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"Did you hear that terrorists?"

Oh no... he mentioned the terrorists... everybody out on your bomb hats and watch for the crazy yoddlers.

Uhhh, seriously? Earlier I saw a guy saying he was posting from Iraq. I thought reading a miniature game forum from a war zone was pretty cool. Now I'm hearing that you actually played 40K in a war zone?

Did you hear that terrorists?

We win.

Yep. Had a group of four guys and six armies, rolling dice after missions. GW ships to APO addresses.

Terrorists didn't play, though. It's a pity; they'd probably have been better shots on the tabletop than they are from windows and rooftops.

I am looking forward to seeing how well the house rule holds up to the new damage chart. That may skew things the other way. All I know for certain was with the old chart, having a moving + shooting like a real vehicle could tank didn't live a lot longer than its in-rule version.

to poor, slow, cumbersom fire magnants. at around 200 points.

Except not. They're significantly tougher now, they get a 4+ save. Yes, if they fail that, they'll get hurt a bit more, but they just IGNORE 50% of all hits.

You'd have to really nerf the crap out of a tank to make it worse, when it's also twice as tough.

You're still fairly mobile, can still shoot all the guns, plus now twice as tough (not exactly, but pretty close, maybe more like 33% tougher).

Envy89: You don't lose the mobility. You have to choose between mobility and firepower on each turn. You can still always fire the railgun or ion cannon every turn and move up to 12

You also missed another point that makes them tougher - the glance and penetrate charts changed, making the tanks harder to kill in both cases.

I'm not a huge fan of the new LOS rules, only because I expect a lot of arguing. However, they make a lot more sense than not being able to see a tank through like 6 trees, unless it goes barely into the trees then it's totally visible. If you want to hide your tanks, go build some big hill terrain or giant walls. Nothing is stopping you. If you were playing with enough size 3 area terrain to regularly completely hide 2 or 3 hammerheads on turn 1 something is wrong anyway, imo. And that was the worst part of the SMF rule - you either hid turn 1, or you prayed to go first.

I always thought defensive weaponry should be defined by rate of fire, not strength. Just made more sense to me.

Envy89 wrote:ok. lets add things up. i lose mobility, 1 point to nerf. i gain a 4+ save 1 point to cool beans. crappy LOS rules 1 point to nerf. it is now more easy to destroy the tank as it dose not get skimmer move, 1 point to nerf. that 3 points to nerf and 1 to cool beans.

"Crappy LOS rules" are at worst a bump. While it may mean that more enemies can see your tank, it also means that you tank can see more enemies. This in turn also means you have to move around a lot less to get line of sight on the targets you want. So now you can drop sub munition shells all over the place with impunity, they never completely miss anymore, and all partials are now fulls. Not exactly the worst things to ever happen.

As far as damage goes, your tanks are much more survivable now than before. In 4th edition, it took an average of 9 marine las cannons to down an av 13 skimmer moving fast. In 5th edition, it takes 15.4 marine las cannon shots to down a skimmer with a 4+ save. In both of these cases I count immobalized as "downing". If you don't then the numbers shift to 18 and 27 respectively. Any way you look at it though, the tanks are a lot tougher now than before, the only real nerf is that you have to give up some shooting if you want to move long distances in a single turn.

Lets break damage down even further. Those 9 las cannon shots that it takes to down you in 4th, will (on average) cause 3 damage results (1 shaken, .5 stuned, .5 weapon destroyed, .5 immobililized, and .5 destroyed). The rest miss or bounce off your armor. So even if you get hit and damaged but not downed, something else bad is going to happen to your tank. In 5th, 15.4 las cannon shots only (on average) cause 2.5 damage results to your tank (.71 shaken, .43 stuned, .43 weapon destroyed, .43 immobililized, and .57 destroyed). The rest miss, bounce off armor, or get negated by your cover save. So with almost double the shots against you, you end up with less actual damage on your tank. For an "apples to apples" comparison, 9 marine las cannon shots in 5th will cause (on average) 1.5 damaging hits on a skimmer with a 4+ cover save (.42 shaken, .25 stuned, .25 weapon destroyed, .25 immobilized, and .33 destroyed). This can only be a good thing for you.

With the new movement rules, you may not even want to count "immobilized" as downing - assuming you're relying on your disruption pod for your cover save, you'll likely be in a reasonable firing position even after being immobilized.

Before, you were always moving 6+ inches, so immobilized was just destroyed

Now, you'll often not move 6+ inches unless you need to tactically, as it hurts you offensively. You still have your 4+ save, and immobilized is just immobilized, you don't crash. And you keep your 4+ save! You are of course totally screwed when you get assaulted, but hey I'm just pointing out that immobilized isn't death anymore for tau skimmers.

Envy89 wrote: i was wrong about 200 points. they are 195.
HH, with rail gun, SMS, multi tracker, decoy launchers, targetting array is 180 points + spine sensores and disruption pod puts me at 195.

Save yourself another five points and dump the decoy launchers. Unless they change the wording via FAQ. They are pretty useless now. Since a glancing hit only happens 1/6 of the time now anyway, and they actually have to roll imobilized on the table, another 1/6 of the time. That means you will only benifit from decoy launchers 1/32 of the time. 1/72 if you keep your distance and have a disruption pod.

Of course this changes with Necrons, who can always glance on a six.

Nice catch Jayden, I had forgotten that the decoy launchers specifically say they only count on the glancing hit table. Yeah, they're out.

Envy89, I'm not sure why you insist on needing the sensor spines - just go around or all the way through the difficult terrain, or take the roll. It's not the end of the world, and doesn't seem worth 10 points.

It seems to be that either you can go with a cheap, slow hammerhead or a normal priced, fast version that is not quite as offensively powerful as before when going fast. The cheap one has burst cannons and no target lock or multitracker. It moves 0-6 inches all the time and just fires its railgun or ion cannon. It costs something like 155 points.

The expensive version has the same stuff it had before normally, changing decoy launchers for disruption pods and coming in at 185. Maybe you insist on adding sensor spines or (my preference with the new rules) flechette dischargers but even at 200 points the tanks are more survivable than before so long as they stay out of CC. The new rules for vehicles and CC are what you should be complaining about, not the str4 defensive weapons

So much whining...

You're all overreacting.

Venator wrote:So much whining...

You're all overreacting.

Thank you for your useful and constructive contribution to the thread.

lambadomy wrote:Envy89, I'm not sure why you insist on needing the sensor spines - just go around or all the way through the difficult terrain, or take the roll. It's not the end of the world, and doesn't seem worth 10 points.

10 pt upgrade. 160+ pt tank. 1/6 chance of Bad Things happening when interacting with terrain. 1/16 cost to substantially reduce chances of those Bad Thiings? It's probably worth it.

Janthkin wrote:Thank you for your useful and constructive contribution to the thread.

Don't mention it.

But seriously, I'm just sick and tired of all the whining. I've gone over this on 4 forums already and no one brings up good solid points.

GW wants to forever avoid anything that modifies your to-hit roll because that's akin to fantasy shooting rules, and they want to keep the two games completely separate and different.

They just freaked out after 2nd edition. Back then shooting was something like this:

Ok, I'm bs 4 so I need a 3 to hit, -2 because your're in hard cover, *measure distance* +1 because I'm at close range, +1 because of my targeter, -1 due to your camolene...so I need a 4 to hit. Now for the next guy in the squad...

It was cumbersome, there were lots of modifiers and you had to do it for every single models that fired, not just for every squad. So in true pendulem fashion, they got rid of all modifiers for everything (except leadership). Now they realize that was a mistake and they need a few back.