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Is there any reason to give Tau vehicles hunter killer missiles? Because I have understood that with markerlights units can fire only missiles if they have one.

For example: I have one unit of pathfinders and a devilfish with two missiles. Pathfinders paint one rhino so can I use two tokens to fire missiles?

Yes, only unit which have missiles can now shoot them. OTOH, if there is a Markerlight token somewhere, I understand it doesn't matter where the enemy is, it can be shot with Seeker missile.

Might give them to Piranhas and then flank the enemy?

As a mech Tau player, I'm definitely planning to take more Seekers. Keep in mind that you do not have to have a ML token to fire them, you can fire them at normal BS without them. Thus, you simply get a lot more long range krak missile goodness spread across your army. Because of this, you can get better Alpha Strikes if needed, get a couple more AP3 shots in with your Hammerheads in addition to their Ion Cannon, get across the board shots into side / rear armor sometimes. With a Skyray or simply a lot of markerlights, you can even use them in the anti-air role if needed. Adds a lot of flexibility to a mech list.

In a foot list, I don't think they're as viable as far as vehicle addons. Taken as part of a Skyray, sure, but otherwise I don't think it's as worthwhile.

Also, while the flyers catch abuse, flying into their deadzone instead of off the board may make an enemy expect them to be unable to fire, just to see a rear armour seeker missile come down from on high.

There's not much use for them, but they're not a bad use of points (almost the price of another FW, though)

Veskrashen wrote:
As a mech Tau player, I'm definitely planning to take more Seekers. Keep in mind that you do not have to have a ML token to fire them, you can fire them at normal BS without them. Thus, you simply get a lot more long range krak missile goodness spread across your army. Because of this, you can get better Alpha Strikes if needed, get a couple more AP3 shots in with your Hammerheads in addition to their Ion Cannon, get across the board shots into side / rear armor sometimes. With a Skyray or simply a lot of markerlights, you can even use them in the anti-air role if needed. Adds a lot of flexibility to a mech list.

In a foot list, I don't think they're as viable as far as vehicle addons. Taken as part of a Skyray, sure, but otherwise I don't think it's as worthwhile.

Can I fire the missile with marker-light at bs5 at the fliers?

At least the Skyray can. And the thing is, you can buff the Skyray's BS to 5 with its networked ML and unload all of their missiles on a flyer in 36" range to maximise damage.

Khartas wrote:
Can I fire the missile with marker-light at bs5 at the fliers?

Probably.

Assume that you have a Markerlight on a flyer (regardless of how it got there). You then have a Seeker on a Devilfish or whatever. Devifish uses a ML token to launch the Seeker against the flyer. It's a Snap Shot, since DFish don't have Skyfire, and hence the DFish is shooting at the flyer at BS1. However, the Seeker shot is resolved at BS5 and ignores cover, because you're using a ML token to guide it in, and the specific codex rule applies (flat BS mod overriding flat BS mod). The rest of the shots from the DFish (including other Seeker shots) would be fired against the flyer as regular BS1 snap shots.

At least that's my read on it, since the codex specifies that it's resolved at BS5, not that it increases the firer's BS or anything like that. Flat mods (BS1 for snap shot, BS5 for ML guided Seeker) are applied after modifiers, and specific codex rules take precedence over base rulebook rules.