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Thankfully, this has not yet come up in a game, but might in the near future, so i would like clarification.

Situation: a unit of 5 Nob bikers is within 6 inches of a KFF MEK. the bikers are hit with 4 marker lights, followed by an AP 3 weapon. What cover saves, if any would the unit receive?

I can think of a few answers, but am not certain on any of them.

1: the marker lights negate their built in cover save, and they get the KFF save.
2: they do not get any cover save.
3: they get a 6+ cover save after the built in save is negated and the KFF save is reduced.

Thank you for the help.

I'm assuming the bikers turbo-boosted, but not sure of the Kustom Force Field confers a +1 to cover.

If the Tau player burns all his markerlights on reducing your cover save, then probably not.

It depends what the Tau player wishes to do with the markers. If he chooses the remove cover, then since it is based on which save is the highest (like if you had Power Armour and Terminator Armour, you wouldn't get a 3+ then a 2+), if he can remove it all then you get no cover saves.

Removing cover with markerlights reduces/removes any of the unit's cover saves, it is not dependant upon the source.

The markerlight states that each counter can impose a -1 pentalty "on any Cover Saves the unit may have..."

From that wording, I would say that the modifier (cumulative or not) would affect any of a targeted unit's cover saves, up to and including all of them.

So in the given case of expending 4 markerlights, the unit would have no cover save, as it applies a -4 modifier to both the 4+ cover save from exhaust as well as the 5+ KFF cover save. Were a player to only expend 1 markerlight, you would then have either a 5+ cover save from exhaust or a 6+ cover save from KFF, and so on.

Using markerlights to reduce cover saves reduce all cover saves, not just from one source.

If you have ork killa kans that are naturally obscured, have a kustom force field, and somehow got cover from a few other ways, and a tau player says -3 to your cover (all of which would be a 4+ in this case) then your cover save is technically a 7+. Good luck with that.

Yep, as above. ALL cover saves are simultaneously reduced by 1 for each token, you dont reduce cover saves individually.

So a nob biker that has turboboosted and is under KFF protection would lose all 3 different cover saves if you use 4 markers - 3+, 4+ and 5+ are all reduced by 1 4 times.

I don't play tau, but I do have a question. If unit "A" uses a markerlight to reduce cover, does unit "B" get to enjoy the reduced cover save, or does the markerlight just work for the unit that uses it?

Explicitly stated in the Tau codex - each expended markerlight hit applies to a single unit using it, not multiple. So only one unit would benefit from reducing the cover on those nob bikers to zero.

Hopefully its a nice broadside unit

So in my example either unit "A" or unit "B" would benefit from the reduced cover save, but not both?

Yes. ONLY the unit that chooses to expend the markerlight tokens gets the benefit.

Only unit B would benefit unless the markerlight was a networked markerlight, which are explicitly stated as being able to be used by the unit that fires it.

Avatar - I think Happyjew was meaning "if they used a markerlight TOKEN", not asking whether they were the one firing the markerlight.