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I started playing Tau a few weeks back and one of my peeps at the club switched from CSM to daemons with the 4 FMC and a heard of screamers and some other stuff (like pink horrors, etc). I'd like to hear how other tau players have dealt with the 4 FMC + screamer/korndog list that's been making the rounds. Between the flying and the high toughness ... good grief ... and while you're trying to deal with them the screamers with the 2++ are knocking on your door turn two. What's a fire warrior to do?
Your opponent is playing a 'screamerStar' list, and its highly effective.
Its not unbeatable, however. You can use riptides to tie up the screamerStar for a few turns -- giving you time to shoot down his FMCs.
FMCs are not that tough for Tau. Broadsides will make very short work of them. Markerlights mean your fire warriors hit them much more often. That T5 is not very impressive when your being hit on a 4+ while flying.
If you ally in other units, you have more options. Tigerous has a pretty good chance of getting 'misfortune' which will put a big crimp in the screamerStar. If your allying with Eldar, 'Fortune' on a riptide will tie up the ScreamerStar the entire game.
At the end of the day, your opponent is putting together more of a competitive list. You will need to do the same if you want to compete.
At the end of the day, your opponent is putting together more of a competitive list. You will need to do the same if you want to compete.
Yep.
Tigurius is an excellent addition to Tau and will give you an edge against the Screamers. I'm under the impression after watching Tau that once you get a hang of your upgrades, Demon Princes are no problem. I see them drop from the skies. That's one reason why I don't include any.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/10/30 15:38:46
labmouse42 wrote: Your opponent is playing a 'screamerStar' list, and its highly effective.
This doesnt sound at all like a screamer star list, That would be Fatewaever with 4 heralds and others thrown in to tast, in that case it wouldnt be the FMC's which are the problem. This sounds more like a flying circus.
Best thing to do as tau is focus fire, and give up sacrificial lambs, use kroot to tarpit, if you have skyrays you've won half the battle use those missile and try to ground them. If you get one grounded focus it down. And if you feel you cant kill the FMC's then outplay him on objectives.
Ideally though id be looking for a list with a lot of skyrays or HYMP+SMS broadsides, just put enough wounds on the Daemon and it will die.
I was considering looking into allying with Eldar as it seems to be the combo of the day for Tau. But yeah, you're right, I need to make my list more competitive. I thought three riptides, buff commander and two units of broadsides would be do it but apparently not.
The toughness issue I've had is that my peep usually manages to get iron arm on fateweaver...T8 can be a bitch...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/10/30 15:58:35
I started playing Tau a few weeks back and one of my peeps at the club switched from CSM to daemons with the 4 FMC and a heard of screamers and some other stuff (like pink horrors, etc). I'd like to hear how other tau players have dealt with the 4 FMC + screamer/korndog list that's been making the rounds. Between the flying and the high toughness ... good grief ... and while you're trying to deal with them the screamers with the 2++ are knocking on your door turn two. What's a fire warrior to do?
For the FMCs then velocity trackers are your friends. Chucking in a Skyray as well is absolutely wonderful, this is the reason why the skyray is in the Tau tournie lists at the moment. Here is a list of things to help.
1) Velocity Trackers. Riptide with HBC is a good deal. Take a farsight enclave riptide and you can also put the signature system on him to re-roll his novacharge (Earth Caste Pilot Array).
2) Skyrays. It has skyfire and also a heck of a lot of S8 missiles. Also its markerlights count as having skyfire as well. Enough said
3) Snipers, either Kroot or Sniper drones. Most people use Kroot with Sniper rounds. Wounding all those MCs on 4s
4) Broadsides as mentioned above. Even without VTs all that twin linked goodness will surely make some hits. However you can stick in a VT to increase their effectiveness.
As for the screamerstar, I've not had a lot of experience in that sector. Best thing to do is do what others have said in this thread. Tie them up with a Riptide for a while. Other than that you're looking at massive firepower to make them fail their 2++ saves. Just remeber that the Grimnoire doesn't always work, he needs to make a roll for it.
necron99 wrote: I was considering looking into allying with Eldar as it seems to be the combo of the day for Tau. But yeah, you're right, I need to make my list more competitive. I thought three riptides, buff commander and two units of broadsides would be do it but apparently not.
First up where would the buff commander go? I usually find he isnt worth putting with riptides unless you're making and O'vesa star. Ideally I would say put him with 3 Broadsides with HYMPSMS and Target lock with 4-8 marker drones. And that actually sounds like a decent list start, 3 Riptides seem excessive as without good support they dont actually do much damage.
Allying in eldar works very well and partially solves the riptides damage problems. A farseer on a bike joined to a riptide will twin link it and you can twin link the other with prescience or the runes of fate power, the third power just depends on your rolls. Throw in 1 or 2 Min jetbike squads to grab late game objectives ( keep them behind LoS until its time to grab objectives). If you have a copy of your current list it would be a lot more helpful, but generally the order of business is try to ground a FMC then focus it, while using kroot to soak charges.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/10/30 16:02:48
Jakobokaj wrote: This doesnt sound at all like a screamer star list, That would be Fatewaever with 4 heralds and others thrown in to tast, in that case it wouldnt be the FMC's which are the problem.
Did you see the part where he said
"Between the flying and the high toughness ... good grief ... and while you're trying to deal with them the screamers with the 2++ are knocking on your door turn two."
The 4 FMCs are not the problem. Its those 2++ screamers. Perhaps we have different definitions of screamerStars
Automatically Appended Next Post:
necron99 wrote: The toughness issue I've had is that my peep usually manages to get iron arm on fateweaver...T8 can be a bitch...
Watch his dice rolling. He should only have a 1/6 chance of getting that power. It should not be that common.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/10/30 16:06:35
Just go ultracompetatvie on him in return, designate one ion cannon riptide as O'vesa, make the star, grab a couple skyrays and go to town.
The real question here is what points your playing and what the exact list your playing against is.
Screamerstar (screamers with 2++) + Dogs + 4 FMC + Troops is alot of points.
Either your running 2000+ or somewhere in that list the daemons should have lost all redudancy. I.E. the FMC are mastery level 1, or the screamers wont have enough rolls to get forewarning.
If he is running bare bones ML 1 FMC, screamers with either only fateweaver or fateweaver and 1-2 heralds for forewarning, than the deamons are fighting themselves in terms of randomness.
Also they should have minimum units of troops killing 20 horrors and a portal glyph shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world.
Run a riptide into the dogs while the O'vesa star kills the troop choices and the skyrays shoot the non iron armed FMC. Sacrafice unit to the screamers to attemp to tie them up. If nothing else take the charge, and hit and run out on their turn. Screamers are not that great against a 2+/3++ T6 MC or two in a unit.
Sniper kroot kill the flying MC, a rip tide or two charge into the dogs and keep them there for the rest of the game. Easy win. I do this all the time.
Desert Hunters of Vior'la The Purge Iron Hands Adepts of Pestilence Tallaran Desert Raiders Grey Knight Teleport Assault Force
Lt. Coldfire wrote:Seems to me that you should be refereeing and handing out red cards--like a boss.
Here's what I'm running at the moment. I do own two sky rays as well - tried them out but they seemed kinda lackluster. I see people running commander buffy with the broadsides but I don't see that as useful as sticking him with an IA enabled riptide. I mean the BS is already TL on all of it's weapons and most stuff I'm shooting at with them has a better armor save than what the HYM puts out. TL and ignore cover on IAs just seem to good to pass up. And before anyone says "sniper drones?!" That's what my peeps said at the club on Monday. On paper they sound really good (I think anyway). In one game they did great in another they got flamed to death on turn one from an ironclad dread that dropped in on them.
Sniper drones arent bad, theyre actually one of the best if not the best snipers in the game for the cost. Dirt cheap for mad range BS5 snipers with rapid fire? yes please!
Problem is theyre not as great as the rest of the heavy slot lol. They still work but usually that slot is used up by sky rays or more broadsides.
My question is whats with the TL Fusion on the buffmander? if you give him anything it should be flamers for overwatch reasons because any shooting phase he will not be shooting or you just wasted 35pts on upgrades and potentially a LOT of extra wounds since now they dont ignore cove/reroll hits. I dont even give him guns because hes usually my warlord, and theres a warlord trait that you do NOT want if you have those buffs purchased...if you dont have a gun though it lets you reroll. If it was army wide that'd be cool but its the same damn unit hes in may reroll to hits - he already does that lol.
An ork with an idea tends to end with a bang.
14000pts Big 'n Bad Orkz
6000pts Admech/Knights
7500pts Necron Goldboys
Jakobokaj wrote: This doesnt sound at all like a screamer star list, That would be Fatewaever with 4 heralds and others thrown in to tast, in that case it wouldnt be the FMC's which are the problem.
Did you see the part where he said
"Between the flying and the high toughness ... good grief ... and while you're trying to deal with them the screamers with the 2++ are knocking on your door turn two."
The 4 FMCs are not the problem. Its those 2++ screamers. Perhaps we have different definitions of screamerStars
Automatically Appended Next Post:
necron99 wrote: The toughness issue I've had is that my peep usually manages to get iron arm on fateweaver...T8 can be a bitch...
Watch his dice rolling. He should only have a 1/6 chance of getting that power. It should not be that common.
You're entirely right, I assumed you couldn't run an efficient screamerstar with 4 FMCs I still dont think you can so the daemons have effectively neutered themselves.
The problem I have with a buffmander with a single riptide is that youre doubling the cost while not doubling the firepower or durability.
Sniper drones are amazingly efficient vs daemons with ethereal support you get 3 BS5 sniper shots with 24" for 15 points. Problem is that's leaning towards lust tailoring.
I would not reccomend VT on anything other than a riptide as the cost is to steep (60 points for a broadside squad is absurd).
Another alternative is an allied wraithknight. It should tarpit the screamerstar all game, whilst maybe being able to ID the FMCs (can't remember t5 or t6)
My question is whats with the TL Fusion on the buffmander? if you give him anything it should be flamers for overwatch reasons because any shooting phase he will not be shooting or you just wasted 35pts on upgrades and potentially a LOT of extra wounds since now they dont ignore cove/reroll hits. I dont even give him guns because hes usually my warlord, and theres a warlord trait that you do NOT want if you have those buffs purchased...if you dont have a gun though it lets you reroll. If it was army wide that'd be cool but its the same damn unit hes in may reroll to hits - he already does that lol.
Yeah, I literally just threw the blaster on him after my last game. I played against an iron hand army with lots of bike wielding grav guns (among other things). The commander was one of the last models left on the table and I kinda wished he had something to shoot with...but I guess if I get to that point a fusion blaster won't do much :(
The reason I threw the VTs on the broadsides (which I know is kinda expensive) vs the riptides is because the riptides only get 3 S7 shots while the riptides are getting 4-8 TL S7 shots (8 being if it's armor 11 then the SMS come into play). But I definitely agree that VT is really expensive.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/10/30 18:43:09
Jakobokaj wrote: The problem I have with a buffmander with a single riptide is that youre doubling the cost while not doubling the firepower or durability.
Its kind of neat, but I covered this in my last 'SimHammer' segment on the 11th company podcast.
A buff commander will actually increase the overall damage delivered by a squad dramatically. So while the points you allocate to the buff commander don't actually give any extra shots you would be amazed at how much more damage is delivered.
I added the transcription of the segment along with this post (in a spoiler to prevent the wall of text CRIT hitting you for 20000 damage). If you want to read the entire thing I show how a buff commander can increase your overall damage output by 335% for a squad.
Spoiler:
Welcome back to SimHammer, mathhammer for everyone. In this segment we will be discussing Armor. We will discuss the history of armor in 40k, how armor is interacted with by weapons, causing damage to armor and resisting damage done to armor. Finally we will discuss how to abuse the ruleset to cause excessive amounts of damage to armor.
Armor is defined by anything with an AV value and is synonymous with ‘vehicle’ for game terms.
History In the 5th edition, armor was king. Most players brought armor in the form of transports for all their troops and fire platforms that were armor. A common list would consist of space wolves in razorbacks. You still see some armor lists today, such as venom spam, wave serpent spam, or battlewagon spam but overall its a lot less common.
One big reason for this is the creation of ‘hull points’. Every vehicle in the game has hull points associated with it. These are akin to ‘hit points’ from D&D or ‘health’ in WoW. When the amount of hull point damage reaches the total hull points on a vehicle, the vehicle is wrecked. Any glancing or penetrating hit takes off at least one hull point.
In 5th edition, it was possible for a single vehicle to be shaken/stunned 10 or more times a game, yet in 6th edition that just does not happen.
Another reason is that armor is now much more vulnerable to assault. All vehicles are treated as WS1, so they can be hit easily by most units. This means that any squad with krag grenades is a serious threat to most vehicles.
Effects Vehicles are effected in one of two primary ways. They suffer either glancing hits or penetrating hits. Sometimes they will suffer a different additional effect -- such as getting hit by a grav gun but usually its either glancing or penetrating hits.
Glancing hits remove one hull point from the vehicle where penetrating hits will remove a hull point and have an additional ‘effect’ on the vehicle. For purposes of this segment, ‘damage’ is hull point loss and ‘effects’ are results rolled from the damage table.
Hull point loss through damage is the most common form of vehicle death in 40k as a whole. Sure you meta might be bristling with melta, but most players lose vehicles to hull point lost. Sometimes a vehicle will explode after it takes multiple penetrating hits -- such as a wave serpent getting assaulted by 10 seekers of slaanesh, but even then it will be the hull points damage that ‘destroys’ it.
This does not mean a single gun can not destroy a vehicle. A ML will explode on a penerating hit ⅙ of the time. A PG will explode the vehicle on ⅓ of penetrating hits, and an AP1 weapon will explode a vehicle ½ of the time on penetrating hits.
These are big jumps! The PG has a 200% chance of exploding on a single hit than a ML does. A MG has a 300% greater chance to explode the vehicle.
In addition, these high AP weapons will generate less ‘shaken’ or ‘stunned’ results, meaning that even penetrating hits that do not explode the vehicle will have a greater negative effect on the vehicle.
Damaging Armor To damage armor you roll the STR + d6 and compare that value to the AV value of the vehicle. The net result is a linear progession on effectivness of weapons vs. armor. Every time you increase the STR of the weapon by 1, your chance to ‘damage’ the same armor goes up by 16.66%. Every time you increase the armor the change to ‘damage’ drops by 16.666%.
This matches the same progression as STR to Toughness ratios. The rule of resilience applies here as well. A LC is literally twice as likely to damage a land raider than a ML will. If an effect is rolled, the LC is twice as likely to cause an ‘explode’ result.
This means that higher armor values can be extremely hard to crack. Anyone who has faced a tri-land raider build with nothing but long fangs can appreciate this.
Tank Hunter There are some exceptions to the normal rule of armor damage. Tank hunter is one such exception. Tank hunters let you reroll the dice when hitting armor. This gives a ‘twin-linked’ effect to increasing overall damage.
Lets say your shooting a rail gun, which is STR 5, at a storm talon, which is AV11. Instead of ‘damaging’ the storm talon with 16.66% of hits, the storm talon is damaged on 30% of the hits. If you cast ‘prescience’ on the fire warrior squad, as well as gave them ‘tank hunters’ they are damaging a storm talon 9% of the time per shot instead of .027% of the time.
If your shooting a STR 7 weapon at AV12, your ‘damaging’ the armor 55% of the time instead of 33.3% of the time. That means that a ‘tank hunter’ quad gun is something that a helldrake needs to address.
Ordnance
Ordnance weapons effect vehicles in a similar way to tank hunters. In the case of an ordnance hit, you roll 2 dice and pick the highest result. This is exactly the same as ‘twin-linking’, and if you ever shooting a single twin-linked gun its adviseable to just roll two dice at once as it saves time.
The key difference between an ordnance hit and a tank-hunter hit is that the ordnance hit gets to roll two dice at once, where the tank hunter must choose to reroll. This means that the ordnance weapon has a greater effect of causing an ‘effect’ on the armor. This is because if you just shot a helldrake with a quad gun and rolled a 5, causing a glance, your not likely to pick that same dice and and reroll it in the chances you will get a 6.
Melta/Armorbane Melta and armorbane hits are another exception to the normal rule. These weapons roll 2d6 and add them together for purposes of armor penetration. This means that the average addition to the weapons STR will be increased from 3.5 to 7.
In other words, is the slightly better than going from STR 7 to STR 10 when hitting a vehicle.
When rolling 2d6 instead of 1d6, your dice percentages turn into a bell curve, which incorporates standard deviation. This means that a weapon with armorbane is more reliable for predicting its effects on
Armorbane does not give an auto-win against armor though. A melta gun, for example only has a 19.4% to ‘explode’ AV14 armor in one shot when fired by a marine. Thats ⅔ chance to hit multplied by .5833% to penetrate multplied by .5 chance to ‘explode’. Sure, 48% of the time a melta gun will strip a HP off the AV14 armor, but a single melta gun is not ‘all the anti-armor’ you will need.
Armorbane can make weak targets more of a threat. Take a warlock with a witchblade. They have a 41.66% of ‘effecting’ AV10, which means that even a single warlock can be a big threat to any vehicle with a rear armor of 10.
Rending The way rending effects armor penetration is defined in more detail during the simhammer segment ‘Rending and You’. Rending does not follow a normal lineral progression, but instead jumps when a “6” is rolled to determine damage on armor.
This means that a STR 3 rending hit can penetrate AV10. A STR 6 rending hit can penetrate a land raider. This makes rending weapons a bit more threatening to armor.
Preventing damage There are not many things that give armor the ability to resist damage. Flyers have a built in resistance by reducing most enemy BS to 1. Armor can also gain cover saves or can have an invulnerable save.
Example : Autocannon vs Raider
Armor saves act in the same fashion as FNP saves to infantry models. They can have quite a significant effect. Lets look at an autocannon shot vs a raider.
The autocannon shot has a ⅔ chance of causing damage on the raider, and ⅔ of the time the raider will fail its jink save. This means that there is a 44.4% chance of having damage occur when hit by an autocannon.
Without the jink, there would be a 66.6% of that hit causing damage. The difference between 44% and 66% is pretty significant!
If you include the roll to hit, a BS4 wielder -- such as a CSM havoc, will have a 29.5% chance of causing damage to a raider. The same autocannon has a 33.3% chance of causing damage to an AV11 tank. This means that when it comes to resisting ‘damage’ the raider is actually better!
Of course, as the raider is open topped any penetrating effects will be greater, so raiders are not quite tougher than rhinos but you get the general idea.
Example : Chimera behind ADL vs Land Raider Something like an ADL can make a significant difference to the unit behind it. This is because the ADL can literally reduce the incoming damage by 50%.
For this example lets assume a lascannon will shoot at both targets.
When shooting at a land raider in the open, it will cause damage ⅔ (hit) * ⅓ (damage) = 2/9 (22.2%) of the time. 11.1% (half) of shots will cause an effect on the target, which is pretty good.
A chimera behind the ADL will have damage caused on it ⅔ (hit) * ⅔ (damage) * ½ (cover) = 2/9 chance of ‘damage’. This is the same as the land raider in the open!
Of course the chance of an effect rolled is much greater. 16.6% of the shots will produce an effect, and 5.5% of the shots will just cause damage (glancing)
This illustrates just how good cover saves can be to the durability increase of a vehicle.
Example : ML vs Wave Serpent Lets say that your shooting a wave serpent with a long fang/devestator squad. Your chances of causing damage are the following. ⅔ (to hit) * ½ (damage) * ½ (jink) or ⅙ chance of causing damage per shot.
Not to say that it will take 18 ML shots to wreck one wave serpent, as you might roll the same pen result twice causing additional HP of damage, or you might just explode on one shot. But this does illustrate how bloody tough wave serpents are.
Abusing the Rules We have just covered how tough wave serpents are. Is there a way to rip them apart? The answer is yes, though the application of USRs to squads.
Lets take a squad of broadsides. Each broadside has 4 TLSTR 7 shots. This means that when shooting at wave serpents each shot has a ¾ (to hit) * ⅓ (to damage) * ½ (cover save) = 1/8 (12.3%) to cause damage on target.
That means you can reasonably expect 6 broadsides to be required to destroy the wave serpents. That’s quite a bit of firepower required.
If you add a buff commander and give the squad tank hunters and ignore cover the math changes quickly.
The chances of causing damage change to the following ¾ (to hit) *.55 (to damage) = 41.25% of causing damage. This is a 335% increase in damage output!!!
This means each broadside is now removing 1.65 hull points. You could now fire 2 broadsides at one wave serpent, then shoot your other broadside plus some missile drones at another wave serpent. You would have a reasonable chance of killing 2 wave serpents per turn.
Let that sink in for a moment. By adding the buff commander, the broadsides go from killing one serpent every other turn to killing nearly 2 serpents a turn. That is why you see buff commanders in today’s top lists joining broadsides and riptides.
Jakobokaj wrote: The problem I have with a buffmander with a single riptide is that youre doubling the cost while not doubling the firepower or durability.
Its kind of neat, but I covered this in my last 'SimHammer' segment on the 11th company podcast.
A buff commander will actually increase the overall damage delivered by a squad dramatically. So while the points you allocate to the buff commander don't actually give any extra shots you would be amazed at how much more damage is delivered.
I added the transcription of the segment along with this post (in a spoiler to prevent the wall of text CRIT hitting you for 20000 damage). If you want to read the entire thing I show how a buff commander can increase your overall damage output by 335% for a squad.
Spoiler:
Welcome back to SimHammer, mathhammer for everyone. In this segment we will be discussing Armor. We will discuss the history of armor in 40k, how armor is interacted with by weapons, causing damage to armor and resisting damage done to armor. Finally we will discuss how to abuse the ruleset to cause excessive amounts of damage to armor.
Armor is defined by anything with an AV value and is synonymous with ‘vehicle’ for game terms.
History In the 5th edition, armor was king. Most players brought armor in the form of transports for all their troops and fire platforms that were armor. A common list would consist of space wolves in razorbacks. You still see some armor lists today, such as venom spam, wave serpent spam, or battlewagon spam but overall its a lot less common.
One big reason for this is the creation of ‘hull points’. Every vehicle in the game has hull points associated with it. These are akin to ‘hit points’ from D&D or ‘health’ in WoW. When the amount of hull point damage reaches the total hull points on a vehicle, the vehicle is wrecked. Any glancing or penetrating hit takes off at least one hull point.
In 5th edition, it was possible for a single vehicle to be shaken/stunned 10 or more times a game, yet in 6th edition that just does not happen.
Another reason is that armor is now much more vulnerable to assault. All vehicles are treated as WS1, so they can be hit easily by most units. This means that any squad with krag grenades is a serious threat to most vehicles.
Effects Vehicles are effected in one of two primary ways. They suffer either glancing hits or penetrating hits. Sometimes they will suffer a different additional effect -- such as getting hit by a grav gun but usually its either glancing or penetrating hits.
Glancing hits remove one hull point from the vehicle where penetrating hits will remove a hull point and have an additional ‘effect’ on the vehicle. For purposes of this segment, ‘damage’ is hull point loss and ‘effects’ are results rolled from the damage table.
Hull point loss through damage is the most common form of vehicle death in 40k as a whole. Sure you meta might be bristling with melta, but most players lose vehicles to hull point lost. Sometimes a vehicle will explode after it takes multiple penetrating hits -- such as a wave serpent getting assaulted by 10 seekers of slaanesh, but even then it will be the hull points damage that ‘destroys’ it.
This does not mean a single gun can not destroy a vehicle. A ML will explode on a penerating hit ⅙ of the time. A PG will explode the vehicle on ⅓ of penetrating hits, and an AP1 weapon will explode a vehicle ½ of the time on penetrating hits.
These are big jumps! The PG has a 200% chance of exploding on a single hit than a ML does. A MG has a 300% greater chance to explode the vehicle.
In addition, these high AP weapons will generate less ‘shaken’ or ‘stunned’ results, meaning that even penetrating hits that do not explode the vehicle will have a greater negative effect on the vehicle.
Damaging Armor To damage armor you roll the STR + d6 and compare that value to the AV value of the vehicle. The net result is a linear progession on effectivness of weapons vs. armor. Every time you increase the STR of the weapon by 1, your chance to ‘damage’ the same armor goes up by 16.66%. Every time you increase the armor the change to ‘damage’ drops by 16.666%.
This matches the same progression as STR to Toughness ratios. The rule of resilience applies here as well. A LC is literally twice as likely to damage a land raider than a ML will. If an effect is rolled, the LC is twice as likely to cause an ‘explode’ result.
This means that higher armor values can be extremely hard to crack. Anyone who has faced a tri-land raider build with nothing but long fangs can appreciate this.
Tank Hunter There are some exceptions to the normal rule of armor damage. Tank hunter is one such exception. Tank hunters let you reroll the dice when hitting armor. This gives a ‘twin-linked’ effect to increasing overall damage.
Lets say your shooting a rail gun, which is STR 5, at a storm talon, which is AV11. Instead of ‘damaging’ the storm talon with 16.66% of hits, the storm talon is damaged on 30% of the hits. If you cast ‘prescience’ on the fire warrior squad, as well as gave them ‘tank hunters’ they are damaging a storm talon 9% of the time per shot instead of .027% of the time.
If your shooting a STR 7 weapon at AV12, your ‘damaging’ the armor 55% of the time instead of 33.3% of the time. That means that a ‘tank hunter’ quad gun is something that a helldrake needs to address.
Ordnance
Ordnance weapons effect vehicles in a similar way to tank hunters. In the case of an ordnance hit, you roll 2 dice and pick the highest result. This is exactly the same as ‘twin-linking’, and if you ever shooting a single twin-linked gun its adviseable to just roll two dice at once as it saves time.
The key difference between an ordnance hit and a tank-hunter hit is that the ordnance hit gets to roll two dice at once, where the tank hunter must choose to reroll. This means that the ordnance weapon has a greater effect of causing an ‘effect’ on the armor. This is because if you just shot a helldrake with a quad gun and rolled a 5, causing a glance, your not likely to pick that same dice and and reroll it in the chances you will get a 6.
Melta/Armorbane Melta and armorbane hits are another exception to the normal rule. These weapons roll 2d6 and add them together for purposes of armor penetration. This means that the average addition to the weapons STR will be increased from 3.5 to 7.
In other words, is the slightly better than going from STR 7 to STR 10 when hitting a vehicle.
When rolling 2d6 instead of 1d6, your dice percentages turn into a bell curve, which incorporates standard deviation. This means that a weapon with armorbane is more reliable for predicting its effects on
Armorbane does not give an auto-win against armor though. A melta gun, for example only has a 19.4% to ‘explode’ AV14 armor in one shot when fired by a marine. Thats ⅔ chance to hit multplied by .5833% to penetrate multplied by .5 chance to ‘explode’. Sure, 48% of the time a melta gun will strip a HP off the AV14 armor, but a single melta gun is not ‘all the anti-armor’ you will need.
Armorbane can make weak targets more of a threat. Take a warlock with a witchblade. They have a 41.66% of ‘effecting’ AV10, which means that even a single warlock can be a big threat to any vehicle with a rear armor of 10.
Rending The way rending effects armor penetration is defined in more detail during the simhammer segment ‘Rending and You’. Rending does not follow a normal lineral progression, but instead jumps when a “6” is rolled to determine damage on armor.
This means that a STR 3 rending hit can penetrate AV10. A STR 6 rending hit can penetrate a land raider. This makes rending weapons a bit more threatening to armor.
Preventing damage There are not many things that give armor the ability to resist damage. Flyers have a built in resistance by reducing most enemy BS to 1. Armor can also gain cover saves or can have an invulnerable save.
Example : Autocannon vs Raider
Armor saves act in the same fashion as FNP saves to infantry models. They can have quite a significant effect. Lets look at an autocannon shot vs a raider.
The autocannon shot has a ⅔ chance of causing damage on the raider, and ⅔ of the time the raider will fail its jink save. This means that there is a 44.4% chance of having damage occur when hit by an autocannon.
Without the jink, there would be a 66.6% of that hit causing damage. The difference between 44% and 66% is pretty significant!
If you include the roll to hit, a BS4 wielder -- such as a CSM havoc, will have a 29.5% chance of causing damage to a raider. The same autocannon has a 33.3% chance of causing damage to an AV11 tank. This means that when it comes to resisting ‘damage’ the raider is actually better!
Of course, as the raider is open topped any penetrating effects will be greater, so raiders are not quite tougher than rhinos but you get the general idea.
Example : Chimera behind ADL vs Land Raider Something like an ADL can make a significant difference to the unit behind it. This is because the ADL can literally reduce the incoming damage by 50%.
For this example lets assume a lascannon will shoot at both targets.
When shooting at a land raider in the open, it will cause damage ⅔ (hit) * ⅓ (damage) = 2/9 (22.2%) of the time. 11.1% (half) of shots will cause an effect on the target, which is pretty good.
A chimera behind the ADL will have damage caused on it ⅔ (hit) * ⅔ (damage) * ½ (cover) = 2/9 chance of ‘damage’. This is the same as the land raider in the open!
Of course the chance of an effect rolled is much greater. 16.6% of the shots will produce an effect, and 5.5% of the shots will just cause damage (glancing)
This illustrates just how good cover saves can be to the durability increase of a vehicle.
Example : ML vs Wave Serpent Lets say that your shooting a wave serpent with a long fang/devestator squad. Your chances of causing damage are the following. ⅔ (to hit) * ½ (damage) * ½ (jink) or ⅙ chance of causing damage per shot.
Not to say that it will take 18 ML shots to wreck one wave serpent, as you might roll the same pen result twice causing additional HP of damage, or you might just explode on one shot. But this does illustrate how bloody tough wave serpents are.
Abusing the Rules We have just covered how tough wave serpents are. Is there a way to rip them apart? The answer is yes, though the application of USRs to squads.
Lets take a squad of broadsides. Each broadside has 4 TLSTR 7 shots. This means that when shooting at wave serpents each shot has a ¾ (to hit) * ⅓ (to damage) * ½ (cover save) = 1/8 (12.3%) to cause damage on target.
That means you can reasonably expect 6 broadsides to be required to destroy the wave serpents. That’s quite a bit of firepower required.
If you add a buff commander and give the squad tank hunters and ignore cover the math changes quickly.
The chances of causing damage change to the following ¾ (to hit) *.55 (to damage) = 41.25% of causing damage. This is a 335% increase in damage output!!!
This means each broadside is now removing 1.65 hull points. You could now fire 2 broadsides at one wave serpent, then shoot your other broadside plus some missile drones at another wave serpent. You would have a reasonable chance of killing 2 wave serpents per turn.
Let that sink in for a moment. By adding the buff commander, the broadsides go from killing one serpent every other turn to killing nearly 2 serpents a turn. That is why you see buff commanders in today’s top lists joining broadsides and riptides.
I completely agree, I think they are excellent with broadsides, I actually suggested it with broadsides in an earlier post
But a riptide with IA benefits far less, generally giving the riptide markers is more efficient than a buffmander in my experience. Where the buff commander shines is with 'sides ovesa star Farsun bomb and maybe a deathrain team. It shines especially well on the O'vesa star because a Rending weapon by nature combines well with tank/monster hunter.
Also while as you've shown a great example (no idea a buffmander and broadsides was THAT efficient against light armor) the unit as a whole will lose that efficient very fast against any unit with an armoir/invul as the ignores cover loses a lot of value.
Give your Ethereal Marker Drones x2, give your Sniper team all 3 Firesight Marksmen, combine the two units for 2+ markerlights x5, with stealth, Ld.10 and Stubborn. Also, your Drones would each be firing 3 times each at 24" (BS5 snipers no less) Forcing and abundance of saves is the best way to counter 2++
Then you can replace some Pathfinders with Flyers of your own.
I prefer the Razorshark because it's cheaper and isn't quite as big a loss when it dies. Quad-ion turret with 360 fire arc? Seeker Missiles x2? Missile Pod? Lot's of S7-8 coming off that unit...
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/10/30 20:16:32
You can't spell 'slaughter' without 'laughter'. By the time they scream... It's too late. DQ:70+S+++G++M+B+I+Pw40k94#-D+A++/areWD106R++T(R)DM+ Check my P&M blarg! - Ke'lshan Tau Fire Caste Contingent: Astartes Hunters
I've played the Flying Circus and Screamer Star several times with Tau and been pretty successful. Managed to eek out one of my wins even with horrendous luck and a sub-opitmal list.
What works for me in a Tau/Tau list:
Buff Commander
2 Riptides with EWO and VT, 1 with HBC, ECPA, EWO and VT
Broadsides w/ EWO, HYMP Sky Ray
Sniper Drone Team w/ 3 Firesight and Ethereal w/ 2 Marker Drones.
Crisis Suits w/ MP's and another Commander w/ Talisman of Arthas Moloch. The Talisman is really a big deal vs. Daemons. I never take the TLFB on the 'Tides. Always SMS.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/10/30 20:16:36
Jakobokaj wrote: The problem I have with a buffmander with a single riptide is that youre doubling the cost while not doubling the firepower or durability.
Its kind of neat, but I covered this in my last 'SimHammer' segment on the 11th company podcast.
A buff commander will actually increase the overall damage delivered by a squad dramatically. So while the points you allocate to the buff commander don't actually give any extra shots you would be amazed at how much more damage is delivered.
I added the transcription of the segment along with this post (in a spoiler to prevent the wall of text CRIT hitting you for 20000 damage). If you want to read the entire thing I show how a buff commander can increase your overall damage output by 335% for a squad.
Spoiler:
Welcome back to SimHammer, mathhammer for everyone. In this segment we will be discussing Armor. We will discuss the history of armor in 40k, how armor is interacted with by weapons, causing damage to armor and resisting damage done to armor. Finally we will discuss how to abuse the ruleset to cause excessive amounts of damage to armor.
Armor is defined by anything with an AV value and is synonymous with ‘vehicle’ for game terms.
History In the 5th edition, armor was king. Most players brought armor in the form of transports for all their troops and fire platforms that were armor. A common list would consist of space wolves in razorbacks. You still see some armor lists today, such as venom spam, wave serpent spam, or battlewagon spam but overall its a lot less common.
One big reason for this is the creation of ‘hull points’. Every vehicle in the game has hull points associated with it. These are akin to ‘hit points’ from D&D or ‘health’ in WoW. When the amount of hull point damage reaches the total hull points on a vehicle, the vehicle is wrecked. Any glancing or penetrating hit takes off at least one hull point.
In 5th edition, it was possible for a single vehicle to be shaken/stunned 10 or more times a game, yet in 6th edition that just does not happen.
Another reason is that armor is now much more vulnerable to assault. All vehicles are treated as WS1, so they can be hit easily by most units. This means that any squad with krag grenades is a serious threat to most vehicles.
Effects Vehicles are effected in one of two primary ways. They suffer either glancing hits or penetrating hits. Sometimes they will suffer a different additional effect -- such as getting hit by a grav gun but usually its either glancing or penetrating hits.
Glancing hits remove one hull point from the vehicle where penetrating hits will remove a hull point and have an additional ‘effect’ on the vehicle. For purposes of this segment, ‘damage’ is hull point loss and ‘effects’ are results rolled from the damage table.
Hull point loss through damage is the most common form of vehicle death in 40k as a whole. Sure you meta might be bristling with melta, but most players lose vehicles to hull point lost. Sometimes a vehicle will explode after it takes multiple penetrating hits -- such as a wave serpent getting assaulted by 10 seekers of slaanesh, but even then it will be the hull points damage that ‘destroys’ it.
This does not mean a single gun can not destroy a vehicle. A ML will explode on a penerating hit ⅙ of the time. A PG will explode the vehicle on ⅓ of penetrating hits, and an AP1 weapon will explode a vehicle ½ of the time on penetrating hits.
These are big jumps! The PG has a 200% chance of exploding on a single hit than a ML does. A MG has a 300% greater chance to explode the vehicle.
In addition, these high AP weapons will generate less ‘shaken’ or ‘stunned’ results, meaning that even penetrating hits that do not explode the vehicle will have a greater negative effect on the vehicle.
Damaging Armor To damage armor you roll the STR + d6 and compare that value to the AV value of the vehicle. The net result is a linear progession on effectivness of weapons vs. armor. Every time you increase the STR of the weapon by 1, your chance to ‘damage’ the same armor goes up by 16.66%. Every time you increase the armor the change to ‘damage’ drops by 16.666%.
This matches the same progression as STR to Toughness ratios. The rule of resilience applies here as well. A LC is literally twice as likely to damage a land raider than a ML will. If an effect is rolled, the LC is twice as likely to cause an ‘explode’ result.
This means that higher armor values can be extremely hard to crack. Anyone who has faced a tri-land raider build with nothing but long fangs can appreciate this.
Tank Hunter There are some exceptions to the normal rule of armor damage. Tank hunter is one such exception. Tank hunters let you reroll the dice when hitting armor. This gives a ‘twin-linked’ effect to increasing overall damage.
Lets say your shooting a rail gun, which is STR 5, at a storm talon, which is AV11. Instead of ‘damaging’ the storm talon with 16.66% of hits, the storm talon is damaged on 30% of the hits. If you cast ‘prescience’ on the fire warrior squad, as well as gave them ‘tank hunters’ they are damaging a storm talon 9% of the time per shot instead of .027% of the time.
If your shooting a STR 7 weapon at AV12, your ‘damaging’ the armor 55% of the time instead of 33.3% of the time. That means that a ‘tank hunter’ quad gun is something that a helldrake needs to address.
Ordnance
Ordnance weapons effect vehicles in a similar way to tank hunters. In the case of an ordnance hit, you roll 2 dice and pick the highest result. This is exactly the same as ‘twin-linking’, and if you ever shooting a single twin-linked gun its adviseable to just roll two dice at once as it saves time.
The key difference between an ordnance hit and a tank-hunter hit is that the ordnance hit gets to roll two dice at once, where the tank hunter must choose to reroll. This means that the ordnance weapon has a greater effect of causing an ‘effect’ on the armor. This is because if you just shot a helldrake with a quad gun and rolled a 5, causing a glance, your not likely to pick that same dice and and reroll it in the chances you will get a 6.
Melta/Armorbane Melta and armorbane hits are another exception to the normal rule. These weapons roll 2d6 and add them together for purposes of armor penetration. This means that the average addition to the weapons STR will be increased from 3.5 to 7.
In other words, is the slightly better than going from STR 7 to STR 10 when hitting a vehicle.
When rolling 2d6 instead of 1d6, your dice percentages turn into a bell curve, which incorporates standard deviation. This means that a weapon with armorbane is more reliable for predicting its effects on
Armorbane does not give an auto-win against armor though. A melta gun, for example only has a 19.4% to ‘explode’ AV14 armor in one shot when fired by a marine. Thats ⅔ chance to hit multplied by .5833% to penetrate multplied by .5 chance to ‘explode’. Sure, 48% of the time a melta gun will strip a HP off the AV14 armor, but a single melta gun is not ‘all the anti-armor’ you will need.
Armorbane can make weak targets more of a threat. Take a warlock with a witchblade. They have a 41.66% of ‘effecting’ AV10, which means that even a single warlock can be a big threat to any vehicle with a rear armor of 10.
Rending The way rending effects armor penetration is defined in more detail during the simhammer segment ‘Rending and You’. Rending does not follow a normal lineral progression, but instead jumps when a “6” is rolled to determine damage on armor.
This means that a STR 3 rending hit can penetrate AV10. A STR 6 rending hit can penetrate a land raider. This makes rending weapons a bit more threatening to armor.
Preventing damage There are not many things that give armor the ability to resist damage. Flyers have a built in resistance by reducing most enemy BS to 1. Armor can also gain cover saves or can have an invulnerable save.
Example : Autocannon vs Raider
Armor saves act in the same fashion as FNP saves to infantry models. They can have quite a significant effect. Lets look at an autocannon shot vs a raider.
The autocannon shot has a ⅔ chance of causing damage on the raider, and ⅔ of the time the raider will fail its jink save. This means that there is a 44.4% chance of having damage occur when hit by an autocannon.
Without the jink, there would be a 66.6% of that hit causing damage. The difference between 44% and 66% is pretty significant!
If you include the roll to hit, a BS4 wielder -- such as a CSM havoc, will have a 29.5% chance of causing damage to a raider. The same autocannon has a 33.3% chance of causing damage to an AV11 tank. This means that when it comes to resisting ‘damage’ the raider is actually better!
Of course, as the raider is open topped any penetrating effects will be greater, so raiders are not quite tougher than rhinos but you get the general idea.
Example : Chimera behind ADL vs Land Raider Something like an ADL can make a significant difference to the unit behind it. This is because the ADL can literally reduce the incoming damage by 50%.
For this example lets assume a lascannon will shoot at both targets.
When shooting at a land raider in the open, it will cause damage ⅔ (hit) * ⅓ (damage) = 2/9 (22.2%) of the time. 11.1% (half) of shots will cause an effect on the target, which is pretty good.
A chimera behind the ADL will have damage caused on it ⅔ (hit) * ⅔ (damage) * ½ (cover) = 2/9 chance of ‘damage’. This is the same as the land raider in the open!
Of course the chance of an effect rolled is much greater. 16.6% of the shots will produce an effect, and 5.5% of the shots will just cause damage (glancing)
This illustrates just how good cover saves can be to the durability increase of a vehicle.
Example : ML vs Wave Serpent Lets say that your shooting a wave serpent with a long fang/devestator squad. Your chances of causing damage are the following. ⅔ (to hit) * ½ (damage) * ½ (jink) or ⅙ chance of causing damage per shot.
Not to say that it will take 18 ML shots to wreck one wave serpent, as you might roll the same pen result twice causing additional HP of damage, or you might just explode on one shot. But this does illustrate how bloody tough wave serpents are.
Abusing the Rules We have just covered how tough wave serpents are. Is there a way to rip them apart? The answer is yes, though the application of USRs to squads.
Lets take a squad of broadsides. Each broadside has 4 TLSTR 7 shots. This means that when shooting at wave serpents each shot has a ¾ (to hit) * ⅓ (to damage) * ½ (cover save) = 1/8 (12.3%) to cause damage on target.
That means you can reasonably expect 6 broadsides to be required to destroy the wave serpents. That’s quite a bit of firepower required.
If you add a buff commander and give the squad tank hunters and ignore cover the math changes quickly.
The chances of causing damage change to the following ¾ (to hit) *.55 (to damage) = 41.25% of causing damage. This is a 335% increase in damage output!!!
This means each broadside is now removing 1.65 hull points. You could now fire 2 broadsides at one wave serpent, then shoot your other broadside plus some missile drones at another wave serpent. You would have a reasonable chance of killing 2 wave serpents per turn.
Let that sink in for a moment. By adding the buff commander, the broadsides go from killing one serpent every other turn to killing nearly 2 serpents a turn. That is why you see buff commanders in today’s top lists joining broadsides and riptides.
This is exactly why I allied in a Tau Buff Commander for my ECPA HBC Riptide.
Normal HBC Riptide Assuming Successful Nova(2/3)
12 BS 3 S6 Rending Shots vs 4+Cover = .5 Pens
ECPA HBC Riptide Assuming Successful Nova(8/9)
12 BS 3 S6 Rending Shots with Reroll 1s vs 4+Cover = .58 Pens
ECPA HBC Riptide Assuming Successful Nova(8/9)
12 TL BS3 S6 Rending Shots with Tank Hunter and Ignores Cover = 2.75 Pens
550% the Wave Serpent Killing Power or a 90% increase in cost. Also come with a 105% increase in suitability(vs Lascannon).
For Reference I run an HBC Riptide with Stim, VT and ECPT. My Buffmander has Iridium Armor, Stim Injector, Shield Generator, Cyclic Ion Blaster, Pen, MSS, C&CN, VRT, Onanger Guantlet, and NSJ.
The last time a Tau player threw a Riptide at my Screamerstar to "Tie it up" it died in a single round of combat... I'd personally say don't do that and feed it a useless group of kroot... or use kroot as blanketing models and surround your fire warriors with them so you cannot be charged.. surrounding your vehicles with them works too since the only thing in the unit that CAN effectively shoot back at you is the heralds and at that point you're basically forcing him to either get tied into combat or to move to another location on the board and mini-VC you which is a hell of a lot better than losing a Riptide to AP2 attacks
Life: An incomprehensible, endless circle of involuntary self-destruction.
You know Tau can be Desperate Allies with Daemons. Why not take a few fast units to intercept his own and have some psychic counter balance? Just keep your shooty stuff in the back and Daemons more than 6" away. A Daemons player would not expect to see such an Alliance.
I'm thinking perhaps a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, some Flesh Hounds, a Beast of Nurgle (for Linebreaker), and maybe a Soul Grinder, oh, and some Horrors and/or Daemonettes. More Daemonic Troops means you need less Firewarriors. Flesh Hounds mean you don't need Kroot as the Hounds can also Outflank, but the Kroot do have sniper rifles which can be useful.
For the Tau stuff, I agree that Broadsides are AMAZINGLY AWESOME at taking out fliers. Too many shots not to love them. Riptide or two is good of course. Crisis bomb is hit or miss, I've had them wipe out my Chaos Marines a couple times without a hiccup, but I've also had them not be able to take down Fateweaver on their drop-in.
Don't be afraid, the Warp is plenty big for everyone!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ooh yeah, I just read that Buff Commander math-hammer example. NASTY stuff. I'd run those too if I had any Tau, maybe after my Orks project.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/10/30 22:30:41
Desert Hunters of Vior'la 
The Purge 
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Adepts of Pestilence 
Tallaran Desert Raiders 
Grey Knight Teleport Assault Force
An ork with an idea tends to end with a bang. 
14000pts Big 'n Bad Orkz
6000pts Admech/Knights
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By the time they scream... It's too late. 
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