR seems pretty fairly costed. "

But is has a terrible chance of taking out AV 14.

Yep, obviously, a 135 pt tank should easilly take out 5-6 landraiders per game.

 koooaei wrote:
Yep, obviously, a 135 pt tank should easilly take out 5-6 landraiders per game.

I'd obviously charge more for the tank, but it should be a rock hard counter to the land raider, and as it is, fusion suits are much, much better.

It's currently averaging less than one Land Raider, which is absurd given its intended role.

I'm a Tau player and I disagree that Hammerheads should be hard counters to all vehicles. Meltaguns (fusion blasters) should be the ultimate tank killing weapon because they usually involve more risk - deep striking near a target or at the very least, getting close.

I would love for my Hammerheads to be slightly more competitive, but NO weapon should have a significant chance to pop a Land Raider from 70" away. Sure, some super-heavies can do that, but they don't cost under 150 points (and a lot of people hate those things anyway).

I think a re-roll on the pen table OR on the damage table would be pretty awesome - you have to pick before you roll to hit. Better chance to penetrate that Land Raider and a better chance to actually destroy that Rhino.

As for the Broadsides, just change their HRR to rapid fire. The ability to move and fire, paired with an extra shot within 30" would make them 100% viable...while still keeping Missilesides as a decent option.

Bharring wrote:
Not that Eldar aren't OP, but their cheap AV13 is 2500 points. Not cheap. Nothing else they have is over av12, and many of their superheavies are av11.

Don't want to derail the thread, just wanted to clear up a factual inaccuracy. Agree with the sentiment expressed, though.

On topic, just how much of a buff do people think the Railhead, Rail sides, and Rail Rifles really need?

Sorry but I was being sarcastic. Just because I find it funny that Tau players what a weapon that cost,, what like 50pnts im guessing, to nearly guarantee kill a land Raider or equivalent every turn, not even counting other buffs you get from marker drones. It would be the only long range weapon to do that from 72 inches away. Then on top of that have a ordnance weapon to blow away anything else.

As for eldar, there is no way the should have or need armor over 12, unless they want to give up jinking, the crazy amount of weapons it gets, and ignoring pens on a 2+

 Mojo1jojo wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Not that Eldar aren't OP, but their cheap AV13 is 2500 points. Not cheap. Nothing else they have is over av12, and many of their superheavies are av11.

Don't want to derail the thread, just wanted to clear up a factual inaccuracy. Agree with the sentiment expressed, though.

On topic, just how much of a buff do people think the Railhead, Rail sides, and Rail Rifles really need?

Sorry but I was being sarcastic. Just because I find it funny that Tau players what a weapon that cost,, what like 50pnts im guessing, to nearly guarantee kill a land Raider or equivalent every turn, not even counting other buffs you get from marker drones. It would be the only long range weapon to do that from 72 inches away. Then on top of that have a ordnance weapon to blow away anything else.

As for eldar, there is no way the should have or need armor over 12, unless they want to give up jinking, the crazy amount of weapons it gets, and ignoring pens on a 2+

Whoa, you're expecting Tau players to actually use markerlights? Get outta here.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've never understood the whole "infinite line" idea with Railguns. Have you seen what happens when a Railgun slug hits its target? The slug more or less disintegrates from the impact, if anything blast seems more fitting.

Excuse me? The Blitzer Railgun PROTOTYPE using PROTOTYPE ammunition, which is neither aerodynamic nor shaped to penetrate, has shown video tests of it going through multiple plates of reinforced concrete and remaining intact.
I have no idea what you're talking about.

I would like to see it do something similar to the XV107,

I.E. "Against units with Bulky roll 2 attacks, Monstrous and Vehicle roll 3 attacks S10"

But in general, the Hammerhead doesn't really fit in this edition as-is; too squishy to avoid focus, not fast enough to run away from close combats, not reliable enough to do its own job, competes in slot for other things.

I'd definitely like to see Hammerhead Formations that rectify the issues it has. I'm not saying "zomg it should pop a tank every turn", but it should do SOMETHING every turn, especially with Markerlight Support.


Every other "good" unit in Tau is "good" because it does one thing with surgical precision and consistency, or is just plain undercosted and ridiculously powerful given the rest of the army's composition (riptiiiiides).

Broadsides are taken for their consistency through numerical superiority. Fire Warriors with a couple markerlights can whipe similarly costed unit off the map from an excellent range. Kroot are 6 point bolters, or 7 point Kabalite Warrior wanna-be's.

Crisis Suits perform any role you don't currently have filled. Pathfinders and Tetras bring Markerlights in whatever form you want. Even the skies bend under the Barracuda and the Skyray, though they do little else of note.

So where do you find room for the Tau Railhead?

-> Consistent penetration

200 Points. BS4. 2 Networked Markerlights. Rear Armour 11. Heavy.

Weapon: S10, AP1, Heavy 1. 72" Range. Rail

Rail: Regardless of the Armour Penetration Roll, a hit from this weapon is always Penetrating. When you roll on the Vehicle Damage Table, add or subtract the difference between the Armour Penetration Roll result and the Armour Value of the vehicle facing fired at.

If this would result in less than a 1, the hit only glances.


I.E. Shooting a Rhino - you roll a 3 for Armour Penetration, giving you 13. 13 - Av 11 is 2, giving you an additional +2 on your penetration roll.


Shooting a Land Raider - you roll a 3 for Armour Penetration, giving you a 13. 13 - AV 14 is -1, giving you a -1 on your penetration roll.

Ferros wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've never understood the whole "infinite line" idea with Railguns. Have you seen what happens when a Railgun slug hits its target? The slug more or less disintegrates from the impact, if anything blast seems more fitting.

Excuse me? The Blitzer Railgun PROTOTYPE using PROTOTYPE ammunition, which is neither aerodynamic nor shaped to penetrate, has shown video tests of it going through multiple plates of reinforced concrete and remaining intact.
I have no idea what you're talking about.

In which case it is overpenetrating the target and not actually imparting its energy into whatever is supposed to be destroyed, in which case the weapon shouldn't be S10 anymore.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Ferros wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've never understood the whole "infinite line" idea with Railguns. Have you seen what happens when a Railgun slug hits its target? The slug more or less disintegrates from the impact, if anything blast seems more fitting.

Excuse me? The Blitzer Railgun PROTOTYPE using PROTOTYPE ammunition, which is neither aerodynamic nor shaped to penetrate, has shown video tests of it going through multiple plates of reinforced concrete and remaining intact.
I have no idea what you're talking about.

In which case it is overpenetrating the target and not actually imparting its energy into whatever is supposed to be destroyed, in which case the weapon shouldn't be S10 anymore.

IIRC the damage comes from the fact that everything inside gets superheated and scrambled from the overpressure and resulting vacuum of entry and exit. Just like with modern tankbuster rounds; Relatively little structural damage, but everyone inside is dead. It's not hard to kill humans with a little temperature and pressure change

 chrisrawr wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Ferros wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've never understood the whole "infinite line" idea with Railguns. Have you seen what happens when a Railgun slug hits its target? The slug more or less disintegrates from the impact, if anything blast seems more fitting.

Excuse me? The Blitzer Railgun PROTOTYPE using PROTOTYPE ammunition, which is neither aerodynamic nor shaped to penetrate, has shown video tests of it going through multiple plates of reinforced concrete and remaining intact.
I have no idea what you're talking about.

In which case it is overpenetrating the target and not actually imparting its energy into whatever is supposed to be destroyed, in which case the weapon shouldn't be S10 anymore.

IIRC the damage comes from the fact that everything inside gets superheated and scrambled from the overpressure and resulting vacuum of entry and exit. Just like with modern tankbuster rounds; Relatively little structural damage, but everyone inside is dead. It's not hard to kill humans with a little temperature and pressure change

Too bad that not all vehicles in the galaxy are crewed by humans. I don't think that a Space Marine in his power armor would mind a little wind and heat from the passing round, or that a daemon engine would even care. This would be also hard to pull off against Eldar vehicles (as they have cockpits) and Dark Eldar vehicles (as their crew compartments are open).

Pretty sure the damage comes from an object travelling at Mach 7+ transferring all it's energy to the intended target, hence why overpenetration is bad. Transferring that much energy into metal more or less makes it combust, and the resulting explosion is what creates the over pressure.

For what it's worth, in the Damnation Crusade Venerable brother Tankred takes repeated Railgun shots to the Sarcophagus and isn't utterly obliterated, so the power of the weapons, as always, vary within the fluff.

It's a bit like giant anti-material rifle/anti-tank rifle. It can pass through and not do too much damage, but have it hit anything like an engine or ammuntion, and that tank goes boom. Imagine this passing through the ammunition stores of a leman russ. With all those battle cannon shells going off, there wouldn't be any tank left.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
It's a bit like giant anti-material rifle/anti-tank rifle. It can pass through and not do too much damage, but have it hit anything like an engine or ammuntion, and that tank goes boom. Imagine this passing through the ammunition stores of a leman russ. With all those battle cannon shells going off, there wouldn't be any tank left.

The same goes for every other AT weapon in the game, from the bright lance to the meltagun.

But the don't have the penetrating power that the railgun has.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
But the don't have the penetrating power that the railgun has.

They actually do, just not the "overpenetration". The meltagun is even described as capable of turning a tank into a heap of molten slag within a blink of an eye.

And it is, but I'm talking about long ranged weaponry here.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
And it is, but I'm talking about long ranged weaponry here.

According to the rules, the meltagun has the same chance to insta-kill a tank than a railgun. So going by fluff-logic, the railgun should receive a damage nerf (AP2?) and a penetration buff (Armourbane?).

I'd be fine with that, and a little re-pricing. But I thought ordnance worked fine, it gives it a penatration buff, while not making overpowered. Although I'm not really concerned about the rail gun as much as the heavy rail rifle (which is currently worse at penetration than lascannons).

The Railgun hurts by being one shot and not being twin linked, so a single bad roll to hit or penetrate can negate its effect. The BS can be compensated for by markerlights, penetration needs a boost, especially given the relatively commonplace superheavies now.

I think making it Strength D and/or Primary Weapon or Ordnance would just about do it. Tau tanks don't get multi-trakers and target locks any more, so there's no need to worry about a bunch of strength 5 attacks when you're slinging a strength 10 AP 1.

Heavy Rail Rifles are heavily overshadowed by the HYMP. Taking them back to being strength 10 would be awesome, but horribly overpowering in their spamability. They also need to be differentiated from the regular Railguns due to size. So, instead being able to fire an additional shot and/or being salvo to restore some mobility to the Broadside is what I would like to see. Neither would be massively overpowering but would make the HYMP not an autoinclude.

Rail Rifles are great, Iwish I could put them on fire warriors, stealth suits, crisis suits and Cadre Fireblades.

Just make broadside rail rifle S9. Maybe give the ordinance rule to all rail weapons as well.

We could do to nerf HYMP to heavy 3 as well.

I think those changes would put the two types of broadsides in line with each other.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
And it is, but I'm talking about long ranged weaponry here.

According to the rules, the meltagun has the same chance to insta-kill a tank than a railgun. So going by fluff-logic, the railgun should receive a damage nerf (AP2?) and a penetration buff (Armourbane?).

Except the mere broadside mounted railgun is by fluff capable of penetrating the front armor of a russ, penetrate the rear again while destroying everything inside with sheer pressure and energy of the projectile passing through, and than penetrate the front armor of yet another leman russ tank that was behind the first, and utterly decimate it as well.

If we go by fluff, the rail weaponry are supposed to be insanely powerful and completely and utterly dominating the field of armored warfare against pretty much everything. they are accurate, long ranged, and utterly decimate anything they hit with relative ease. its a one-shot-one-kill weapon in the armored warfare field.
Longstrike became a legend by taking out a WARHOUND with a hammerhead railgun.
Fluffwise, railtech is the most powerful non-necron weapon around for its size class, at every single class.

HOWEVER there are many inconsistencies between fluff and game-in order to keep the game playable, and giving railguns their fluff destructive abilities would ahve broadsides carry D weapons, hammerheads having even more powerful versions and the tigershark would be dealing multiple D strikes per hit. it will be absurd.


What we DO talk about, is to reduce the silliness of the railgun failing to penetrate so damn often. the HRR that is a dedicated AT gun not being able to even penetrate AV14 on theory.
Hammerheads fail to utlize their true power outside apoc, as range 72" is irrelevant in a normal game, but they should still penetrate better, and the HRR is far behind what it SHOULD do. (the braodside as a whole does not fit the fluff. I cannot find an excuse why a centurion is thougher than a braodside.)
The fact HRR utterly fails compared to HYMP is that HYMP is really just too good, but the HRR fails even if the HYMP did not exist. it will have only about a 16% chance to kill even an AV10 AFTER hitting, and its supposedly one of the best anti-tank guns in the entire setting. a 35 point transport will take the 65 point broadside the entire game to kill.

Even the tri-las predator, who is largely hailed as a bad choice will outpreform the "mighty" hammerhead railgun against nearly anything. despite it being supposely the best tank destroyer that exists under the superheavy class.

As for markerlights someone brought up-they help you land the shot, but they wont help you penetrate, or do damage.
If you land the shot at 100%, there is still a fair chance the railgun will do nothing at all against anything heavier then a chimera. and as a dedicated anti-tank gun, that's just not enough.
And when people compare its chances to a meltagun-a meltagun does not come on a 125 base platform. yes, it has range-but range helps little if you can't actually land a kill with it.

As long as its a non-threat to MCs (due to the simple fact that with all its points, it will not shoot enough during the game to kill any MC with T of 6 or higher even if left unharmed), it should furfill its declared purpose, being the end-all-be-all tank destroyer.
Right now? I'm just running fusion suits. despite running multiple railheads, because I know they will never get the job done.
And my railsides just went to shelf, because they cannot do the one thing they are supposed to do, kill tanks.

Distortion weapons are easily more powerful than the Railguns as well, as are Shokk Attack Gunz (when they work).

I'm also going to be that guy and ask for a source on the multi-killed Leman Russ Tanks, because at this point it 'a becoming Chinese whispers. Further, if Longstrike became legendary due to killing a Warhound with a Railgun I would argue that the Hammerhead isn't supposed to be able to lose a credible threat to a Warhound, otherwise Longstrike wouldn't be very legendary at all.

What about giving rail weapons Ordnance and Beam? or some kind of beam where it keeps going until whatever it hits survives?

Taffy17 wrote:
What about giving rail weapons Ordnance and Beam? or some kind of beam where it keeps going until whatever it hits survives?

That's something, but if I were a Tau player, I'd want that one shot to count for a lot more than it does right now. You are paying the price of the hammerhead to basically get one shot. It better be a helluva shot, which, right now, it isn't. It's actually inferior to a short-range meltagun shot.

As a total side note, I wonder where the people complaining about me being a Tau hater are now? I don't like units that make no sense or that are too good/too poor. The rail head is total joke right now compared to missilesides. I want to change that.

The railgun should have marker light support. Give them the primary rule instead of ordinance like the doomsday ark from necrons. Also, while updating the old vehicle design rules, i noticed that to make a str10 shot into a D strength shot, it costs 30 points per round fired. Get your people to give it a chance, and see what you can do!

How about increase the point cost of a HH to 150pts and make it's weapon twin-linked and have the following special rules.

Rail: Against vehicles no saves of any kind can be taken, including invulnerable saves. On a roll of 2+ for armor penetration the shot automatically penetrates. If the model has the tank hunter special rule it can re-roll its damage table roll (Basically to have a reason for taking Longstrike).

Now this gives the HH a 27% chance to one hit any vehicle and does not buff it against non-vehicles. This does not guarantee that it can one shot a vehicle but it will do some "damage" to it on a consistent basis. 3 HH against a knight with some marker support will average around 4 HP a turn. Obviously the HRR cannot have this rule too because that will be OP. I think the best fix for HRR is just make them rapid fire.

Tautastic wrote:
How about increase the point cost of a HH to 150pts and make it's weapon twin-linked and have the following special rules.

Rail: Against vehicles no saves of any kind can be taken, including invulnerable saves. On a roll of 2+ for armor penetration the shot automatically penetrates. If the model has the tank hunter special rule it can re-roll its damage table roll (Basically to have a reason for taking Longstrike).

Now this gives the HH a 27% chance to one hit any vehicle and does not buff it against non-vehicles. This does not guarantee that it can one shot a vehicle but it will do some "damage" to it on a consistent basis. 3 HH against a knight with some marker support will average around 4 HP a turn. Obviously the HRR cannot have this rule too because that will be OP. I think the best fix for HRR is just make them rapid fire.

That's a pretty good fix too.

How about give HRR armorbane?

I don't understand your line of thinking, gents. The Hammerhead is very similar to other single-shot, dedicated tank destroyers like the Fire Prism or Vanquisher. This should be your first point of comparison.

If you want a better railgun -- say strength D, 110", Ordnance -- it's actually already available to the Tau. It's just not at 125pts.

Yoyoyo wrote:
I don't understand your line of thinking, gents. The Hammerhead is very similar to other single-shot, dedicated tank destroyers like the Fire Prism or Vanquisher. This should be your first point of comparison.

If you want a better railgun -- say strength D, 110", Ordnance -- it's actually already available to the Tau. It's just not at 125pts.

Fire prism is a really good comparison with a HH. Outside of +1 front armor, I believe the fire prism is better in all other aspect. It is fast, will pen anything on a roll of 4+ and has 3 different firing mode with good AP (1, 2, 3). I am not really familiar with the vanquisher. It is the single range shot with armourbane and same strength of a missile pod? Either way, I do not remember the last time I saw one on a table top. I understand that if you buff the railgun that all other dedicated anti-tank should also be buffed. As it is now, I believe all three of those models are shelved. I do not even know if they are being "considered" in any competitive list.

OP I don't believe there's anything off with its stats. Its a point stronger than the most widespread human anti-tank weapon and 1 AP better too. (and has the bonus of using submunitions). Longer range too I believe. That +2 on the damage chart is already significant enough, +3 is too much imo. If it's proving underwhelming in games then a points drop might be the best solution.
Agreed if it hits a rhino or other light vehicle it would tear through it like cardboard but don't forget as in real warfare a piercing hits are not neccessarily a kill. An example that comes to mind is the US escortcarriers in WW2 on one occasion Japanese heavy cruisers caught a few escort carriers but they ironically survived because they were lightly armoured -the heavy Japanese shells tended to tear through the ships and out the other side without exploding.

Actually, the lascannon is a good point of comaprison, it is slightly worse in range strength and AP, but has one thing the railgun can't hope to match, numbers.

The lascannon is on everything, many tanks boasting twinliked or multiples. It is even carried by infantry. The railgun is a single main weapon on a relatively expensive tank.

Yoyoyo wrote:
I don't understand your line of thinking, gents. The Hammerhead is very similar to other single-shot, dedicated tank destroyers like the Fire Prism or Vanquisher. This should be your first point of comparison.

If you want a better railgun -- say strength D, 110", Ordnance -- it's actually already available to the Tau. It's just not at 125pts.

Those weapons systems are also subpar, I'd say. Single shots in this game are very weak unless juiced by some serious rules.

A lot in 40k is "subpar". That's because your point of reference is power lists, right?

I understand the need to argue for balance but for fun, let's imagine using troops and dedicated tranports as a baseline, as well as cross-codex 'tank destroyers' like the Prism and Vanq. A Hammerhead is the same price as a Tac squad in a Razorback, a Vet squad in a Chimera, or 5 FW in a Devilfish (all before upgrades). The Railgun has a good anti-infantry profile with submunitions, is still S10AP1 at 72" and can be supported with Markerlights. It all seems pretty fair once we change the standard of comparison from 5HP superheavies and undercosted HS choices to classic CAD troops. In this light, the Hammerhead is a good platform, it's fairly costed, and the Railgun is a decent weapon.

It's only "subpar" once we start matching them against the AdLance, or cost them uniquely against Riptide or Missileside spam which are seen as the new baseline because of tournament copycats. Unfortunately, that's what happens when you take a game that has very little support for competitive balance, and get invested in the tournament scene where the players are actively searching to break the game in their favor.

Yoyoyo wrote:
A lot in 40k is "subpar". That's because your point of reference is power lists, right?

I understand the need to argue for balance but for fun, let's imagine using troops and dedicated tranports as a baseline, as well as cross-codex 'tank destroyers' like the Prism and Vanq. A Hammerhead is the same price as a Tac squad in a Razorback, a Vet squad in a Chimera, or 5 FW in a Devilfish (all before upgrades). The Railgun has a good anti-infantry profile with submunitions, is still S10AP1 at 72" and can be supported with Markerlights. It all seems pretty fair once we change the standard of comparison from 5HP superheavies and undercosted HS choices to classic CAD troops. In this light, the Hammerhead is a good platform, it's fairly costed, and the Railgun is a decent weapon.

It's only "subpar" once we start matching them against the AdLance, or cost them uniquely against Riptide or Missileside spam which are seen as the new baseline because of tournament copycats. Unfortunately, that's what happens when you take a game that has very little support for competitive balance, and get invested in the tournament scene where the players are actively searching to break the game in their favor.

I would take the devilfish and 5 Fire warriors over the hammerhead. 9/10 times they will be more useful.

Of course this isn't saying much - devilfish are still overcosted for what they bring to the table, and fire warriors can't even take special weapons. I'd take the chimera and vets given the choice to have them as objective secure troops in a tau FOC. At least that way I get S6 at 36" and special weapons.

I think you miss the point. Hammerheads do fine in a conventionally balanced old-school list. They don't see much use in the tournament scene that min-maxes undercosted units and takes 3x Riptides as an auto-include.

Example, competitive types will run 3x Riptides in a 1000pt game. Do you really need S10AP1 or an S6AP4 template in this list? Nope.

Claiming that Hammerheads are simply so woefully underpowered they can't compete, and ignoring the wider context of why, isn't helpful to the greater good, if you know what I mean...

You are the one missing the point man.

Its not a matter of meta, its a matter of the railgun failing to preform its one job, even at the best of conditions, even in a vaccum and even if riptides did not exist at all.
Heck, even if I know my opponent is running a full-on armored list, I still don't want the "god of anti tank" railgun, not to mention the utterly pointless HRR.

Its not a matter of "I got better things to spend points at", its a matter of "I got no reason to field this unit, even in vacuum"
Its a dedicated anti-tank weaponry that simply does not destroy tanks nearly in anything that resembles a reliable matter.

And the fact people keep saying "use markerlight" just proves how much they don't get it-the problem isn't with HITTING, the problem is that even if you hit every time, you still won't take out tanks nearly fast enough for it to matter.

And for a dedicated anti-tank to not be good at killing tanks, that's just makes it unreasonable.


And this is coming from someone how fields 2 railgun hammerheads every time in a "conventional balanced list" because I just like the apperance and style of the tank.
I KNOW they don't work, from infinite testing. the once-in-a-while turn 1 instakill is nice, but more often than not, I just shake my head on how much they DONT hurt anything.

 BoomWolf wrote:
You are the one missing the point man.

Its not a matter of meta, its a matter of the railgun failing to preform its one job, even at the best of conditions, even in a vaccum and even if riptides did not exist at all.
Heck, even if I know my opponent is running a full-on armored list, I still don't want the "god of anti tank" railgun, not to mention the utterly pointless HRR.

Its not a matter of "I got better things to spend points at", its a matter of "I got no reason to field this unit, even in vacuum"
Its a dedicated anti-tank weaponry that simply does not destroy tanks nearly in anything that resembles a reliable matter.

And the fact people keep saying "use markerlight" just proves how much they don't get it-the problem isn't with HITTING, the problem is that even if you hit every time, you still won't take out tanks nearly fast enough for it to matter.

And for a dedicated anti-tank to not be good at killing tanks, that's just makes it unreasonable.


And this is coming from someone how fields 2 railgun hammerheads every time in a "conventional balanced list" because I just like the apperance and style of the tank.
I KNOW they don't work, from infinite testing. the once-in-a-while turn 1 instakill is nice, but more often than not, I just shake my head on how much they DONT hurt anything.

Quoted for truth.

If your argument depends on existing in a vacuum, free of context or challenges, it's not a strong argument. Think about the impact of turn 1 advantage if those "nice" instakills were actually something you (or your opponent) could depend on.

Once again, D-strength Railguns already exist in the Tau codex. Go see if you can find them.

It's pretty obvious they don't belong on a spammable 125pt platform though.

Actually, they don't exist in the tau codex. They exist on 2 things that have never been in the tau codex. And the 2 units that it is on are both overpriced compared to their non-tau alternatives (and over priced in general IMO).

Yep, rail weaponry across the entire game, both GW and FW are overcosted, and underpreforming.

The railgun tigershark, fluff-wise intended to be a titan hunter, is actually highly unlikely to kill one (even a mere knight) over the course of the entire game. the single D shot on a platform that costs over 650 points, has targeting issues (being supersonic) and can't start the game on board at all is just not worth bothering with.

I would not play it if I owned it, even at a 20% point discount.



And the point you are utterly missing is that my argument does not depend on a vacuum, but that it works even in vacuum, let alone the harsher reality where it actually has to compete with other things.
The so-called "master of tank destruction" is incapeable of taking out a simple chimera in any degree of reliability.

A chimera is about half the cost of the railgun hammerhead. and the latter will take an average of about four turns to take it down on it own, before factoring cover that may exist, as it deals about 0.55 HP on average, and has about 11% to get an explode result.
A CHIMERA.

An anti-tank unit that takes 4 turns to kill a tank half its price is USELESS, because it means that during a game, even if unhindered, its unlikely to actually pay itself off!
Would you play any unit that cannot pay itself off under optimal conditions, unless it was tax for something much better? (aka most troops)


God just running the numbers make me regrent running them all the time. I know I love them, and they get me one-shots once in a blue moon that are epic, but they are just horrible.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Yep, rail weaponry across the entire game, both GW and FW are overcosted, and underpreforming.

The railgun tigershark, fluff-wise intended to be a titan hunter, is actually highly unlikely to kill one (even a mere knight) over the course of the entire game. the single D shot on a platform that costs over 650 points, has targeting issues (being supersonic) and can't start the game on board at all is just not worth bothering with.

I would not play it if I owned it, even at a 20% point discount.



And the point you are utterly missing is that my argument does not depend on a vacuum, but that it works even in vacuum, let alone the harsher reality where it actually has to compete with other things.
The so-called "master of tank destruction" is incapeable of taking out a simple chimera in any degree of reliability.

A chimera is about half the cost of the railgun hammerhead. and the latter will take an average of about four turns to take it down on it own, before factoring cover that may exist, as it deals about 0.55 HP on average, and has about 11% to get an explode result.
A CHIMERA.

An anti-tank unit that takes 4 turns to kill a tank half its price is USELESS, because it means that during a game, even if unhindered, its unlikely to actually pay itself off!
Would you play any unit that cannot pay itself off under optimal conditions, unless it was tax for something much better? (aka most troops)

God just running the numbers make me regrent running them all the time. I know I love them, and they get me one-shots once in a blue moon that are epic, but they are just horrible.

How many points is the unit inside that chimera? It's probably veterans at 60 points, plus 30-40 points of gear. Oh what's that? You're now shooting at a unit worth about 155 points. You penetrate on a 3+, on a 2+ you take it out of action for a turn if not the rest of the game. Oh, so now that hammerhead is actually throwing a wrench into you're opponent's strategy, go figure.

No, i'm shooting at the chimera itself.

The extra 60 points of troops and 30-40 points of gear are extra troops and gear.

I might disable it, but it means I need to shoot again next turn, and nothing stops the troopers from disembarking and doing their thing.

By your logic the WS is not OP because you need to pay for the units inside it too.


And the chemira was a randomly chosen unit for the fact its pathetic defensivly compared to real armor.

Predators? I'll need about an entire game's worth of hammerhead shots not considering cover.
Land raider or russ? you are not likely to kill it even if you hit every single turn. again-not even considering possible cover.


Its a dedicated anti-tank gun that cannot kill any tank in the game in any fasion that resembles efficiency. a dedicated unit should be able to do at least twice if not trice its cost in damage to its target of choice over the course of the game, because its not going to do anything of value to any other target. (assuming its not killed naturally, twice or trice its cost over the course of 6 rounds of action.)

The end line is, the railgun hammerhead fails to preform even against its target of choice under optimal conditions, and to top it off in any other conditions its hardly even helping.
Therefor its a bad unit. there is no way around it.
It lacks the firepower to matter. its actually completely safe to ignore it all game long even if you are an armored list-who are its supposed targets of choice.

Yoyoyo wrote:
If your argument depends on existing in a vacuum, free of context or challenges, it's not a strong argument. Think about the impact of turn 1 advantage if those "nice" instakills were actually something you (or your opponent) could depend on.

Once again, D-strength Railguns already exist in the Tau codex. Go see if you can find them.

It's pretty obvious they don't belong on a spammable 125pt platform though.

I disagree. GW's pricing schemes mean nothing to me. I'm talking about actual efficacy.

Ammunition:

Hyper-velocity Slug: S10 AP1 Any vehicle struck by this ammunition must have all occupants roll a toughness test to wound.

HARM: This projectile is comprised of any conductive metal that, upon impact, turns molten and penetrates the vehicle causing substantial damage to both its super structure and internal mechanisms. This weapon causes an additional haywire roll on a successful hit.

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's pretty obvious they don't belong on a spammable 125pt platform though.

Then make the Hammerhead more expensive to justify a powerful gun. IG are supposed to be the army with cheap tanks that make up for poor quality with spamming a dozen of them. Tau are supposed to prefer quality over quantity, and that means the Hammerhead needs to be a scary tank killer even if its point cost has to be increased for balance reasons.

Yeah, a 150 or higher Railhead with a worthy weapon isn't exactly a bad thing.

Ionhead would have to be cheaper though (or upgrade to the Ion Accelerator).

 Peregrine wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's pretty obvious they don't belong on a spammable 125pt platform though.

Then make the Hammerhead more expensive to justify a powerful gun. IG are supposed to be the army with cheap tanks that make up for poor quality with spamming a dozen of them. Tau are supposed to prefer quality over quantity, and that means the Hammerhead needs to be a scary tank killer even if its point cost has to be increased for balance reasons.

A stock Vanquisher is actually 10pts more expensive. What most of the people in this thread want is the Tau equivalent of the Lynx.

Vanquisher is large blast and ordnance. No one wants large blast for it. Ordnance would be a cheap, easy bandaid but doesn't address the base problem.

That's the LRBT, not the Vanq. S8 AP2 Armourbane.

Yoyoyo wrote:
A stock Vanquisher is actually 10pts more expensive.

So? The LR Vanquisher sucks. It's an awful tank that no competitive IG player ever uses. So yes, the Hammerhead should be better. The goal is to make it a good competitive option, not a terrible unit that might be better than some even worse unit.

Ammunition:

Hyper-velocity Slug: S10 AP1 Any vehicle struck by this ammunition must have all occupants roll a toughness test to wound.

HARM: S10 AP1 This projectile is comprised of any conductive metal that, upon impact, turns molten and penetrates the vehicle causing substantial damage to both its super structure and internal mechanisms. This weapon causes an additional haywire roll on a successful hit.

I agree the D3 extra HP is ridiculous - but I don't think it's too far off from where it should be given the price. Just give it some more options and minor buffs.
The thing should obviously have "Ignores Cover" as a default anyway since no amount of cover short of a cliffside is going to stop a railgun slug or even remotely change its course in the short term.

Why exactly is D3 HP ridiculous again? So it's okay for Tau to incinerate entire squads of 2+ armor with one shot, but they can't kill a tank?

Martel732 wrote:
Why exactly is D3 HP ridiculous again? So it's okay for Tau to incinerate entire squads of 2+ armor with one shot, but they can't kill a tank?

because no other AT weapons have this special quality. Including the ones that are supposed to be more effective at destroying a tank than the railgun (melta/fusion weapons).

 TheSilo wrote:
I might be mistaken, but aren't railguns S10 Ap1? As in, they're literally the strongest weapon possible in the game. Or am I mistaken?

You are not mistaken my friend.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Railheads are cheap. Hard to justify taking one when you can take a riptide for just a little bit more...and be invincible. I see now why you cry. It doesn't automatically destroy things like riptides.

Actually, riptides and hammerheads do not compete, at all. Different slots.

 AtoMaki wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Why exactly is D3 HP ridiculous again? So it's okay for Tau to incinerate entire squads of 2+ armor with one shot, but they can't kill a tank?

because no other AT weapons have this special quality. Including the ones that are supposed to be more effective at destroying a tank than the railgun (melta/fusion weapons).

So? Think outside the box. I think the railgun should be far more powerful than melta/fusion weapon. So I guess we can conceptually disagree there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 TheSilo wrote:
I might be mistaken, but aren't railguns S10 Ap1? As in, they're literally the strongest weapon possible in the game. Or am I mistaken?

You are not mistaken my friend.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Railheads are cheap. Hard to justify taking one when you can take a riptide for just a little bit more...and be invincible. I see now why you cry. It doesn't automatically destroy things like riptides.

Yes S10 AP 1 is the current top, but all that really shows is how poor individual shots are in Spamhammer 40K. As much as I hate Riptides, I admit that the railhead should be much, much better.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Actually, riptides and hammerheads do not compete, at all. Different slots.

Everything competes with everything for points. They don't compete for the same slots true. After you've got 3 riptides and your required HQ and troops - you really don't have any points left for hammerheads.

 BoomWolf wrote:
No, i'm shooting at the chimera itself.

The extra 60 points of troops and 30-40 points of gear are extra troops and gear.

I might disable it, but it means I need to shoot again next turn, and nothing stops the troopers from disembarking and doing their thing.

By your logic the WS is not OP because you need to pay for the units inside it too.


And the chemira was a randomly chosen unit for the fact its pathetic defensivly compared to real armor.

Predators? I'll need about an entire game's worth of hammerhead shots not considering cover.
Land raider or russ? you are not likely to kill it even if you hit every single turn. again-not even considering possible cover.


Its a dedicated anti-tank gun that cannot kill any tank in the game in any fasion that resembles efficiency. a dedicated unit should be able to do at least twice if not trice its cost in damage to its target of choice over the course of the game, because its not going to do anything of value to any other target. (assuming its not killed naturally, twice or trice its cost over the course of 6 rounds of action.)

The end line is, the railgun hammerhead fails to preform even against its target of choice under optimal conditions, and to top it off in any other conditions its hardly even helping.
Therefor its a bad unit. there is no way around it.
It lacks the firepower to matter. its actually completely safe to ignore it all game long even if you are an armored list-who are its supposed targets of choice.

I agree - I made a suggestion earlier.

Tau have too many experimental weapons and support systems that for the next codex, I'd like to see become standard issue. From what I can tell Tau are perhaps the only army that have active scientists and R&D departments that churn out new gear.

All tau tanks should have the ability to be upgraded with tank commander that wears XV02 Pilot Battlesuit. Modify the rules from Longstrike to keep him unique.
- This lets games workshop still sell the Longstrike model, but they throw in a few more arms and heads on a sprue so you can model them differently. - everyone would by 3-4 of these rather than 1.

This upgrade costs - 50 pts
Gives the model:
BS 5
Overwatch - keep rule that allows multiple overwatch per phase
Supporting Fire
Blacksun filter

Also - up the tank cost to 175 base but change the gun to:
Primary weapon with Armorbane which allows - roll 3d6 and pick the two highest and add them for armor pen
Ignore cover

Give a special rule - If the armour pen roll =20 the vehicle is insta killed and you roll on the catastrophic dmg table for super heavies, if the pen roll = 15 its auto explode results non-super heavies (Land Raiders, etc..) No FNP, armor or cover saves - only invuln
For non av units - roll the armor pen roll as well. if the number is double the number of wounds the model is insta killed. No FNP, armor or cover saves - only invuln

Kitted out with Spines, Pod, submunitions it's a 250pt tank.

You now have a land raider priced tank killer that lives up to the rail gun fluff but leaves GW room to add tau super heavies with D weapons shenanigans. The gun is still 1 shot but that 1 shot has a good chance to hit and could be twinlinked with enough marker lights.

Guys, before just randomly offering rules suggestions and hoping to see what sticks, let's step back and consider things with a little wider vision.

Regarding looking to tournament lists, competitive players spam the most broken OP units in the highest quantities possible to increase their chances of winning. It's a terrible place to establish what gameplay is supposed to look like. This is not a good standard of measure.

Second, 40k is a tabletop tactics game, not a CCG or RTS. You shouldn't be winning by your list, hard counters, or OP units that destroy three times their cost. You should by winning by your grasp of tactics and smart decisions with the units you have. Is anyone in disagreement with this?

The Chimera example is not a bad thing. You should be rightfully be punished for plinking away at front armour like a dummy instead of hitting the AV10 side. That's why anti-tank weapons are typically used in pairs and sited where they can get at the side armour. Evaporating front armour regardless of circumstance is the realm of superheavies.

Removing as basic a concept as "flank shot" from your codex isn't really improving gameplay!

So if the competitive scene isn't the place to start, or mathhammer, what now?. Let's try a new angle, what you want the game to actually look like by the time you're finished with it. Why isn't anyone mentioning the Lynx? It's a lightweight platform with a D-strength 'railgun'. Should Tau have one? Is the gradual creep towards superheavies going to make 40k a better game? What's the unintended consequences of saying "if I point my Hammerhead at a target, it should go boom?"

I don't have all the answers, but there's very little consideration of these questions in this thread from what I see. Or even the most basic obvious things like cross-codex balance! The issues with single shot and the vehicle damage table apply equally to the Prism, Vanquisher, Doomsday Ark, etc.

Finally, if you say "D-weapon" you would have to price an improved railgun fairly, which explains why there's all this jumping through hoops with special rules to get a D-weapon equivalent for 1/3rd of the price. Just try houseruling Lynx stats on your Hammerheads for now, we will probably all learn something.

Think of it as "balance testing".

With Longstrike its not that bad. 170pts for hitting on 2s, and then tankhunter means your probably gonna pen anything that isn't AV14 and even then there's still a decent chance.

Then with that pen it'll get an explodes! result a third of the time.

The only time Longstrike isn't great is against Titans which he gained his fame for killing. He should probably have preferred enemy Imperial Knights instead of/as well as imperial guard.

A standard Hammerhead is BS4 so it's still good but when it's probably failing to hit and to pen rolls a third of the time every fail is costly. That's where ordnance would be helpful.

I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

"This is not a good standard of measure. "

If those lists are legal, why isn't it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brennonjw wrote:
I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

Because math shows that S10 AP 1 is actually terrible at killing tanks.

 Brennonjw wrote:
I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

Because they way the game is currently set up, a single S10 AP1 a turn is actually kind of pointless.
In order to make the single shot weapons useful you would have to rework the the current vehicle damage system to something better, where it can reliably do more damage per turn to a heavily armored vehicle than multiple shots from a much weaker source.
As it is now, stripping hull points with mid strength decent rate of fire weapons are way more effective than fishing for that explodes result, even when using an AP1 weapon.
I think the hammerhead itself is fine in theory, it's the damage system that I feel needs the rework.

Martel732 wrote:
"This is not a good standard of measure. "

If those lists are legal, why isn't it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brennonjw wrote:
I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

Because math shows that S10 AP 1 is actually terrible at killing tanks.

It's really not that bad when you are close to auto hitting with marker lights. Pens from AP1 like 3-6 rolled on the dice too. Good stuff happens. Guns fall off, immobilization, explosions. It's just a 125 point tank and it will likely survive the entire game with it's range.

The elephant in the room is Imperial Knights. Invul saves stand a good chance of negating any effect from a single shot weapon, hurts more if it's worth backing up with Markerlights. AP1 doesn't cripple superheavies even if it pens (superheavies are not stunned, immo'd, etc). So in this case, you're not getting those benefits on the damage table.

Knights have both these features and are very popular amongst the competitive set. You can say "no superheavies" with your friends, and happily play classic 40k combined arms with some semblance of balance. Hardline tourney players (poor souls) don't get that luxury. They endure cheese powergaming 24/7 and otherwise lube up to be on the recieving end of the worst offenders in 40k's competitive meta. The passion, the pain, the Serpent spam, the need of a shower after 14 straight hours standing around in a cheap hotel ballroom.... Las Vegas, here we come!

Do these guys need a D weapon? Yeah, probably. But they also are probably triple riptide stacker types, so they deserve all the frustration they get. I'm sure GW/FW will eventually make a Tau superheavy at an exorbitant price. If so, hopefully you will be able to live in the cardboard box it comes in.

Anyways, back in the world of mere mortals and not competitive powergamers, tank destroyers like the Prism/Vanq/Hammerhead shouldn't necesarily auto-pen AV14. There's sometimes issues in getting flank shots (which is a good thing, since that's half the point of deep striking) but flanking shouldn't be impossible. 40k used to be played on a bigger table, and among your friends you can do that. You can also houserule Ordnance to help out if one player is struggling. But if you're willing to houserule, you're probably also not going to field AdLance or Steel Host against 250pts of Hammerheads, since you're not going to encourage a list mismatch for advantage.

As for hardline competitive players, well, no wonder you look for help on forums (since GW doesn't have a professional and involved balance team with an eye on competition, like say, Blizzard). "Legal" is not synonomous with fun, balanced, a good use of your time, etc. I used to play Warcraft 3 and that game had growing pains with balance that rendered it unplayable. Anyone remember sorc spam? Competitive players will ALWAYS spam the most OP shizz they can get away with and completely ruin the game in the pursuit of victory. That's why you change the laws as needed, since human nature assuredly won't.

Make Tau rail weapons ignore vehicle invuln saves. The rule could be "No Shielding Strong Enough"

It does amuse me so when Knights go boom.

The hull points system has skewed weapons as much as it has balanced them. the rail gun is among those it hurt. Hull points are a computer game mechanic that is nonsensical when applied to tabletop 40k. A better solution would have been to retain the old damage charts with the following changes. If a weapon destroyed or result came up and all weapons have already been KO'd then the result defaults to immobilised, and vica versa. And if if both weapons and molbility have been destroyed then then the result defaults to vehicle destroyed. Or something along those lines, there were no need for hull points ...in my very outspoken opinion.

 thegreatchimp wrote:
The hull points system has skewed weapons as much as it has balanced them. the rail gun is among those it hurt. Hull points are a computer game mechanic that is nonsensical when applied to tabletop 40k. A better solution would have been to retain the old damage charts with the following changes. If a weapon destroyed or result came up and all weapons have already been KO'd then the result defaults to immobilised, and vica versa. And if if both weapons and molbility have been destroyed then then the result defaults to vehicle destroyed. Or something along those lines, there were no need for hull points ...in my very outspoken opinion.

I understand this position, as spammy HP scrubbers are better AT than dedicated AT guns.

Yoyoyo wrote:
The elephant in the room is Imperial Knights. Invul saves stand a good chance of negating any effect from a single shot weapon, hurts more if it's worth backing up with Markerlights. AP1 doesn't cripple superheavies even if it pens (superheavies are not stunned, immo'd, etc). So in this case, you're not getting those benefits on the damage table.

Knights have both these features and are very popular amongst the competitive set. You can say "no superheavies" with your friends, and happily play classic 40k combined arms with some semblance of balance. Hardline tourney players (poor souls) don't get that luxury. They endure cheese powergaming 24/7 and otherwise lube up to be on the recieving end of the worst offenders in 40k's competitive meta. The passion, the pain, the Serpent spam, the need of a shower after 14 straight hours standing around in a cheap hotel ballroom.... Las Vegas, here we come!

Do these guys need a D weapon? Yeah, probably. But they also are probably triple riptide stacker types, so they deserve all the frustration they get. I'm sure GW/FW will eventually make a Tau superheavy at an exorbitant price. If so, hopefully you will be able to live in the cardboard box it comes in.

Anyways, back in the world of mere mortals and not competitive powergamers, tank destroyers like the Prism/Vanq/Hammerhead shouldn't necesarily auto-pen AV14. There's sometimes issues in getting flank shots (which is a good thing, since that's half the point of deep striking) but flanking shouldn't be impossible. 40k used to be played on a bigger table, and among your friends you can do that. You can also houserule Ordnance to help out if one player is struggling. But if you're willing to houserule, you're probably also not going to field AdLance or Steel Host against 250pts of Hammerheads, since you're not going to encourage a list mismatch for advantage.

As for hardline competitive players, well, no wonder you look for help on forums (since GW doesn't have a professional and involved balance team with an eye on competition, like say, Blizzard). "Legal" is not synonomous with fun, balanced, a good use of your time, etc. I used to play Warcraft 3 and that game had growing pains with balance that rendered it unplayable. Anyone remember sorc spam? Competitive players will ALWAYS spam the most OP shizz they can get away with and completely ruin the game in the pursuit of victory. That's why you change the laws as needed, since human nature assuredly won't.

To be quite honest I think hammerheads are fine against IK. For the cost of a knight you can take 3 hammer heads. On certain boards you could probably have at least 3 turns of shooting from each one before it's on you. Even assuming hes got sheilds for each shot. with some marker light hits - your chances of outright destroying it aren't that bad. I'd say if the game went on for a while that a knight would have little to no chance against the hammer heads...obviosuly this is an in a vacuum kind of way of looking at it but I know for a fact that AP1 pens ruin knights and hammer heads should be able to get several of them. Obvious when you start taking many knights things become more difficult for a TAC tau list.

I don't know mate, I think there's some serious issues with scaling. I've never seen 8-9 Hammerheads w/Submunitions in a list, even on Dakka. I'm guessing there are good reasons for that. Outside that vacuum, Markerlight sources cost money, need to get in range, need to survive, etc. And you can't sacrifice versatility against most of the lists in the game just to stay even with AdLance.

If you really want to stick with the whole 7th edition solutions, where you might see 1000+ points of heavy AV and the traditional FOC doesn't scale, you should give the Tau an armour formation with appropriate bonuses or special rules. Extra Markerlights, "No Shield Strong Enough", whatever. In fact one already existed in Apoc.

ftp://ftp.sonic.net/pub/users/planes/games/wh40k/apoc/ApocTauArmoredCadre.pdf

I'm not personally a fan of making 40k "Apoc light" but at least you're not affecting the regular FOC unit this way. And by using a formation you can make Hammerheads taken in large quantities less of a burden on the rest of the army, since they become more cost-effective.

Scaling has a huge impact on balance. Even MT can do well at low points levels, but not at 1850pts once the big boys come out to play.

High-volume HP scrubbing is too effective if it's replacing dedicated AT weaponry, yes. Very much worth discussing (and it relates back to the HRR versus missleside's issues).

How about something like this?

Overkill: A weapon with this special rule adds 1 to rolls on the vehicle damage chart for each point above the enemy vehicle's armor rolled.

For example, if firing a Railgun (S10) at a Rhino front (AV11) and you rolled a 3 to pen, you'd get an additional +2 to the damage chart roll (not counting the AP2 bonus), to simulate the shot hitting with such force that a slight miss isn't going to matter. Similarly, if you hit an AV10 vehicle with such a weapon, you'd simply automatically demolish it, seeing as most AV10 vehicles are flimsy at best.

EDIT: On second thought, this could become an USR added to stuff like lascannons, Railguns, Vanquisher Cannons and other single-shot non-melta anti-tank weapons to make them stack up to mid-S spamming better.

Hmm, how about on 6s to penetrate the hit inflicts an extra D3 Hull Points to represent the complete passage of the shell through the vehicle?

This could also be a bonus number of wounds on a roll of 6 to wound for representing the massive trauma the shell causes to Monstrous and Gargantuan creatures

Well personally I think that giving all rail weapons (not just railguns) Lance would go a long way.

Lance may be a tad strong in strength 10 weapons (penetrate AV 14 on a 3+) and it would allow Rail Rifles to glance Land Raiders on 6s.

Railgun(x)

A Hit from a Railgun always glances. On a roll of X+, it also penetrates.

Railgun:
36" range, Rapidfire, Railgun(6).

Heavy Railgun
60" range, Twin-Linked, Railgun(4)

Railhead
72" Range, Railgun(2).

Adjust points to taste. Gun is now flavourful and effective rather than bland and hokey.

Jefffar wrote:
Lance may be a tad strong in strength 10 weapons (penetrate AV 14 on a 3+) and it would allow Rail Rifles to glance Land Raiders on 6s.

Yep that was the point. It effectively gives rail rifles Gauss vs. vehicles and makes the heavy rail rifle and railgun very good against medium or heavy vehicles, with no improvement at all against Monstrous Critters or light vehicles, thus not stepping on the toes of.the HYMP or ion cannon.

Necrons have a S10 Pen 1 Lance Blast.

 chrisrawr wrote:
Railgun(x)

A Hit from a Railgun always glances. On a roll of X+, it also penetrates.

Railgun:
36" range, Rapidfire, Railgun(6).

Heavy Railgun
60" range, Twin-Linked, Railgun(4)

Railhead
72" Range, Railgun(2).

Adjust points to taste. Gun is now flavourful and effective rather than bland and hokey.

So what you're saying is that a squad of pathfinders with rail rifles can take out a land raider in 1 turn....

Alcibiades wrote:

Jefffar wrote:
Lance may be a tad strong in strength 10 weapons (penetrate AV 14 on a 3+) and it would allow Rail Rifles to glance Land Raiders on 6s.

Yep that was the point. It effectively gives rail rifles Gauss vs. vehicles and makes the heavy rail rifle and railgun very good against medium or heavy vehicles, with no improvement at all against Monstrous Critters or light vehicles, thus not stepping on the toes of.the HYMP or ion cannon.

Necrons have a S10 Pen 1 Lance Blast.

How about instead a +1 to penetration rolls. Gives the HRR a chance to pen even AV 14, the Railgun a decent chance against it and the RR doesn't suddenly become potent enough to punch the frontal armour of a Leeman Rus.

Jefffar wrote:
Lance may be a tad strong in strength 10 weapons (penetrate AV 14 on a 3+) and it would allow Rail Rifles to glance Land Raiders on 6s.

I was thinking lance is far too weak for a rail gun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kingbobbito wrote:

 chrisrawr wrote:
Railgun(x)

A Hit from a Railgun always glances. On a roll of X+, it also penetrates.

Railgun:
36" range, Rapidfire, Railgun(6).

Heavy Railgun
60" range, Twin-Linked, Railgun(4)

Railhead
72" Range, Railgun(2).

Adjust points to taste. Gun is now flavourful and effective rather than bland and hokey.

So what you're saying is that a squad of pathfinders with rail rifles can take out a land raider in 1 turn....

Sounds fine to me. The Tau are supposed to be advanced, right?

Martel732 wrote:

Jefffar wrote:
Lance may be a tad strong in strength 10 weapons (penetrate AV 14 on a 3+) and it would allow Rail Rifles to glance Land Raiders on 6s.

I was thinking lance is far too weak for a rail gun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kingbobbito wrote:

 chrisrawr wrote:
Railgun(x)

A Hit from a Railgun always glances. On a roll of X+, it also penetrates.

Railgun:
36" range, Rapidfire, Railgun(6).

Heavy Railgun
60" range, Twin-Linked, Railgun(4)

Railhead
72" Range, Railgun(2).

Adjust points to taste. Gun is now flavourful and effective rather than bland and hokey.

So what you're saying is that a squad of pathfinders with rail rifles can take out a land raider in 1 turn....

Sounds fine to me. The Tau are supposed to be advanced, right?

Pathfinders can only take 3 rail rifles per squad at a high price
Their stat lines are terrible: 11 points + 15 per rifle - that replaces their markerlight
WS 2 BS3 T 3 W 1 5+ - so its not like you can't kill them easily.

Jefffar wrote:
Hmm, how about on 6s to penetrate the hit inflicts an extra D3 Hull Points to represent the complete passage of the shell through the vehicle?

This could also be a bonus number of wounds on a roll of 6 to wound for representing the massive trauma the shell causes to Monstrous and Gargantuan creatures

I could get on board with this.

I could even get on board with giving the heavy rail gun ordnance so it could roll 2 dice for penetration.

If you're going to discuss balance guys, always look cross-codex. The Rail Rifle is an imperial plasma equivalent -- it has the same price and can take on roughly the same targets. Better range, no "gets hot", better AP. But only S6, which is how GW attempted balance at the time. For 15pts, it's not too badly balanced in theory.

The Ion Rifle is cheaper and is S7 AP4, S8 AP4 with overcharge. It's profile is basically light anti-infantry (can't explode vehicles or negate MEQ+ saves). But wait! Is it also a better anti-AV weapon? Probably, because it's easier to glance AV with S7/S8, easier to pen, and AP1 is nice but not needed to kill vehicles. I didn't run stats but I imagine yes, there is a problem.

Here is another way to help pricey AP+ weapons, simply end AP- HP scrubbing. If a weapon doesn't have a minimum AP3 rating, it can't hurt armour at AV11+. At all.

No more S6/S7 spam, Lascannons and Krak necessarily supplant autocannons for anti-AV+, and Railguns (with that AP1) suddenly become more attractive if you want to stop anything even as weak as a Rhino. If you want to kill armour, you don't take a "S7" weapon, you take a weapon that can penetrate armour (AP1/2/3). Secondary effects are that with less mid-strength, high-volume shooting on the board, it's safer to run troops again. A lot of underused weapons would get a lot more attractive (HK/Seeker missiles), and a lot of silly high RoF weapons would get used less. Perfect example of this silliness is Punisher Pasks being the preferred option to glance down AV with an AP- weapon. Cmon yo. Take an anti-armor weapon.

You'd have to do a mess of balancing and changes after, but you're improving the core mechanics rather than layering on overcomplicated extra rules to sidestep addressing a real problem. It's not like you'd take 2 units of Pathfinders for 6x 30" Rail rifles when you could get a Missileside unit under the current ruleset -- the Missilesides are more versatile, have S7 to glance up to AV13, put out far more firepower, use Markerlights more efficiently, have more wounds, equivalent or better range, and get a 2+ save.

Nobody likes when their toys get nerfed though!

Martel732 wrote:
Sounds fine to me. The Tau are supposed to be advanced, right?

Hmm, if you go down that road you'll get people like me stating. "Power armour is supposed to give near immunity to small arms fire therefore I think power armour should give a 2+ save on a D20." and so forth... I'm tolerant of the disparity between the power of things in the fluff and on the tabletop, if only in the interest of keeping the game practically playable.

Yoyoyo wrote:
If you're going to discuss balance guys, always look cross-codex. The Rail Rifle is an imperial plasma equivalent -- it has the same price and can take on roughly the same targets. Better range, no "gets hot", better AP. But only S6, which is how GW attempted balance at the time. For 15pts, it's not too badly balanced in theory.

The Ion Rifle is cheaper and is S7 AP4, S8 AP4 with overcharge. It's profile is basically light anti-infantry (can't explode vehicles or negate MEQ+ saves). But wait! Is it also a better anti-AV weapon? Probably, because it's easier to glance AV with S7/S8, easier to pen, and AP1 is nice but not needed to kill vehicles. I didn't run stats but I imagine yes, there is a problem.

Here is another way to help pricey AP+ weapons, simply end AP- HP scrubbing. If a weapon doesn't have a minimum AP3 rating, it can't hurt armour at AV11+. At all.

No more S6/S7 spam, Lascannons and Krak necessarily supplant autocannons for anti-AV+, and Railguns (with that AP1) suddenly become more attractive if you want to stop anything even as weak as a Rhino. If you want to kill armour, you don't take a "S7" weapon, you take a weapon that can penetrate armour (AP1/2/3). Secondary effects are that with less mid-strength, high-volume shooting on the board, it's safer to run troops again. A lot of underused weapons would get a lot more attractive (HK/Seeker missiles), and a lot of silly high RoF weapons would get used less. Perfect example of this silliness is Punisher Pasks being the preferred option to glance down AV with an AP- weapon. Cmon yo. Take an anti-armor weapon.

You'd have to do a mess of balancing and changes after, but you're improving the core mechanics rather than layering on overcomplicated extra rules to sidestep addressing a real problem. It's not like you'd take 2 units of Pathfinders for 6x 30" Rail rifles when you could get a Missileside unit under the current ruleset -- the Missilesides are more versatile, have S7 to glance up to AV13, put out far more firepower, use Markerlights more efficiently, have more wounds, equivalent or better range, and get a 2+ save.

Nobody likes when their toys get nerfed though!

So far your complaints all come from a desire to overhaul the underlying game in its entirety. Try to stay on-track with the focus of the thread, which is strictly "improving the tau's weapons." Limited scope, limited intent. Rail weapons are overcosted and underperforming across the board, and this is a thread for proposed boosts that would be acceptable given a points increase proportionate to the upgrade.

Try to provide useful feedback and constructive criticism within this scope, rather than complaining about the state of the game not being something you like.

To re-cap: this thread is about how the Railhead and other rail weapons are inconsistent in their intended purpose, and that their gameplay does not line up with fluff in a big way, and about what can be done to improve this situation.
It is not about how power armour isn't strong enough or how there's other weapons with similar statlines.

Thank you!

What used to make railguns scary was that you could have 9 twin linked ST 10, AP1 shots with a range of 72 inches in a standard FOC.

Now the standard FOC lets you either have 3 St10, AP1 shots with 72 inch range or 9 twin-linked St 8, AP1, 60 inch shots. While the latter still does a number on light armour and MCs, the ability of the Tau to kill heavy armour from more than 9 inches away has essentially disappeared this edition.

Regaining this loss is a fair bit of the reason behind this thread, though doing so in a way that doesn't break the game is the tricky part.

 thegreatchimp wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Sounds fine to me. The Tau are supposed to be advanced, right?

Hmm, if you go down that road you'll get people like me stating. "Power armour is supposed to give near immunity to small arms fire therefore I think power armour should give a 2+ save on a D20." and so forth... I'm tolerant of the disparity between the power of things in the fluff and on the tabletop, if only in the interest of keeping the game practically playable.

It's too great of a disparity in this case.

 chrisrawr wrote:
So far your complaints all come from a desire to overhaul the underlying game in its entirety. Try to stay on-track with the focus of the thread, which is strictly "improving the tau's weapons." Limited scope, limited intent. Rail weapons are overcosted and underperforming across the board, and this is a thread for proposed boosts that would be acceptable given a points increase proportionate to the upgrade.

Try to provide useful feedback and constructive criticism within this scope, rather than complaining about the state of the game not being something you like.

To re-cap: this thread is about how the Railhead and other rail weapons are inconsistent in their intended purpose, and that their gameplay does not line up with fluff in a big way, and about what can be done to improve this situation.
It is not about how power armour isn't strong enough or how there's other weapons with similar statlines.

Thank you!

I don't have an overwhelming desire to overhaul the game. I'm making observations, drawing conclusions from them, and seeing where they lead.

It's very easy to "fix the railgun". Lower price, bump strength, hand out special rules. What is hard, however, is to create a balanced game out of many asymmetrical pieces, which is why you need to take a holistic approach. And if you can't do that, you have no business suggesting balance "solutions" that consider neither what makes a certain unit weak, or the secondary effects of improving it.

Considering GW has no feedback mechanism or real-time balance team, this thread is all theory anyway. So if you think what I said was wrong in any way, feel free to explain why.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 chrisrawr wrote:
So far your complaints all come from a desire to overhaul the underlying game in its entirety. Try to stay on-track with the focus of the thread, which is strictly "improving the tau's weapons." Limited scope, limited intent. Rail weapons are overcosted and underperforming across the board, and this is a thread for proposed boosts that would be acceptable given a points increase proportionate to the upgrade.

Try to provide useful feedback and constructive criticism within this scope, rather than complaining about the state of the game not being something you like.

To re-cap: this thread is about how the Railhead and other rail weapons are inconsistent in their intended purpose, and that their gameplay does not line up with fluff in a big way, and about what can be done to improve this situation.
It is not about how power armour isn't strong enough or how there's other weapons with similar statlines.

Thank you!

I don't have an overwhelming desire to overhaul the game. I'm making observations, drawing conclusions from them, and seeing where they lead.

It's very easy to "fix the railgun". Lower price, bump strength, hand out special rules. What is hard, however, is to create a balanced game out of many asymmetrical pieces, which is why you need to take a holistic approach. And if you can't do that, you have no business suggesting balance "solutions" that consider neither what makes a certain unit weak, or the secondary effects of improving it.

Considering GW has no feedback mechanism or real-time balance team, this thread is all theory anyway. So if you think what I said was wrong in any way, feel free to explain why.

You've got "fix" and "buff" mixed up.

Also, you don't have a shop that lets you use homerules? It's definitely not theory-craft for me. I run my railguns with additional/ess vehicle damage table for over/underpenetration at 175 points and 4 hull points before additional upgrades - the always glances and x chance to additional pen was also excellent back in 5th edition, but strips a lot of hullpoints now, which is why I only mentioned it as a secondary offering (would be priced at 200, 4hp as well).

Check out the Vehicle Design Rules thread for more ways to alter the Tau Vehicles with the intention of seeking greater effectiveness and balanced points cost. I run all my homebrew with a 10% point tax rounded off to the nearest 5. The Overpenetration rule costs 25 points per shot (2.5x more than haywire). The Railgun rule costs 45. Both are Addons.

Well, if you give the railgun Lance it has an about 22% chance of destroying a Land Raider in one hit, if it hits. (2/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 chance to Explode = 2/9).

If you give the Heavy Rail Rifle (which is actually the weapon that I think needs real imporovement) Lance it has an about 11% chance to one-shot a Land Raider on a successful hit. (1/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 Explode chance = 1/9).

Is that really too much? What was it in 5th edition?

In 5E you could pen a Raider 33% of the time on a hit, explodes 33% of the time, wrecked 50% of the time, immobilized or take a weapon of your choice off it over 75% of the time.

On a glance, you still had a 17% chance to wreck it.

Alcibiades wrote:
Well, if you give the railgun Lance it has an about 22% chance of destroying a Land Raider in one hit, if it hits. (2/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 chance to Explode = 2/9).

If you give the Heavy Rail Rifle (which is actually the weapon that I think needs real imporovement) Lance it has an about 11% chance to one-shot a Land Raider on a successful hit. (1/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 Explode chance = 1/9).

Is that really too much? What was it in 5th edition?

I still think those numbers are too low. A weapon with the purpose and cost of the railhead should kill a LR at least 50% of the time. Remember that it is directly competing with a unit that gets *24* shots. The railhead gets *one*. ONE.

Martel732 wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
Well, if you give the railgun Lance it has an about 22% chance of destroying a Land Raider in one hit, if it hits. (2/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 chance to Explode = 2/9).

If you give the Heavy Rail Rifle (which is actually the weapon that I think needs real imporovement) Lance it has an about 11% chance to one-shot a Land Raider on a successful hit. (1/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 Explode chance = 1/9).

Is that really too much? What was it in 5th edition?

I still think those numbers are too low. A weapon with the purpose and cost of the railhead should kill a LR at least 50% of the time. Remember that it is directly competing with a unit that gets *24* shots. The railhead gets *one*. ONE.

The unit that gets 24 shots costs over twice as much (I think?) and can't hurt the Land Raider at all.

No weapon should kill a 250-point model at least 50% of the time, I think.

A Lance railgun will Pen 2/3 of the time, usually causing somehing like Weapon Destroyed and Immobilized, with a 33% chance of just blowing the thing up. I think that is great.

Martel732 wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
Well, if you give the railgun Lance it has an about 22% chance of destroying a Land Raider in one hit, if it hits. (2/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 chance to Explode = 2/9).

If you give the Heavy Rail Rifle (which is actually the weapon that I think needs real imporovement) Lance it has an about 11% chance to one-shot a Land Raider on a successful hit. (1/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 Explode chance = 1/9).

Is that really too much? What was it in 5th edition?

I still think those numbers are too low. A weapon with the purpose and cost of the railhead should kill a LR at least 50% of the time. Remember that it is directly competing with a unit that gets *24* shots. The railhead gets *one*. ONE.

50% chance to kill a 250+ point model at 72" for 125 points? No. That's a completely unrealistic and unbalanced vision of the game.

Units can be powerful, long-ranged, or cheap. You can have any two of those, you cannot have all three.

 TheSilo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
Well, if you give the railgun Lance it has an about 22% chance of destroying a Land Raider in one hit, if it hits. (2/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 chance to Explode = 2/9).

If you give the Heavy Rail Rifle (which is actually the weapon that I think needs real imporovement) Lance it has an about 11% chance to one-shot a Land Raider on a successful hit. (1/3 chance to Pen x 1/3 Explode chance = 1/9).

Is that really too much? What was it in 5th edition?

I still think those numbers are too low. A weapon with the purpose and cost of the railhead should kill a LR at least 50% of the time. Remember that it is directly competing with a unit that gets *24* shots. The railhead gets *one*. ONE.

50% chance to kill a 250+ point model at 72" for 125 points? No. That's a completely unrealistic and unbalanced vision of the game.

Units can be powerful, long-ranged, or cheap. You can have any two of those, you cannot have all three.

I never said it would cost 125 pts.

"Point at unit, remove unit" is bad game design

Alcibiades wrote:
"Point at unit, remove unit" is bad game design

Maybe, but it's how modern armor works and the railhead is the most modern armor-like unit in the game. The kill rate for the M1A2 Abrams is super high. And this game is supposed to be the future. If the railhead is not going to function like modern armor, maybe it shouldn't be in the game. Because right now, it's just a trap choice.

IMO of course


Automatically Appended Next Post:
whoops this was supposed to be attached to an earlier post - sorry


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
"Point at unit, remove unit" is bad game design

Maybe, but it's how modern armor works and the railhead is the most modern armor-like unit in the game. The kill rate for the M1A2 Abrams is super high. And this game is supposed to be the future. If the railhead is not going to function like modern armor, maybe it shouldn't be in the game. Because right now, it's just a trap choice.

This is a game to have fun by having both sides be evenly matched, not an actually military engagement where one side tries to be as unbalanced as possible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess we could play "cavemen vs. Wehrmacht," where one side gets rocks and the other gets tanks but that would not be enjoyable

If the unit is not going to be allowed to work as it should, then I say it should just be removed then. A one-shot weapon in 40K needs to be very reliable or it will just be outshone by all the mid-high ST spammy weapons and never used. Which is exactly what we are seeing now. No matter how you slice it a single pen from AP 1 has a miserable chance of killing a vehicle now and getting that pen against AV 13/14 is inconsistent as well. Terrible.

Martel732 wrote:
If the unit is not going to be allowed to work as it should, then I say it should just be removed then. A one-shot weapon in 40K needs to be very reliable or it will just be outshone by all the mid-high ST spammy weapons and never used. Which is exactly what we are seeing now. No matter how you slice it a single pen from AP 1 has a miserable chance of killing a vehicle now and getting that pen against AV 13/14 is inconsistent as well. Terrible.

Sounds like the right answer is Hammerhead Squadrons then. Let it Spam!

 AtoMaki wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
If the unit is not going to be allowed to work as it should, then I say it should just be removed then. A one-shot weapon in 40K needs to be very reliable or it will just be outshone by all the mid-high ST spammy weapons and never used. Which is exactly what we are seeing now. No matter how you slice it a single pen from AP 1 has a miserable chance of killing a vehicle now and getting that pen against AV 13/14 is inconsistent as well. Terrible.

Sounds like the right answer is Hammerhead Squadrons then. Let it Spam!

That's one possibility for sure.

If you want a model can destroy Land Raiders and Knights with any kind of reliability, the Lynx and Gauss Pylon are your points baseline. Not 125pts, not 170pts, it's actually 400+pts. At this point you're talking about a different unit entirely, and it's a LoW and not a HS choice. Example :

Tau Carcharodon. Hammerhead chassis/options, Heavy Railgun Battery (Str D AP1 110", Primary Weapon, Ordnance 4), 420pts.

If just want minor buffs in your own games and your opponents are ok with it, run Ordnance as a houserule, unlimited Longstrikes, allow squadrons, or design your own custom vehicles exactly as chrisrawr mentioned. Why not? A lot of good suggestions have already come up in this thread.

If you're interested in discussing global balance and the desired endstate for gameplay, you need to look at the entire picture, not just complain your railgun is too ineffective. Should running a mounted Ork army = auto lose against Tau? That's not good design.

To have a more productive discussion, it would be good to reflect which of these three separate discussions we are currently having. All three at once is going to result in a lot of circular arguments.

"If you want a model can destroy Land Raiders and Knights with any kind of reliability, the Lynx and Gauss Pylon are your points baseline. Not 125pts, not 170pts, it's actually 400+pts"

Ridiculous, imo.

Yoyoyo wrote:
If you want a model can destroy Land Raiders and Knights with any kind of reliability, the Lynx and Gauss Pylon are your points baseline. Not 125pts, not 170pts, it's actually 400+pts. At this point you're talking about a different unit entirely, and it's a LoW and not a HS choice. Example :

Tau Carcharodon. Hammerhead chassis/options, Heavy Railgun Battery (Str D AP1 110", Primary Weapon, Ordnance 4), 420pts.

If just want minor buffs in your own games and your opponents are ok with it, run Ordnance as a houserule, unlimited Longstrikes, allow squadrons, or design your own custom vehicles exactly as chrisrawr mentioned. Why not? A lot of good suggestions have already come up in this thread.

If you're interested in discussing global balance and the desired endstate for gameplay, you need to look at the entire picture, not just complain your railgun is too ineffective. Should running a mounted Ork army = auto lose against Tau? That's not good design.

To have a more productive discussion, it would be good to reflect which of these three separate discussions we are currently having. All three at once is going to result in a lot of circular arguments.

Good points all around.

Maybe the real solution, and you can call me crazy, but, is that Tau should move towards being the shooting grey knights equivalent.

They have a small empire
They do everything tactically - they don't suicide their troops or even have hordes to draw from.
They are highly advanced technologically and continue to advance

So in saying that perhaps they should get more expensive but more resilient and generally have fewer models on the table.
So that playing against tau means you drown them in volumn fire and get up the table fast for close combat because they'll cut you down with high power shooting at range with a relatively small force.

Wait... is this or isn't this partially true?

Naaris wrote:
They are highly advanced technologically

This is a common misconception, but the Tau is not advanced technologically. They have effective technology, but they are faaar away from the level you would call "advanced" by 40k standards. In fact, the Orks of all people could show them new tricks (see: the Repulsor Impact Field that is based on Ork Traktor tech - or at least partially, because the Tau couldn't reverse engineer it properly).

Martel732 wrote:
"If you want a model can destroy Land Raiders and Knights with any kind of reliability, the Lynx and Gauss Pylon are your points baseline. Not 125pts, not 170pts, it's actually 400+pts"

Ridiculous, imo.

IMO theres nothing worse than playing a game where your tough centerpiece gets one shot from safe distance before you even get to move it. gotta be honest games like this I'd really like to throw my LR directly into my opponents face or at least stomp on it a little. OFC I don't do this and try to brush it off and laugh and have fun but seriously - A hammer head even without buffs is very dangerous for a raider already. LR start in marker light range regularly - so LR is getting auto hit and no cover most likely. The reason it's dangerous is AP 1. Half the results of a pen are disastrous for a tank with ap1. So at 125 I think it's just fine. Give it ordinance for a 20 point increase and I think you'd see them all over the place.

" A hammer head even without buffs is very dangerous for a raider already"

Not really. (2/3)*(1/3)*(1/3) is a 7.4% chance to take out the land raider. That's pitiful. If you want to throw in immobilization, it goes up to a whopping 11.1% chance. I would never take this unit. Ever.

With markerlights, it goes up to 13.9%. That's still terrible. The problem is that S10 only pens AV 14 33.3% of the time. That just drags down the chances of anything meaningful happening too much.

Martel732 wrote:


It's too great of a disparity in this case.

I understand where you're coming from but is the disparity any worse than in the case of the protective capabilities of terminator armour, for example? I'm all for tweaking rules where it's clear they need it, but I think any power increase has to be subtle.

 thegreatchimp wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


It's too great of a disparity in this case.

I understand where you're coming from but is the disparity any worse than in the case of the protective capabilities of terminator armour, for example? I'm all for tweaking rules where it's clear they need it, but I think any power increase has to be subtle.

GW has blown subtle power increases out of the water. That ship has sailed. See: Wraiths.

So, buff Railguns, because Wraiths.

Nice logic.

I'd like a buff to the railgun and heavy rail rifle for no other reason than they are cool and I would like to see them more often than ion cannons and high-yield missile pods, neither of which are even slightly interesting to look at. HYMPs at least have the very awesome mental image of a massive number of missiles, but that's pure imagination. On a static miniature, they look a bit silly. This is especially shameful after the update to the Broadside; the current model posing with rail "rifle" is one of the reasons I started collecting Tau when I did.

Martel732 wrote:
" A hammer head even without buffs is very dangerous for a raider already"

Not really. (2/3)*(1/3)*(1/3) is a 7.4% chance to take out the land raider. That's pitiful. If you want to throw in immobilization, it goes up to a whopping 11.1% chance. I would never take this unit. Ever.

With markerlights, it goes up to 13.9%. That's still terrible. The problem is that S10 only pens AV 14 33.3% of the time. That just drags down the chances of anything meaningful happening too much.

Considering the LR has 18.78% chance to immobilze or destroy a Hammerhead at twice the cost and half the range. Without MLs two Railheads have just under 21% chance to do the same. A 1/5 chance to invalidate the same number of points on the other side is pretty fair for one round of shooting.

The real problem for anti armor weapons in general is that aside from HP loss there is no real loss of effectiveness when you hit the other 4/5 of the time. Vehicles are a little too all or nothing now.

LR fills a completely different role than the HH. Closest Tau comparison is the Orca, which is 400 points and a superheavy.

Alcibiades wrote:

I guess we could play "cavemen vs. Wehrmacht," where one side gets rocks and the other gets tanks but that would not be enjoyable

I constantly play something like this with footslogging orkses vs IG

 chrisrawr wrote:
LR fills a completely different role than the HH. Closest Tau comparison is the Orca, which is 400 points and a superheavy.

Oh I realize they serve very different functions, in fact the LR I was referring to is rarely taken as well. It really served as a point for point comparison. Two railheads are more offensively point efficient than a LR. They will be more likely to beat the shootiest LR variant in a vacuum.

And that one in five games 2 railheads make a LR useless first turn. Better than 1 in 3 by the second turn and over half the time by turn 3. Hell only about 1 in 6 games does the LR survive past turn 5.

Hell adding the Longstrike upgrade alone more than doubles the chance to immobilized or explode a LR in one turn. From 11.11% to 23.14%.

I'd argue that the ability for railguns to straight up destroy something is fine, but that the real problem is that most of the rest of the time it does nothing of consequence. If I were to make changes I'd make so pens automatically afflict crew shaken and 1-4 would be crew stunned. That way every pen counts, but doesn't always destroy.

The LR is taken less commonly because the underlying game rules make taking more, cheaper things better than less, more-expensive things. This is because the game is heavily disposed toward alpha-strike and less toward action/reaction; there is nothing for a landraider to DO in a game. It has no real meaningful purpose, and making it *better* without absurd points increases makes it blatantly overpowered.

If we were to balance Railheads against LR in a vacuum I would give the LR 6 HP and AV16, ignores extra to-pen dice, and let him have a 3+ armour save and a 3+ save against haywire. All this for 500 points, taken only as dedicated transport for Elites. Now only a few select S10 weapons can meaningfully hurt it and it can put out S9 twinlinked lascannons and drop terminators off exactly where they need to be all day like it's supposed to.

Then I would implement the Rail rule where Rail gets autopen but loses points for rolling less than the AV; a shot can only then explode said LR on a roll of 5 followed by a 6, or a 6 followed by a 5+, at 200 points.

Tautastic wrote:
First of all I like the models of the rail weapons. It is huge, “looks” powerful, and “should” only ever need one shot to take down anything. Unfortunately even a lowly rhino will take multiple shot to consistently destroy it. So with that I want is to make a special rule for rail weapons, “Rail”.

With all the scarcasm I can muster.. lets apply this 'look' to other 40k things. Yes I know we dug these graves before...not an attack but Ironic humor.

SM and and those of common Ilk use propelled powered ammo. Let’s make them S7 cause the should be able to penetrate most vehicles cause they are … powered ammo.
Terminator Armor was built to withstand Plasma cores so all plasma and melta weapons have no effect. And powered ( see below )
SM’s and as above train constantly and live for 100’s of years .. they train constantly including assaulting things. They should be able to assault out of anything… bathrooms , Rhino’s , flyers. Anything you can fit a marine into. Remember ’only built for war. So they spend their Friday nights practicing.. how about assault practice.?
Some Chaos’s Marines are 10,000 years old. They should also be able to assault out of anything even their opponents own vehicles.
Power armor is Powered. So everyone wearing it gets +2 S, runs 2d6 further and can power cell phones and tablets just by touching them.
Eldar wave serpents shields are a ‘wave’ so when fired draw a line from the 45 deg arc out to the end of the table and everything in its arc is hit. And stunned and unhappy.
Orks are large. In fact they get larger the more they fight. In size and bulk they should be able to out muscle most other races. So to apply this new logic.. they should all be S6, S7 for Nob’s and S8 for the bosses. And because they get bigger they should be able to carry Battle cannons.
Necrons are machines.. so no poisoning, fear, pinning, morale or anything involving and emotional test. Metal is harder than flesh so all Necrons should be T6. Be immune to blinding and night fighting rules and be total by ignored by Nids.
Nid should have no FOC. Since they are reactive to the threats , the Nid player should field whatever he needs to beat his opponent (after his opponent deploy) in whatever quanity and repeats every turn as reserves.
IG is dependent on the Imperial Navy. Large capital ships with big guns. Or large battery’s miles away. IG player should be able to fire 2d6 orbital bombardments every turn. Every turn the IG player has a comm. Guy anywhere on the board the scatter each round is reduced by 4 inches.
And lastly .. every inf gun can shoot the length of the table.. cause Damn that’s unrealistic.

Anyway back to all the rule balancing/ math and codex comparing. Thanks for playing

Sarcasm aside, increasing the overall strength of most basic troops and creating a wider disparity between "heavy" and "infantry" weapons would be something nice, but is not the context of this thread.

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe, but it's how modern armor works and the railhead is the most modern armor-like unit in the game. The kill rate for the M1A2 Abrams is super high.

... versus less sophisticated tanks. Amongst the lessons that can be learnt from history, weapons and armour (at least of equivalent technological level) tend to be in something of an equilibrium.
In friendly fire incidents, or even occasions where they have deliberately tried to destroy Abrams tanks that have thrown tracks (to stop the enemy forces recovering and repairing them), the Abrams is highly resistant to its own weapons.
The same applies to other tanks with Chobham armour - for example, only one Challenger 2 has been destroyed in the field, in a friendly fire incident where a HESH round hit the open top hatch and started a fire that detonated the on-board munitions.

In these circumstances, the M829/M256A1 combination isn't actually that impressive - large missiles like the AGM-114 Hellfire are considerably more effective against high end tank armour.

And the Land Raider is definitely in the realm of "high end tank armour" - at least, if we take what it's supposed to do, rather than the rather paltry "equivalent to 300mm of conventional steel armour" description that appears somewhere in the older background (which wouldn't stop RPG warheads developed in the 70s, let alone any of the things they're supposed to survive in the fluff).

However, the railgun is actually very hard to predict, because if it's a true hypervelocity weapon (that is, that the impact is higher than the speed of sound in the target, probably 6,000 m/s or so), then you're into a completely different realm to the much more trivial velocities of the M829 penetrator. Normally, you have concerns about how strong or hard the materials used in your armour are, but at hypervelocity, the impacts are so fast that the forces cannot propagate (much like you cannot hear a supersonic plane until it's gone past). In a figurative sense, the armour is penetrated before it even knows it's been hit.

At this point it's all about how your armour is configured. There's a concept called Whipple shields which are used extensively on space craft (which have to deal with hyper-velocity micrometeors on a regular basis), not entirely different from spaced armour in its approach - basically, one initial layer that smashes the projectile apart (because, in impacts of these speeds, the penetrator is also immediately annihilated... so no penetrating several targets with one railgun shot, sorry), and reduces its coherency so that even though it's still hitting the second layer of armour very fast, it's not doing it all in one place. (And sectional density is a massive concern in penetrating armour).

So, basically, it depends how Land Raider armour is structured internally. Although there's no one "perfect" configuration - what's good versus hypervelocity penetrators would be adversely affected against high mass, low(er) velocity penetrators or certain types of explosive attack (so something like the large and heavy Hellfire previously mentioned would have a field day).

However, that's a level of detail far beyond the WH40K rules, and is entirely the ballisticist in me rambling at length.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe, but it's how modern armor works and the railhead is the most modern armor-like unit in the game. The kill rate for the M1A2 Abrams is super high.

... versus less sophisticated tanks. Amongst the lessons that can be learnt from history, weapons and armour (at least of equivalent technological level) tend to be in something of an equilibrium.
In friendly fire incidents, or even occasions where they have deliberately tried to destroy Abrams tanks that have thrown tracks (to stop the enemy forces recovering and repairing them), the Abrams is highly resistant to its own weapons.
The same applies to other tanks with Chobham armour - for example, only one Challenger 2 has been destroyed in the field, in a friendly fire incident where a HESH round hit the open top hatch and started a fire that detonated the on-board munitions.

In these circumstances, the M829/M256A1 combination isn't actually that impressive - large missiles like the AGM-114 Hellfire are considerably more effective against high end tank armour.

And the Land Raider is definitely in the realm of "high end tank armour" - at least, if we take what it's supposed to do, rather than the rather paltry "equivalent to 300mm of conventional steel armour" description that appears somewhere in the older background (which wouldn't stop RPG warheads developed in the 70s, let alone any of the things they're supposed to survive in the fluff).

However, the railgun is actually very hard to predict, because if it's a true hypervelocity weapon (that is, that the impact is higher than the speed of sound in the target, probably 6,000 m/s or so), then you're into a completely different realm to the much more trivial velocities of the M829 penetrator. Normally, you have concerns about how strong or hard the materials used in your armour are, but at hypervelocity, the impacts are so fast that the forces cannot propagate (much like you cannot hear a supersonic plane until it's gone past). In a figurative sense, the armour is penetrated before it even knows it's been hit.

At this point it's all about how your armour is configured. There's a concept called Whipple shields which are used extensively on space craft (which have to deal with hyper-velocity micrometeors on a regular basis), not entirely different from spaced armour in its approach - basically, one initial layer that smashes the projectile apart (because, in impacts of these speeds, the penetrator is also immediately annihilated... so no penetrating several targets with one railgun shot, sorry), and reduces its coherency so that even though it's still hitting the second layer of armour very fast, it's not doing it all in one place. (And sectional density is a massive concern in penetrating armour).

So, basically, it depends how Land Raider armour is structured internally. Although there's no one "perfect" configuration - what's good versus hypervelocity penetrators would be adversely affected against high mass, low(er) velocity penetrators or certain types of explosive attack (so something like the large and heavy Hellfire previously mentioned would have a field day).

However, that's a level of detail far beyond the WH40K rules, and is entirely the ballisticist in me rambling at length.

What's the kill rate, theoretical or empirical, of the Abrams against other modern armor?

That's hard to know, particularly without defining what counts as "modern" armour.

There's a wide range of different armour technologies (with the passive elements ranging from fairly basic steel or aluminium up to full-blown composites, and reactive elements such as explosive applique that are designed to disrupt incoming projectiles) and while it's common for militaries to spread around a bit of "hey, look how awesome our latest tank armour is" for publicity, unsurprisingly they tend to not reveal what will penetrate it and many of the important details are classified. Most reports of what will defeat the armour on an Abrams come from the public media reporting from war zones. It's not even public for many modern tanks what type of armour they use - it's likely that the composite MBT armour of many NATO forces is derived from Chobham armour, but only the Abrams and Challenger 1 & 2 are publicly acknowledged as so.

It also depends on what the Abrams is firing. The M829 APFSDS round will go through heavier armour than the M830 HEAT (particularly as the composites many MBTs use are often more effective against HEAT than KE), but there are circumstances where the M829 has completely over-penetrated lighter vehicles (such as armoured personnel carriers) and left them functioning - if a bit breezier than before.

 Solar_lion wrote:

With all the scarcasm I can muster.. lets apply this 'look' to other 40k things.

You're spot on with that post. While there are things that need balancing in the rules, "realism" is too much to aspire to in 40k.