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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/12/29/nobody-is-safe-from-the-awesome-power-of-the-tau-empires-new-and-improved-railgun/

Well, this is a thing.

The lethality train has no brakes!

I think if any gun should be that scary, the Railgun is it. I am glad they finally gave it the teeth it deserves.

Holy forkballs!

I am wondering if the Hammerhead is going to BS4+, because BS3+ with access to +1 to hit & hit/wound rerolls is pretty much a guaranteed 10 damage between the weapon damage and the mortal wounds.

That Strat is frakking vicious too!

Wow, that plus (hopefully) added space with where I'm moving means making a Tau Mechanized Infantry list might be possible....

Should be able to one-shot most Dreadnoughts and light vehicles. Low rate of fire might mitigate this, but lists that rely on Raiders, Buggies, Trukks, Dreads, Keepers of Secrets etc will be trouble.

I shudder to think of what the Volcano Cannon will be when they get around to the Astra Militarum codex...

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Should be able to one-shot most Dreadnoughts and light vehicles. Low rate of fire might mitigate this, but lists that rely on Raiders, Buggies, Trukks, Dreads, Keepers of Secrets etc will be trouble.

Or any other regular tank or monster in the game.

Don't forget it can be fired in close combat too and will kill 4 1 wound models pretty much guaranteed despite not being Blast or having more than 1 shot.

Has less than 1/6 odds of 1 shotting russ. Dreads are pretty likely to get one shotted though not quaranteed

tneva82 wrote:
Has less than 1/6 odds of 1 shotting russ. Dreads are pretty likely to get one shotted though not quaranteed

How do you get those odds?

2/3rds to wound and 1/3rd to kill?

Did you factor in rerolls etc.?

Dedicated AT weapon finally good at killing tanks and big monsters. Next up, water wet?

 Gert wrote:
Dedicated AT weapon finally good at killing tanks and big monsters. Next up, water wet?

And medium to heavy infantry, and light infantry.

It kills 4 models out of a unit of guardsmen if it hits and wounds (possibly on a 2+ with reroll and 2+, respectively). That's way more reliable than any d6 blast weapon against the same target

The silly part for me is just auto-ignoring invulnerable saves.

Yep. It kills 2 custodes, 2 and a half Marines, and 4 guardsmen with about the same chance as it has of one-shotting a Predator and only slightly better than it one-shots a Russ.

Right now an HH is 185 points. It's a strong gun that is still on a very expensive and frail chassis.
A glass cannon, really.

 Aenar wrote:
Right now an HH is 185 points. It's a strong gun that is still on a very expensive and frail chassis.
A glass cannon, really.

Yeah, as long as these don't get a ton more durability, I think people are definitely jumping to conclusions. That said, this is quite strong. If the whole book is this strong, then Tau offensive firepower is pretty crazy. That said, they will still have the fatal flaw of struggling to hold points.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 Aenar wrote:
Right now an HH is 185 points. It's a strong gun that is still on a very expensive and frail chassis.
A glass cannon, really.

Yeah, as long as these don't get a ton more durability, I think people are definitely jumping to conclusions. That said, this is quite strong. If the whole book is this strong, then Tau offensive firepower is pretty crazy. That said, they will still have the fatal flaw of struggling to hold points.

If they hit this hard, I can see why they'd lose JSJ (according to the rumors). Being and facing Tau becomes a huge battle of positioning.

 vipoid wrote:
The silly part for me is just auto-ignoring invulnerable saves.

Yeah. There's not even a hint of rationalizing how this works. Just... delete.

As far as 'in the 2nd half of the edition, we add rules to ignore rules' goes, its a bad sign.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Audustum wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 Aenar wrote:
Right now an HH is 185 points. It's a strong gun that is still on a very expensive and frail chassis.
A glass cannon, really.

Yeah, as long as these don't get a ton more durability, I think people are definitely jumping to conclusions. That said, this is quite strong. If the whole book is this strong, then Tau offensive firepower is pretty crazy. That said, they will still have the fatal flaw of struggling to hold points.

If they hit this hard, I can see why they'd lose JSJ (according to the rumors). Being and facing Tau becomes a huge battle of positioning.

Yep. You run at them as fast as you can, they hide as far in the corner as possible. Hurrah for maneuver, 9th edition 40k style.

 vipoid wrote:
The silly part for me is just auto-ignoring invulnerable saves.

I think it's a sign of the bloat in 40k rules. -6 AP, ignoring invulnerable saves and still has to cause mortal wounds.

Funnily enough it's only the mortal wounds that it allows saves against.

Mortal wounds may as well be sacked off from a rules perspective, at this point they're just another type of wound to be caused and the defences against them are only getting more widespread.

Voss wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
The silly part for me is just auto-ignoring invulnerable saves.

Yeah. There's not even a hint of rationalizing how this works. Just... delete.

As far as 'in the 2nd half of the edition, we add rules to ignore rules' goes, its a bad sign.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Audustum wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 Aenar wrote:
Right now an HH is 185 points. It's a strong gun that is still on a very expensive and frail chassis.
A glass cannon, really.

Yeah, as long as these don't get a ton more durability, I think people are definitely jumping to conclusions. That said, this is quite strong. If the whole book is this strong, then Tau offensive firepower is pretty crazy. That said, they will still have the fatal flaw of struggling to hold points.

If they hit this hard, I can see why they'd lose JSJ (according to the rumors). Being and facing Tau becomes a huge battle of positioning.

Yep. You run at them as fast as you can, they hide as far in the corner as possible. Hurrah for maneuver, 9th edition 40k style.

I think your table is supposed to be arranged such taht sitting in an actual corner doesn't let you see very much. Maneuver in 40k is very contingent on good terrain tables.

 vipoid wrote:
The silly part for me is just auto-ignoring invulnerable saves.

And AP-6. So, it hits, it wounds, you eat d3+6D+3MWs. Ouch.

I don’t understand the purpose of AP-6, what am I missing?
AP-5 bypasses a 2+ save and there aren’t any 1+ saves (are there?)

Aash wrote:
I don’t understand the purpose of AP-6, what am I missing?
AP-5 bypasses a 2+ save and there aren’t any 1+ saves (are there?)

There are functional 1+ saves from units that have a 2+ save and either storm shields or if they're within light cover or another rule giving them a +1 to their armour saving throws. I think the -6 is there for the fringe cases so you basically don't have a save either way.

 Grimskul wrote:

Aash wrote:
I don’t understand the purpose of AP-6, what am I missing?
AP-5 bypasses a 2+ save and there aren’t any 1+ saves (are there?)

There are functional 1+ saves from units that have a 2+ save and either storm shields or if they're within light cover or another rule giving them a +1 to their armour saving throws. I think the -6 is there for the fringe cases so you basically don't have a save either way.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

 Grimskul wrote:

Aash wrote:
I don’t understand the purpose of AP-6, what am I missing?
AP-5 bypasses a 2+ save and there aren’t any 1+ saves (are there?)

There are functional 1+ saves from units that have a 2+ save and either storm shields or if they're within light cover or another rule giving them a +1 to their armour saving throws. I think the -6 is there for the fringe cases so you basically don't have a save either way.

Right. This thing is designed to bypass any defense. So a vehicle's only defense is to just not get shot. Hide, hide, hide. Unless it's TITANIC, then it can't even do that. Range 72 means this can bracket a Knight from across the board. In one shot.

*sad Falchion noises in AP-5 D6 nominal titan killing weaponry*

On one hand it's cool to see the rules team experimenting with variations of damage mechanics, but on the other it really grinds my gears to see normal guns just bypass expensive defences like force fields that are there for the precise reason of stopping weapons like this. The strat is even more painful from immersive design viewpoint, when it could have just had an alternative firing profile instead of more MW spam.

So, are we back to whoever shoots first wins? I imagine that any titanic model is going to cost twice the cost of a hammerhead. So, if you have equal points shooting at each other who wins, the Knight or the hammerheads?

Aash wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

Aash wrote:
I don’t understand the purpose of AP-6, what am I missing?
AP-5 bypasses a 2+ save and there aren’t any 1+ saves (are there?)

There are functional 1+ saves from units that have a 2+ save and either storm shields or if they're within light cover or another rule giving them a +1 to their armour saving throws. I think the -6 is there for the fringe cases so you basically don't have a save either way.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

Currently, a Custodes Guardian with a Storm Shield in Light Cover is an effective 0+ save. Even this AP-6 gun would leave a Guardian with a 6+ armor save. I know you were already told it was for edge cases, but I wanted to give an example.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
So, are we back to whoever shoots first wins? I imagine that any titanic model is going to cost twice the cost of a hammerhead. So, if you have equal points shooting at each other who wins, the Knight or the hammerheads?

Right now it depends a lot on dice because the hammerheads have one shot each.

The caveat is that the dice are still reliable (the worst roll is the 3+ to wound with no save allowed for the knights). There may also be dice mitigation mechanics in the Tau codex (e.g. long strike with +1 to wound, CP rerolls, whatever marker lights end up doing, etc).

So if the hammerheads are having an okay or a great day, they win. If the hammerheads are having a really bad day the Knights may have a chance, depending on the tools available to the hammerhead in the Tau book.

EDIT:
On the shooting first front, remember it is possible for the Hammerheads to stay 100% hidden all game and still shoot the Knights because they have >18 wounds.

GW is caught in a catch 22 of their own making. Theyve made invulns so common that this is really the only way to make a single shot, high damage weapon work. Otherwise, these kinds of weapons are way too swingy and just bounce off invulns all the time. We've hit a point where there are multiple non daemon factions that have access to army wide invulns, often baked right into their profile. Plus the much loved CP reroll, which is just further insurance against a big gun killing a key model with a single shot.

Im not crazy about how it just ignores invulns, but we wouldnt need it if half the factions in the game didnt have regular access to invulns on their tanks and monsters now.

 Sherrypie wrote:
*sad Falchion noises in AP-5 D6 nominal titan killing weaponry*

On one hand it's cool to see the rules team experimenting with variations of damage mechanics, but on the other it really grinds my gears to see normal guns just bypass expensive defences like force fields that are there for the precise reason of stopping weapons like this. The strat is even more painful from immersive design viewpoint, when it could have just had an alternative firing profile instead of more MW spam.

The Fellblade Accelerator Cannon feels the Falchion's pain.

I can't wait to see the Vanquisher Cannon profile, given that it has historically been better AT than the railgun.