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Working on a Tau army, and I'm curious if it's worth the extra points to take a Smart Missile System over the two gun drones on a Devilfish that's just going to serve as transport for a squad of FWs.

I'd say yes, it is worth it. Since the gun drones form thier own unit in case the DF is destroyed (or sooner, if you choose to detach) they are worth one more killpoint to the opponent. I always take SMS on my devilfishes.

Smart Missile Systems are delicious candy. For 20 pts they ignore LOS cover, have 4 shots, and make your fish only 1 KP. There is no downside, aside from the fact that you have the only army with 100pt transports....

StarHunter25 wrote:Smart Missile Systems are delicious candy. For 20 pts they ignore LOS cover, have 4 shots, and make your fish only 1 KP. There is no downside, aside from the fact that you have the only army with 100pt transports....

Yeah.. except for eldar. But that's another story.

The SMS are SO worth it.

I take SMS on all my Tanks.

Losing the extra kill point and a heavy 4 gun is worth the 20 points in most situations. Although, after the multi-tracker, targeting array, and disruption pod the Devilfish becomes pretty expensive.

Gun drones on vehicles never count as a scoring unit folks. I always take em - especially in transports cos they can detatch and form a shield wall along with your fish to stop the squishy unit inside from being assaulted!
Also being a transport you want it cheap cos it's gonna go down and also it's probably gonna be charging at the enemy so won't benefit from the SMS ability to fire round corners. If i use em I put em on Hammerheads of Broadsides not fish myself.

Madog wrote:Gun drones on vehicles never count as a scoring unit folks.

...

.

How do you make that out?

Kilkrazy wrote:How do you make that out?

What do you mean by "How do you make that out? " ?

I don't know either.

If he was asking why they don't score, answer: it says so in the Tau codex.

If he was being sarcastic (though I doubt that)...then /shrug.

I think he meant "How do you figure Gun Drnoes from a Devilfish are not worth a KP?"

Yeah - sorry that was totally irrelevant to the arguement about em being worth a KP - got my wires crossed (it was early in the morning in my defence...). If they detatch they are definitely worth a KP but are they worth a KP if they don't detatch though? They are part of the same unit after all? I've always played as if they don't but I don't know what the official ruling on this is.

TheRhino wrote:I think he meant "How do you figure Gun Drnoes from a Devilfish are not worth a KP?"

That's what I was thinking of.

Since you're typically going to try to keep your Firewarriors safe inside your Devilfish, where they aren't shooting, a few more S5 AP5 shots are good in this case. I do recommend adding the MultiTracker and Targetting Array to make it a decent gunship, though; I run mine that way and find them to be completely worth it. Being able to move 12" and still fire four shots is quite valuable, especially since you have to start moving your Devilfish early to be able to get your Firewarriors to the enemy objectives in those kinds of missions.

I also have to say that the Disruption Pod is a darn near mandatory upgrade.