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I keep reading here and there a certain mistrust against the railgun version of the hammerhead but i think that it could be very effective supported by a Skyray and at least one pathfinder team (even naked as the codex made it), and equipped with disruption pods and sensor spines they should survive long enough to repay their points, exspecially in an heavy-environment situation (like an urban game, where you can put a lot of scenery between you and the enemy).

What do you think?

The problem is that Tau rely on redundancy. The Ion Cannon is 3 shots with decent S/AP, and has a Large Blast. The Skyray has a very reliable use - sometimes two. Broadsides are some of the most statistically reliable units in the game.

This leaves the Railhead as an odd-man out. Sure, it's S10, but why do you need a single S10 shot at BS4 when you can deal with AV14 so many other, more reliable ways? The Tau's HS slot is most definitely for AV12-13, anti-air, and horde removal.

I'm personally just really sad it's not a dual-mode weapon; one with skyfire, single shot, and the other as a line attack :c

The reason the Hammerhead is considered a bad choice is that it can only move 6" and shoot (0" if you want to use your SMS effectively) instead of 12" (6") like in the old codex. For an army that depends on mobility this is a really frustrating change.

 chrisrawr wrote:
The problem is that Tau rely on redundancy. The Ion Cannon is 3 shots with decent S/AP, and has a Large Blast.

Except each shot is much less likely to kill a vehicle target than the railgun's single shot. The ion cannon is better against infantry of course, but a mediocre vehicle killer at best.

So many options for AV14? Please enlighten me, because aside from Riptides Smashing a vehicle or any suit with the gauntlet landing his single hit, wtf do tau have that can even glance down av14? The ONLY S8 in our codex is either a pi plate (single shot), craptastic Railsides, or Melta guns (most likely to work). Melta guns w/o the half range bonus will only glance, and getting that close can be a big problem.

The only reliable way i see to take out vehicles with high AV is deepstrike a group of Crisis suits with meltas and/or plasmas and blast its ass apart. Problem is proper bubblewraps and Landraiders kinda counter this idea and theres always the bad scatter roll to worry about.
I literally had to send my Riptide to punch a Landraider one game because i had nothing else that could take it out before delivering Termies to my defense line. I fully expected to lose the riptide, but he got pinned so i got away

 Vineheart01 wrote:
So many options for AV14? Please enlighten me, because aside from Riptides Smashing a vehicle or any suit with the gauntlet landing his single hit, wtf do tau have that can even glance down av14? The ONLY S8 in our codex is either a pi plate (single shot), craptastic Railsides, or Melta guns (most likely to work). Melta guns w/o the half range bonus will only glance, and getting that close can be a big problem.

The only reliable way i see to take out vehicles with high AV is deepstrike a group of Crisis suits with meltas and/or plasmas and blast its ass apart. Problem is proper bubblewraps and Landraiders kinda counter this idea and theres always the bad scatter roll to worry about.
I literally had to send my Riptide to punch a Landraider one game because i had nothing else that could take it out before delivering Termies to my defense line. I fully expected to lose the riptide, but he got pinned so i got away

Truth

I have to say the Hammerhead with Longstrike is a must for my lists. Giving the HH a permanent BS5 so you are always hitting on a 2+. then when it comes down to penetrating if shooting at tanks, like the landraider. you get to re-roll failed Armour penetration. on average you can kill a tank every turn or if not kill it, as long as you score that pen, you are going to disable a weapon with the 2+ modifier on the damage table. The twin linked burst cannons help if anything gets near you. and being able to over watch against multiple charging units helps a lot.

I fined it does a lot more Damage to armies than my Broadsides do. Points for points. But i suppose it all comes down to who you play and how you play.

I also equip it with the ATS. nothing more satisfying than getting a Str10 AP1 precision shot on someones commander. And if they clarify if he is a character or not (hopefully) then he will get precision shots on a 5+ instead of a 6.

Longstrike makes it viable, bout it. I field it just because i want to, i like the damn thing, but it still feels underwhelming.

Still think youre better off running 3 fully kitted out Missilesides (yea, overkill, thats kinda the point) and 2-3 Crisis suits with meltas/plasmas deepstriking. However theres this awesome feeling of sniping a huge tank from across the board in 1 hit that any proper tactic just wont beat lol.

Quite frankly, if they made the Railsides Str9 Ap2 instead of what they are now, i'd still be using the crap out of them. Still pens AV14 reasonably well, which was the POINT of the damn thing, but gives it a much needed nerf (lets be honest the damn things were overpowered for the cost rofl)
My issue with the current Railsides is 1) it removes what it was suppose to be doing and 2) its a special weapon only available to 1 unit in the entire codex....and is weaker than a Lascannon now (could give 2 hoots about AP1 vs AP2 or the slightly better range, 48" still hits most of the board)

I can't see the point of it now. Since i'm bring eldar allies anyways, why don't I just bring a fire prism instead.

S10 AP1 single shot against AV14, even with the chance to explode the vehicle, just isn't reliable unfortunately. At BS4, you have roughly a 1/9 chance of blowing it up an AV14 vehicle in a single shot, and roughly a 1/3 chance of taking off a hull point. Most of that is due to having to roll a 5+ to pen in the first place, not the BS, so upping the BS via markerlights only does so much to increase the lethality.

With Longstrike, you have about a 1/4 chance to make it go boom each shot, assuming you reroll glances looking for that penetrating hit. You hit a lot and pen pretty reliably, but the explode result is still 50/50 and there's nothing you can do to modify that. You'll probably make it explode before you HP it out, but it will probably take 2-3 shots to do it.

Against AV14 as Tau, your most reliable bet is melta weapons still. Crisis with 2x Fusion each, supported by Markerlights, will generally wreck an AV14 vehicle in a single round. Getting them there and having them survive afterwards is problematic of course. Piranhas can also be an effective fusion carrier if taken in enough numbers, but that gets pricey fast and you need at least 4-5 of them to have a good chance of wrecking something in one pass.

The reason we took Broadsides before was that we could throw out 9 TL S10 shots each turn - that was enough to make things go boom pretty reliably. Being able to only throw out 3 per turn max is a much different proposition.

Chrisrawr was right - the HS slots seem to be best used for anti-horde, anti-air, and anti light/medium armor. Possibly for markerlight support if you like Sniper Drone Teams. Anti-heavy armor is best left to our Riptides (double tap TL Fusion), Crisis and Piranhas.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
So many options for AV14? Please enlighten me, because aside from Riptides Smashing a vehicle or any suit with the gauntlet landing his single hit, wtf do tau have that can even glance down av14? The ONLY S8 in our codex is either a pi plate (single shot), craptastic Railsides, or Melta guns (most likely to work). Melta guns w/o the half range bonus will only glance, and getting that close can be a big problem.

The only reliable way i see to take out vehicles with high AV is deepstrike a group of Crisis suits with meltas and/or plasmas and blast its ass apart. Problem is proper bubblewraps and Landraiders kinda counter this idea and theres always the bad scatter roll to worry about.
I literally had to send my Riptide to punch a Landraider one game because i had nothing else that could take it out before delivering Termies to my defense line. I fully expected to lose the riptide, but he got pinned so i got away

Melta was and will always will be a very reliable way to get rid of AV14. I run Farsight with two crisis suits, both with two Fusion Blasters each, one has the Puretide chip for the Tank Hunters and the other Target Lock for the time when you need to shoot at 2 Land Raiders at once. Farsight makes sure I don't scatter, and if need be can also add in a glance or maybe even an explosion via the Dawn Blade since its S5 AP2 with Armorbane. I also run 3 units of BS Markerlights (two sniper drone teams and a marker drone unit with a DC Commander), so getting those hits in on a Land Raider should be easy.

Again, Melta should be your go-to solution for AV14. Anything less and a Railgun might work better, especially with Longstrike.

Hammer heads are pretty useless with the railgun your putting alot of points into luck (submunition rounds are't bad thou) i had a guy try to put several shots in to my ghost arc and just could not hit/pen the av 13 with either his hammer heads and one got popped start of my turn two. there are just becoming more things that are more reliable its nice that it is only 125 points but the ion cannon can be way more effective with its three shots for taking out the light armor on the ground and allowing a riptide or crisis team deal with av 14(which i rarely see)