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Hey guys, I was just wondering how you like to loadout your piranhas and broadsides. Do you prefer burst cannons or fusion blasters? Do you take the twin linked heavy railgun ir twinlinked high yield missile pod? How many do you take a unit? What upgrades do you prefer?

Just want to know how you guys like to do things.

Thanks, Pheonix Lord Asurmen

I don't play Tau but I've had a decent go-over the new codex. I would say that it's not really worth taking the FB on the Pirahnas. With only AV10 and 2HP it seems that they'll die before they can get within the critical Melta range. I wouldn't take the extra Seekers mainly due to the reason, but 1-2 scattered through the unit couldn't hurt. As for the Broadsides, taking the HYMP along with the Velocity Tracker would be a very efficient flyer deterrent, but can get expensive pretty quickly, so I'd only take 1-2 in a unit if going along these lines.

For some reason Prianha have never appealed to me. Maybe i just missed the hype boat back in the day when they were popular.

For Broadsides I chose to go for HYMP, although you can kit crisis to do the same job now with double MP and JSJ, the amount of TL shots thay can put out either with EWO for anti-flyer or at ground targets with missile drones is just too good to pass up. Isusually run in a group of 2 with 4 missile drones, EWO and a seeker each. Or 3 with 4 missile drones EWO on 2 and Velocity tracker on 1.

Heavy Railguns just seem a bit mute to me. If i want anti tank ill go Fusion Blaster, HH Railguns or Ordnance Riptides. I think the opportunity cost of not taking HYMP is too good to miss.

I did a video review of the piranha (http://youtu.be/TLYWpJVaAr4). I'm not saying its a great review, but it shares some thoughts.

If you're going to run piranhas, I'd take FBs. BCs are just more S5 AP5 and there are better ways to get more of that if you need it. FBs can be effective tank hunters if you play them correctly, although they're relatively easy to kill. The real problem with the piranha is that it competes for FOC with more important units, like pathfinders. For that reason, I wouldnt bother with them.

I'm currently running standard broadsides with HRR and SMS with Velocity Trackers. That said, Missilesides are also a popular loadout.

I think in this age I'm only using them for burst cannons. Plus they re relatively cheap blocking unit unit. 14 points for each gun drone and its basically a base cost of 12 points. They're wide Av11 which is immune to most small arms fire requiring heavy weapons attention. Imagine getting to deploy a wall where ever you want with in 30" with turbo boosting. The piranha are not denial units....but those drones are. biggest down side i think is the fast attack slot means less pathfinders, flyers, drone squads ect.

I have the Piranhas kited out with fusion blasters and I usually boost them forward first turn into cover with their spines to stop from taking dangerous terrain tests. Then on my turn 2 I pop out and shot some tanks to death.

My broadsides have HYMP and I think that is the single best way to kite them out when you could bring a hammer head with a railgun if you wanted to shoot at tanks.

Drones are never denial or scoring units and never count as a killpoint in their own right, but they do have impressive dakka, and are perfect for harassing things like eldar rangers, or longfangs, which really can't afford to move or really deal with the drones while the babysitters are out doing other things - they're also great at giving most scoring units a hard time, particularly if they're en route to an objective on foot.

Piranhas are entirely immune to bolters if you face them properly, and have a small jink save that does help against light AT weaponry, particularly if it goes flat out. I like to gear them with two seeker missiles in a large squadron - they come on (from reserves or just going first), use markerlights to fire all of their missiles (4 lights - BS5 and ignore cover for the squad), unload the gun drones, and go about hunting tanks with fusion blasters, or staying super cheap with lots of s5 (really handy for taking out rear armor/adding to the PITA factor the drones have). The drones can follow along fairly well, or move about separately if they want.

The best part is that piranhas are affordable enough to do this, points-wise. You don't lose much of your usual list to send a few piranhas out, and they provide a lot of tactical uses that similar units don't really deliver on.

I had a similar idea with CSM, where you had 2 combibolters and a combimelta on the rhino, flat out first turn, and it's just a 50-point expendable av-11 box that requires diversion of real AT weaponry towards it to handle. Kind of like Koptas in a way, except immune to bolters. If they're allowed to live, they can really spread general chaos among the enemy, and confuse them from marching towards objectives.


As to broadsides, I would say they're not too horrible with heavy rail rifle and missile drones to help with quantity of fire. Add skyfire to the broadsides just because it's one of the few decent AA weapons in the game, and if you really want, a support commander, to make the squad less underwhelming. Many people say the HYMP is better than the Heavy Rail Rifle, but one argument that struck a chord with me - s8 ap1 is actually really scary to get hit with for an av12 flyer, and will often force an enemy to jink, meaning even if you don't *kill* that enemy, you've neutered them for a turn (or more if you get even a single pen). Overall though, I think skyrays are actually a better choice than broadsides (if I heard that said 3 months ago, I would have laughed in that person's face).

Unless you face a flyer-spammy list, which isn't going to have much in the way of real scary ground elements, a skyray can kill about one flyer of any sort per game - and it usually will make its points back in doing so - before becoming a nice markerlight platform that can support other elements, like crisis suits or FB piranhas, to shoot at remaining air assets, or buff your other ground elements. Possibly a mix of 2 skyrays and a non-skyfire broadside squad would be powerful, simply because the skyrays can boost the broadside/missile drone's snapfires to non-trivial levels once their anti-flyer work is done.

On the other hand, Broadsides do have a better end-game utility, and having a 2+ save unit on the board is a nice way to get those weapons off your other more vulnerable units. I know for a fact that when an enemy stormraven/vendetta comes on, it's shooting the broadsides. They are definitely not meant for heavy armor duty anymore, so I would say to get lots of fusion in the army to help them out versus av13+, but they do their job well enough if you want to take them still. Take care to babysit them though, because they're a prime target for the usual scalpel suspects, like sternguard.