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The changes to Vehicle rules have changed the viability of some of the Vehicle equipment available to the Tau, making some of them useless and others a more questionable purchase.

So, first up is a nice upgrade which almost no Tau vehicle left home without, the Disruption Pods.
The changes to cover and Skimmers in 6th have reduced this little 5 point piece of awesome to being completely useless unless your skimmer is immobilised or it's out in the open on turn 1 with your opponent going first. It grants you a basic cover save against shooting from over 12" away (So useless against Meltaguns but great against Lascannons, Missile Launchers, Lances etc.). "Wait, how is that useless?" you ask. Because all Skimmers get a basic cover save, with no range restrictions, as long as they move. "Ah! But that means you won't be able to fire all of your weapons at your full BS!" you say. Well, about that...

The Multi Tracker. Awesomosity personified.
Allowing you to fire your weapons as if you were a fast vehicle, this little thing is the solution to the cover save conundrum from before. Put this beauty on your Hammerhead and you can move up to 12", get that nice cover save from being a mobile skimmer and still fire 2 weapon systems at full BS. No messing about with snapshots here, fire that Railgun and that Smart Missile System at BS4!

Blacksun Filter. Great.
This, I think, is going to see a lot more use now that the randomness of vision ranges in Night Fighting is gone. This gives you Night Vision. That tank is 37" away at night? Who cares? Put a Solid Shot through that sucker! With the impending Necron vehicular slaughter which seems to be on the horizon, ignoring their Night Fighting and blasting those Warriors to pieces from turn one with Submunition will save you some of those precious Hull Points.

Sensor Spines. Useful.
These things could be seeing a bit more use now. Hiding in ruins to get a better cover save than your standard Jink save might increase the survival of your vehicle so not having to worry about immobilising your vehicle by landing in that ruined building is quite nice. If you've got some points left over then these might be worth a buy.

Target Lock. Still great.
Fire at different targets with your different weapons? Great! No wasting those S5 Smart Missiles on that AV12 Dreadnought. Take it on your Hammerhead.

Decoy Launchers. Unsure.
This used to be great. It allowed you to have your opponent re-roll any immobilised result from a Glancing Hit. So against anything but AP1 you could have a chance to get a better result and keep those Devilfish flying and those Fire Warriors could get to where they needed to go, without having to worry about it getting worse. Now that the Glancing Hit table is gone this allows you to have your opponent re-roll Immobilised from the Penetrating Hit table. Against AP3 and above you have a 1 in 6 chance of the result getting worse but against AP2 and AP1 it is harder to judge. Personally I don't think this is worth it as its now impossible to just endure loads of stunned/shaken hits thanks to Hull Points.

Flechette Discharger. Slightly Better.
50% chance to hurt someone attacking you, with saves allowed, before they get to attack. If you kill of those dudes at the front then there's the possibility of making those guys at the back unable to hit you. Not bad against lightly armoured soldiers such as IG trying to stick a Meltabomb on you but against more heavily armoured opponents the effectiveness drops, though killing that Space Marine Sergeant before he can stick that Krak grenade to your hull is quite nice when it happens. Pretty much personal choice.

Targeting Array. Same as before.
Increasing your ballistic skill, what's not to love?

Landing Gear. Why?
All Tau vehicles have it but in this edition of the rules (and the previous one for that matter) I don't see how it could ever have been useful.

Have you read the updated FAQ? They removed Target Lock as an upgrade.
Black sun filter is now grants Night Vision, so rerolls for distance.

Neroman wrote:Have you read the updated FAQ? They removed Target Lock as an upgrade.
Black sun filter is now grants Night Vision, so rerolls for distance.

They removed Target Locks from the normal armoury, not the Vehicle one. So split firing in Tau infantry units is gone but Vehicles can still split fire with their weapons.

Night Vision has changed, it now flat out ignores Night Fighting.

Yep and night fighting is no longer a roll to view range. The further away a unit is the higher cover save bonus they get. So no more Necrons and their pesky night fighting!

Tau vehicles got some of their swagger back. I think my Railhead is still going to cost 180 points though. Just dropping the disruption pods and use the points for Blacksun filters.

I'll be adding decoy launchers back on my devilfish for sure - and keep in mind that in Big Guns if you are immobilzed the vehicle no longer scores, so that is one plus for that specific mission.

I prefer 2 XV88's for the price of 1 HH.

Nothing changes with Tau at all. 5 pts for the DP is nothing to save. Its almost a might as well take it anyways item now.

The BSF is going to be a help for sure. Thats another minimal points item too though.

Tau remain overcosted and underperforming.

We will continue to suck the big one until we get a new dex

My bad. My book hasn't come in yet >.<

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Neroman wrote:Have you read the updated FAQ? They removed Target Lock as an upgrade.
Black sun filter is now grants Night Vision, so rerolls for distance.

They removed Target Locks from the normal armoury, not the Vehicle one. So split firing in Tau infantry units is gone but Vehicles can still split fire with their weapons.

Night Vision has changed, it now flat out ignores Night Fighting.

Neroman wrote:My bad. My book hasn't come in yet >.<

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Neroman wrote:Have you read the updated FAQ? They removed Target Lock as an upgrade.
Black sun filter is now grants Night Vision, so rerolls for distance.

They removed Target Locks from the normal armoury, not the Vehicle one. So split firing in Tau infantry units is gone but Vehicles can still split fire with their weapons.

Night Vision has changed, it now flat out ignores Night Fighting.

No problem. It's now become quite worth it to give team leaders hard-wired blacksun filters as it only takes one model in the unit to have night vision for the entire team to get its effects. As Bonding Knives are now a lot less useful due to the changes in regrouping (you can regroup at any unit size but if you are under 25% it takes rolling a double 1, so you don't need the Bonding Knife until you only have 2 Fire Warriors out of a 12 man squad left and 3 man Crisis teams without drones will never need them) we can just take the knives away and stick BSF in their place, effectively saving us 2 points on each squad.

So you can still use target lock on tanks? That's great!
I think that even though we are old, Tau now have a real edge. With night-fighting so common, and with the commander ability to pick it, our blacksun filters and markerlights mean we don't have to care about it while our entire army gets awesome cover saves because no-one else can do what we do.
The biggest thing I'm unhappy about is that skyrays don't get skyfire an interceptor. This would make them not only worth taking, but actually make the entry make sense: their entire purpose is "perimeter and air defense", so they should be able to point that nice missile rack at incoming fliers.

DakkaHammer wrote:So you can still use target lock on tanks? That's great!
I think that even though we are old, Tau now have a real edge. With night-fighting so common, and with the commander ability to pick it, our blacksun filters and markerlights mean we don't have to care about it while our entire army gets awesome cover saves because no-one else can do what we do.
The biggest thing I'm unhappy about is that skyrays don't get skyfire an interceptor. This would make them not only worth taking, but actually make the entry make sense: their entire purpose is "perimeter and air defense", so they should be able to point that nice missile rack at incoming fliers.

Ah but that would be unfair on the poor, underpowered Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Necrons who actually get Fliers.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

DakkaHammer wrote:So you can still use target lock on tanks? That's great!
I think that even though we are old, Tau now have a real edge. With night-fighting so common, and with the commander ability to pick it, our blacksun filters and markerlights mean we don't have to care about it while our entire army gets awesome cover saves because no-one else can do what we do.
The biggest thing I'm unhappy about is that skyrays don't get skyfire an interceptor. This would make them not only worth taking, but actually make the entry make sense: their entire purpose is "perimeter and air defense", so they should be able to point that nice missile rack at incoming fliers.

Ah but that would be unfair on the poor, underpowered Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Necrons who actually get Fliers.

Too true, too true. After all, tau don't appear to have heard about air support yet, so it only follows that they don't have air defense.

So if black sun filters eliminate night fight does the enemy still get their night fight cover saves?

Tauownz wrote:So if black sun filters eliminate night fight does the enemy still get their night fight cover saves?

That would be a no. Otherwise what would be the purpose of wargear that defeats night fighting.

I guess I should say, if they normally would have a cover save because of their position, they get that save. However, the bonus to the save that nightfighting confers would be negated.

I think flechette launchers may be more useful due to a few changes.

Namely, the buff to haywire grenades, the change to vehicle glancing, and DE/Eldar units being cautious about risking assault units to Overwatch will lead to a higher use of lightly armored units to assault vehicles. Quite a few of the eldar players on this board are talking about dusting off their Swooping Hawks for such a purpose.

I had found most of this to be true myself going through the rulebook tonight. I didn't realize the FAQ still left in target lock for vehicles though. That was a pleasant surprise to find that someone else caught that.

When it comes to Disruption pods though, I don't think there's a reason why you would want to take them with the new skimmer rules. I was trying to dig into the wording on obscured targets but I just couldn't justify any reason that they would benefit more than just simply moving your vehicle a bit every turn. Save the points for something else (like target locks and multitrackers)

The most amusing thing about Tau having no fliers is they are built to be a (very rough) analogue to a modern military - air power, mechanized infantry and mobility, and technology enabling force multipliers. Even the fluff talks about how much effort Tau put into aircraft, and trying to achieve air superiority (Mantas and battlefield mobility, anyone?)

Sadly the army we can field from the Codex is a laughable apparition of the way we're depicted in the fluff.

RogueRegault wrote:I think flechette launchers may be more useful due to a few changes.

That is true, since we get hits for every model, against large units there is a chance that people may not even be able to attack us due to the front ranks dying off.

YotsubaSnake wrote:I had found most of this to be true myself going through the rulebook tonight. I didn't realize the FAQ still left in target lock for vehicles though. That was a pleasant surprise to find that someone else caught that.

When it comes to Disruption pods though, I don't think there's a reason why you would want to take them with the new skimmer rules. I was trying to dig into the wording on obscured targets but I just couldn't justify any reason that they would benefit more than just simply moving your vehicle a bit every turn. Save the points for something else (like target locks and multitrackers)

The jink rule only applies if you actually move the vehicle. If you can't move for some reason, Either cuz you got stunned/immobilized or more commonly the enemy got first turn, those points could be well spent.

Any idea why Target Lock was removed from the Armoury? It doesn't look like it interferes with any new rule. Did they just decide it was overpowered or something?

Actually from what I understand vehicles still get to take target locks

CorvidMP wrote:Actually from what I understand vehicles still get to take target locks

Indeed.
Was asking about the entry in the Armoury since it was mentioned earlier in the thread.

Nightbringer's Chosen wrote:Any idea why Target Lock was removed from the Armoury? It doesn't look like it interferes with any new rule. Did they just decide it was overpowered or something?

No idea. Considering Target Locks are one of the upgrades which have been available to them since they were first released it doesn't make much sense that they suddenly lose it now. Obviously Tau technology has suddenly become less effective than a Space Wolf Long Fang sergeant shouting at his drunken Marines to fire at two different targets.

I mean, it's not really like our guns have got more powerful now. In 5th we destroyed a vehicle on a 4,5 or 6 when we got a penetrating hit, in 6th we destroy a vehicle on a 4, 5 or 6 with a penetrating hit. By making us fire at the same target with all our shots they've effectively made light transports easier to kill. We have a unit of three XV88s and we want to destroy that Rhino carrying a load of Marines to that objective. We now have to fire all three shots at it, rather than the one or two we might have done before. If those 3 shots hit then that Rhino is instantly wrecked because with its AV of 11 we automatically glance it 3 times, taking away all its Hull Points. If we'd only fired two shots at it and then it would have only lost 2 HPs and might have taken 2 crew stunned results or a weapon destroyed.

I guess all we can hope for is that when we get a new codex this nerf is gone and our Target Locks are back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DakkaHammer wrote:

RogueRegault wrote:I think flechette launchers may be more useful due to a few changes.

That is true, since we get hits for every model, against large units there is a chance that people may not even be able to attack us due to the front ranks dying off.

I hadn't thought of that, good catch.

Thaylen wrote:

YotsubaSnake wrote:I had found most of this to be true myself going through the rulebook tonight. I didn't realize the FAQ still left in target lock for vehicles though. That was a pleasant surprise to find that someone else caught that.

When it comes to Disruption pods though, I don't think there's a reason why you would want to take them with the new skimmer rules. I was trying to dig into the wording on obscured targets but I just couldn't justify any reason that they would benefit more than just simply moving your vehicle a bit every turn. Save the points for something else (like target locks and multitrackers)

The jink rule only applies if you actually move the vehicle. If you can't move for some reason, Either cuz you got stunned/immobilized or more commonly the enemy got first turn, those points could be well spent.

But even then, you place it behind cover in deployment or, worst case scenario, you put it in reserves. With only having to roll a 3+ now, you can easily have it come in and move flat out for 18" from your table edge, giving it a 4+ jink save. If you're deploying a vehicle in open ground you're asking it to get shot first turn anyways.

They included the split-fire USR, so supposedly we might get the Target Lock back at some point, but it really is weird that they would take it out rather than update if that was the case. Especially to only take it out for infantry. It makes it a lot harder on hidden markerlights, sniper drones, and pathfinders with rail-rifles.
And @Malus: thanks


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, a good stragety to ensure first turn cover is to buy a bastion, then deploy the hammeheads behind it (making sure that they can get some over even if the enemies move to shoot). After all, moving to get a shot, range, and night-fight are all things we don't have to worry about.