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I'm going to be playing a friend with a Tau army in the next few days (no, the friend is not me ). He was telling me about his army and mentioned he has firewarriors that have a markerlight in the squad as well as a hammerhead with some upgrade that counts the hammerhead as being concealed if it is shot at from more than 12 inches away.
We were unsure if:

The squad of fire warriors with the markerlight cannot shoot a squad of (lets say) guardians with the marketlight and then have the same squad benefit from the markerlight's abilities with firing their pulse rifles (or whatever the standard FW weapons are called) because technically all of a squads shots are fired and resolved at the same time, right? A different squad could benefit from the marketlight in the same turn if it fired after that marketlight FW squad though. I ask because I've played against people who will roll a lascannon first and then the bolters afterwords but I am under the impression that the rules are every shot goes off at the same time so I couldn't choose to shoot a lascannon/marketlight/whatever and then not the bolters.

I believe the Tau codex came out during 4th ed, when concealed meant that a vehicle counted all hits against it as glancing. Because of the consolidated vehicle damage chart in 5th ed glancing lowers the damage roll rather than being a different table. In this cause for the Hammerhead with the upgrade that counts all shots from more than 12 inches away as having the vehicle being concealed does this mean that all his against the Hammerhead are glancing (-2 on vehicle damage chart) or that that Hammerhead receives the 4+ coversave for being obscured?

Hopefully those questions make sense, its late :/ Thanks for the help!

The hammerhead upgrade you're talking about is the disruption pod, which are also available for the other tau vehicles. Basically if the person firing at it is more than 12" away, the vehicle counts as obscured and recieves a 4+ cover save.

With the fire warrior squad, the shas'ui may take a regular markerlight. I say regular because the markerlight is not a "networked markerlight". A markerlight counter can't be expended by the unit that fired the markerlight because, as you said, all shots happen at once. Networked markerlights are the exception, because they fire before the rest of the unit, and so may benefit their own unit. So that's a no go for the fire warriors.

In case you're wondering, the only models that have a networked markerlight are the spotter (sniper drone team), the marker drone (battlesuit/infantry wargear), and the skyray (a tank with 2 networked markerlights). With networked markerlights, you roll for the markerlight, then you roll for the rest of the unit (possibly using up the counter you just placed on the target unit).

The 4th edition core rules effectively don't exist anymore, so any codex which refers to something in the core rules such as obscured uses the 5th edition rules (unless it explains the older functionality within the codex). If the referenced rule doesn't exist in the 5th edition codex, then it doesn't exist anymore and the thing that referenced it will not function.

So because of this, the wargear that makes Tau vehicles count as obscured when fired on from a distance use standard 5th edition obscurement rules and as such get a 4+ save.

Drunkspleen wrote:The 4th edition core rules effectively don't exist anymore, so any codex which refers to something in the core rules such as obscured uses the 5th edition rules (unless it explains the older functionality within the codex). If the referenced rule doesn't exist in the 5th edition codex, then it doesn't exist anymore and the thing that referenced it will not function.

So because of this, the wargear that makes Tau vehicles count as obscured when fired on from a distance use standard 5th edition obscurement rules and as such get a 4+ save.

Drunkspleen has it right here.