Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I have read many things about Longstrike not being worth his points but I have used him to great affect in all of my lists.

45 points for BS 5 re rolling glances seems completely worth it to me.

What are your opinions?

I have been on the receiving end of longstrike. Worth the points? Hard to say but I lean towards yes. He dramatically increases the lethality of an alpha strike with the rail gun, but the explode result is now less likely so the single alpha is less useful. Personally, any time my tau opponent says "I hit on 2s" I lose a little morale...

I'd say for 45 points, yea he is worth it if you have filled out the other requirements in your army. I don't think he will make a big impact if you are building your army around him, but it is definitely nice to have.

That being said, he also becomes a major target. So don't expect him to last long, and be aware that your opponent will be gunning for him. So use that to your advantage. Make sure he is in some cover and think about how you can take advantage of units going after him. Setting up flanks, etc.

That's why I like him, It means hitting on 2's with out having to dedicate a path finder team to him.

Strength 10 ap 1 hitting on 2s is a no brainer to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Icculus wrote:
I'd say for 45 points, yea he is worth it if you have filled out the other requirements in your army. I don't think he will make a big impact if you are building your army around him, but it is definitely nice to have.

That being said, he also becomes a major target. So don't expect him to last long, and be aware that your opponent will be gunning for him. So use that to your advantage. Make sure he is in some cover and think about how you can take advantage of units going after him. Setting up flanks, etc.

That's one of my other big pluses for him is that he annoys people enough to waste a lot of their heavy fire on him.

In most of the games I have used him he has survived to at least turn 3.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Icculus wrote:
I'd say for 45 points, yea he is worth it if you have filled out the other requirements in your army. I don't think he will make a big impact if you are building your army around him, but it is definitely nice to have.

That being said, he also becomes a major target. So don't expect him to last long, and be aware that your opponent will be gunning for him. So use that to your advantage. Make sure he is in some cover and think about how you can take advantage of units going after him. Setting up flanks, etc.

That's one of my other big pluses for him is that he annoys people enough to waste a lot of their heavy fire on him.

In most of the games I have used him he has survived to at least turn 3.

I think he's totally worth it. If you try to build a hammerhead to have the same bonuses he confers, then he ends up only being like 10/15 points more expensive. 10/15 points seems like a good deal for tankhunter and bs5 to me.

Another thing worth thinking about is that since he starts off at bs5, he can focus something other than your marker light targets. Generally an entire tau army needs to focus one thing down at a time. Long strike gives you a little flexibility in that regard.

I like to run my Tau by dedicating Pathfinders to certain models e.g. one team for Riptide one team for Broadsides. So always take Longstrike now that it guarantees me BS5 st10 ap2 shots.

It's just I never see him used by other Tau players in battle reports and such.

I think he loads up the hammerhead too much, I prefer to run mine bare-bones there days.


Quantity over quality.

 BoomWolf wrote:
I think he loads up the hammerhead too much, I prefer to run mine bare-bones there days.


Quantity over quality.

I would agree with this in most cases. but if you get to the point in your list where you are like, "well crap, I have 50 points leftover that I dont know what to do with" That's when Longstrike is a good idea. If you have enough points leftover to buy another hammerhead, that's probably going to be a better bet than putting longstrike in one and tossing points somewhere else.

Personally to the question "is longstrike worth it?" I think its pretty obvious that hes COMPLETELY worth the 45 pts upgrade. But the real tough question is "are hammerheads worth it" and competitively I'd say probably not....

They are competeing with missle broadsides which are the definition of efficiency, and skyrays which provide a perfect counter for FMCs, skyfire markerlights and a great alpha strike.
Personally I like to have 1 longstike in high point games for the flavor of a railgun that decimates stuff but overall I don't think hammerheads are competitive.

TLDR if you're taking a hammerhead, you take longstrike but you're list might suffer for going quality over quantity.

i just find he makes a hammerhead too pricey. Without him you can easily get away with no upgrades other than subs, keeping the hammerhead REALLY cheap since he shoots across the map anyway not much threatens him....and forcing him to jink now days is almost as bad as causing damage since byebye BS5. Now if he ignored that, yea auto-take lol but sadly no.

A longstrike hammerhead tends to rival a riptide in costs, and usually does significantly less damage. Yes he threatens targets a riptide needs damn good luck to kill (av14) barring getting right up in its face with a ripple-firing fusion blaster, but thats few and far between to see these days. IG are the only ones i see bring AV14 regularly (i do NOT count ork battlewagons as AV14 since immediately after they move i can easily snipe AV12 sides) and my usual fusion suit bomb takes care of them quite well.

Meanwhile a bareboned hammerhead still has good odds to kill a vehicle, and costs a LOT less. Both my orks and my tau play a style where i dont like painting a huge bullseye on any unit that cant take it - riptides, warbikers, or stealth suits are the only units i try to make you waste shots on - everything else i try to keep cheap enough so you dont feel a huge obligation to get rid of it.

Slightly off topic but thats why i refuse to use pathfinders for other than markerlight reasons. They are already a huge target, why the hell would i add lethal and expensive guns to a unit i cant help survive longer than they already do, which is at best turn 3? lol...its just dumb to try it.

What I have been wondering is if he might be better in an Ionhead over a railhead. I am thinking of running him like this with 2 railheads in support.

Problem with that one is BS5 doesnt allow a reroll for Gets Hot! - you'd need a markerlight to BS6 to allow that - so he has a chance to not even fire and Tank Hunter isnt NEARLY as awesome with a single S8 hit at AP3. Thats the bigger reason you take him, the BS5 is nice and the Preferred Enemy: IG is....well my views on that rule are biased anyway so moving on... but the rerolling to pen is HIGHLY valuable when its only one shot.

BS5 really wont make him land his pi plate any better than BS4 does without him. Only way to miss with a pi plate even with a crappy BS is to roll boxcars scatter in the one or two possible directions where you miss everything....my riptide misses his main target all the time with BS3 but i almost always nail something else anyway because i never fire it at lone units...always clusters

Yeah, I wouldn't use him with an Ion Head.

He's is always worth it to me if I have points left over in a large point Battle

However, his ability to fire an infinite number of overwatches has me thinking that the ionhead might be the way to go. Especially if you forward deploy him.

I've played against longstrike many times. Though he threatened my landraiders, I think my opponent would have preferred more AT then a slightly more reliable pen roll.

His massed overwatch isnt that awesome with either gun, since you cant overwatch a blast and he still fires snaps. That being said i have caused some rather HILARIOUS overwatch damage with a railhead longstrike in overwatch (marine bikers charged me, one was a tripped out captain. Captain ended up in front because the overwatch from the two firewarriors opened him up, and the railgun managed to connect and splatted him muhahahaha) but the Ionhead isnt much better since its 3 shots at S7 AP3. Yes, better than 1 S10 AP1 via snapshots, but getting that gun + longstrike purely for overwatch is.....wow thats the biggest waste of points ive ever seen lol overwatch should never be banked on to win a game, but because of supporting fire we should try to make it as painful as we can with what we already got.

 BoomWolf wrote:
I think he loads up the hammerhead too much, I prefer to run mine bare-bones there days.


Quantity over quality.

As uncle Stalin once said, "Quantity has a quality of its own."

 Vineheart01 wrote:
i just find he makes a hammerhead too pricey. Without him you can easily get away with no upgrades other than subs, keeping the hammerhead REALLY cheap since he shoots across the map anyway not much threatens him....and forcing him to jink now days is almost as bad as causing damage since byebye BS5. Now if he ignored that, yea auto-take lol but sadly no.

A longstrike hammerhead tends to rival a riptide in costs, and usually does significantly less damage. Yes he threatens targets a riptide needs damn good luck to kill (av14) barring getting right up in its face with a ripple-firing fusion blaster, but thats few and far between to see these days. IG are the only ones i see bring AV14 regularly (i do NOT count ork battlewagons as AV14 since immediately after they move i can easily snipe AV12 sides) and my usual fusion suit bomb takes care of them quite well.

Meanwhile a bareboned hammerhead still has good odds to kill a vehicle, and costs a LOT less. Both my orks and my tau play a style where i dont like painting a huge bullseye on any unit that cant take it - riptides, warbikers, or stealth suits are the only units i try to make you waste shots on - everything else i try to keep cheap enough so you dont feel a huge obligation to get rid of it.

Slightly off topic but thats why i refuse to use pathfinders for other than markerlight reasons. They are already a huge target, why the hell would i add lethal and expensive guns to a unit i cant help survive longer than they already do, which is at best turn 3? lol...its just dumb to try it.

This might just be me but if you have a quality gun such as a 72" S10AP1 gun you want the best available soldier firing that gun within the realm of cost efficiency. When you're firing 1 devastating shot per turn the difference between BS4 and 5 is NOT negligible and to reroll to pen vs AV13-14 is ALMOST like firing 2 railguns.... since you only have a 50% chance to pen on 14. preferred enemy IG and firing overwatch are just icing on the cake, he's easily worth the extra 45 points. Hes also tons better with markerlight support becasue you only need 2 markers to remove cover and have a perfect shot. This can be done with one 4 man PF squad 1 commander with 2 marker drones or 1 skyray consistently.

45 points is less than any minimum size squad in the dex. Its like I said before, hammerheads in general are not worth the points... but if you're gonna take one, why wouldn't you spend a few extra points and almost double your chance to pen on av14? You cant really argue quantity vs quality when comparing a standard hammerhead vs a longstrike one, you can only have up to 3 railguns per FOC and frankly the heavy slot is more valuable than a few extra points. You can argue that the cost is almost as much as a riptide but everyone knows they are underpriced, and this still doesn't make a standard hammerhead seem any more viable because130 pts is still to high for 1 rail when you have access to MCs and a million places to put fusion blasters.

If you're taking a hammerhead take longstrike! DO IT BECAUSE ITS COOLER! DO IT NOW!!!!!

The Tau list I'm working with now utilizes a hammerhead with the dual long barreled burst cannon turret. What are your guys thoughts on letting Longstrike command that bugger?

Tank hunter does practically nothing there, and the fact its just spamming more S5AP5 in an army that has it on basic gun profile means its probably a waste of a model with or without longstirke.

Seriously, you want S5AP5 dakka-get some firewarriors or something....

I agree with Boomwolf.

There is no point using a Heavy Support Slot for more st5 ap5 shots.

actually, the burst cannon is str 6

www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/t/Tauupdate.pdf

So it is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still wouldn't run Longstrike on it.

 carldooley wrote:
actually, the burst cannon is str 6

www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/t/Tauupdate.pdf

those rules are old. the new ones are in IA3E2

Yep, not a single thing in that PDF is still the same as the current rules. (that's why the link got removed. the fact the file itself is still floating is a durp)

Hopefully you are not using them in-game?

unless the hammerhead was sporting like 16 TL Burst shots at 36" or better from that turret, you literally have no reason to field that thing over firewarriors or even crisis suits. You can get way more shots than that with firewarriors at 30" for the same cost, and double it at half range. Yes they die easy, but so does a hammerhead if the opponent actually cares about it. Even with d-pods mine dies pretty fethin quick when my opponent finally gets sick of it lol

From an anecdotal standpoint, Longstrike will almost always roll a 1 to either hit or wound/pen each time he fires his railgun. Everyone knows this.


From a practical standpoint, yes if you want a hammerhead Longstrike is the way to go. But as the previous posters have said, consider first if you want a hammerhead instead of something else.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Tank hunter does practically nothing there, and the fact its just spamming more S5AP5 in an army that has it on basic gun profile means its probably a waste of a model with or without longstirke.

Seriously, you want S5AP5 dakka-get some firewarriors or something....

The idea was that the hammerhead is fairly durable. For 150ish points I get16 S5 shots at 30-36 inches(4 twin-linked and ignoring cover). The same amount of shots from a fire warrior squad would cost a little past 200. The tank gets BS 4 and immunity to small arms.

I'd say the burst hammerhead is not as bad a choice as you would suggest.

"Cost" of Longstrike - and Hammerhead in general - depends on how short you are of Heavy Support slots. If you want a Railhead and have only one FOC slot to spare, then put Longstrike in by all means, squeeze the most ouf of the slot. OTOH, if you have plenty of slots, then go for quantity because as said, oftentimes 2 bare-bones vehicles is better than one hyperduper-upgraded vehicle.

However, the biggest problem with Longstrike is what urza 8188 said, the Railhead is a pretty terrible unit. It doesn't have a proper role - either it shoots its one S10 AP1 shot per turn, and it's anti-infantry firepower is wasted, or it shoots submunition against infantry (together with SMS), but the Tau have much better units for anti-infantry work than Railhead, so why would you take one in that case anyway?

Plus as said, the once-mighty Railgun ain't what it used to be. It was big deal in 5th edition when it could immobilize or kill enemy vehicle with a glance, but now glance only strips off one hull point. Whoope doo, you just Railgunned 1 HP off from that Truck. Also, 7th edition made it even worse since now even penetration only blows up the enemy vehicle 1/3 of the time. Big guns which fire one shot per turn are simply not worth it anymore.

Really, pretty much only worthwhile way of using Hammerhead anymore is like in recent tournament list: take them in barebones Ionhead configuration if you have the FOC slots to spare. If your HS slots are scarce, don't waste them on Hammerhead.

I've seen him against Imperial Guard - made a right mess of the Lemon Rusks.

2+ rerollable to hit. Then has rerollable tank buster. Then a 5+ to pop the vehicle in one shoot (if not, he's destroying a weapon or immobilising it). His range allows him to sit back and threaten/destroy a vehicle a turn.

They'll be times when all he does is shave HP and cause crew stunned, but I've seen him cause real bother.

However, on the flip-side, he struggled against my Daemons. The Grinders' invulnerable save gives a 1/3 chance to ignore his shot and rending CC brings him down quickly.

His preferred enemy of Imperial Guard is a clear indicator of his battlefield role.