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Can the Piranha's Gundrones deploy separately from the vehicle? Are they passengers/unit that can be deployed away from the Piranhas? Or are they a magical vehicle ability that has no game effect until on the table?

You mean they split off from the ship before it gets on the table? So you form a gundrone squadron that enters separately.

If I remember the codex correctly (I don't have it at hand to check) gundrones on vehicles count as passengers. Presumably they could be deployed separately. I don't think it is specifically ruled for or against, so I assume they would be treated like any other passengers.

Exactly. That's what my thought on it is - just wanted to be sure.

Don't take my word alone.

I stand ready to be corrected by a more knowledgeable player.

You are a genius. Too bad that means (as passengers) each pair from a piranha, hammerhead, devilfish would count as 1 KP, yes?

Well, not necessarily each pair would be a KP - if the Piranhas are in a squadron, then their collective drones are a KP. But otherwise yes, because the drones form their own unit after disembarking.

yes, they count as passengers, which absolutely blows for KPs. I've gone back to SMS on devilfish and started using piranhas in squads instead of solo for this reason. KPs suck so bad in so many ways....


As for the original question - I've never seen it done, and didn't think of it myself, but it could be legit. The only issue I can see is the wording of Gun Drone section in Wargear in the tau codex(pg 30). The way it's worded seems to imply that they are not regular passengers, but that they work like other passengers during any Tau movement phase. I'm not sure why it goes into specifics in this section instead of just saying they count as passengers unless they wanted them to work in a very specific, not-quite-passengers way.