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 was reading our esteemed Ork colleague's battle reports from the Las Vegas tournament and I came upon his Pylon nonsense.

According to his opponent his deathstar isn't shooting so it can shoot you even when in CC and a whole bunch of other stuff that it can do,

I want a Dakka forum opinion on this, how can something engaged in CC fire a massive artillery weapon and kill 20-30 ork boyz that are attacking it?

 Ghazkuul wrote:
I was reading our esteemed Ork colleague's battle reports from the Las Vegas tournament and I came upon his Pylon nonsense.

According to his opponent his deathstar isn't shooting so it can shoot you even when in CC and a whole bunch of other stuff that it can do,

I want a Dakka forum opinion on this, how can something engaged in CC fire a massive artillery weapon and kill 20-30 ork boyz that are attacking it?

Typically, models locked in close combat can't make shooting attacks in the Shooting phase. I would need to see the rules, but I don't recall anything related to Pylons that get around this restriction.

Canoptek Artillery as a unique unit type cannot be locked in combat, but is automatically hit in combat and has no attacks back.

So it's a pay off. If you survive the assault then yeah, you can shoot back next turn.

Alternately, could you explain the issue in more detail or link to the thread that contains the discussion? I'm not familiar with the issue.

If you read the datasheet on pylons, i think it would clear up all of your questions. Anyways, focused deathrays are a shooting attack, they just don't need to target an enemy unit. Although, after the actual hits are resolved, they follow the standard shooting rules for LoS, wounding, etc.

It is impossible to lock pylons in combat unless they have characters attached to its unit. On their own, they can literally stand toe to toe with an enemy unit attacking them in melee and freely proceed to zap the crap out of them, just like a vehicle would.

Pylons are a weird hybrid of automated artillery with pseudo beam attacks. There's a ton of rules clarifications that need to be addressed before you play against them, so you're well informed about their capabilities and drawbacks.

Me being a avid sentrystar player, i can tell you that a good portion of your game is explaining pylon rules to your opponent. The last tournament i attended, i was mired with assuring my opponents that I'm being candid with them and to trust my word on the pylon rules to avoid calling a TO to verify my claims every game turn. Unfortunately, none of my opponents were satisfied with my word, resulting in rubberbanding TOs. I was ready to caddy a personal TO for the day just so i can play more than 4 turns...

 Nyghoma wrote:
If you read the datasheet on pylons, i think it would clear up all of your questions. Anyways, focused deathrays are a shooting attack, the just don't need to target an enemy unit. Although, after the actual hits are resolved, they follow the standard shooting rules for LoS, wounding, etc.

It is impossible to lock pylons in combat unless they have characters attached to its unit. On their own, they can literally stand toe to toe with an enemy unit attacking them in melee and freely proceed to zap the crap out of you, just like a vehicle.

Pylons are a weird hybrid of automated artillery with pseudo beam attacks. There's a ton of rules clarifications that need to be addressed before you play against them, so you're well informed about their capabilities and drawbacks.

Me being a loyal sentrystar player, i can tell you that a good portion of your game is explaining pylon rules to your opponent. The last tournament i attended, i was mired with assuring my opponents that I'm being candid with them and to trust my word on the pylon rules to avoid calling a TO to verify my claims every game turn. Unfortunately, none of my opponents were satisfied with my word, resulting in rubberbanding TOs. I was ready to caddy a personal TO for the day just so i can play more than 4 turns...

Why not just show them the rule book containing the army list entry? I assume your opponents could read.

Because GW wrote the book....

You'll be surprised with the stunts you can pull with pylons that are total legal, but hard to absorb if you dont have experience playing against them.

Yet another reason FW is bad.

Your opponents were correct to call a TO, especially if you were unwilling to actually show them the rules.

The rules for pylons are just FW nonsense, that should not exist.

They are artillery, but never need crew- can move and fire without them.

They can't be locked in combat- but are hit automatically.

The worst are the beam rules, which is why every pylon player will take the beam.

it should be faqed by tournaments to be like the deathray on the doomscythe, as the doomscythes old deathray (what pylons have because they were made for last edition and do not have current rules) was essentially what the pylon used to have.

Also it is worth mentioning, as its an old weapon from an old edition, the old FAQ which stated you still had to target an enemy unit and not a point on the ground should be in effect to any TO that is playing favorites and not updating a weapon with rules from the old edition to the rules of the new edition.

S10 Heavy 1 Blast lance.

would solve the rules nonsense, as that is the new profile of the deathray. Maybe the TOs should also errata the doomscythe deathray to be the same a the pylon deathray again as that would solve so many problems...

I think that's an over-embellishment. Most of the broken and ridiculous units in the tournament scene come from no-frills, standard GW books. Don't get me started...

I just reread the forum post and it says "can not be locked in combat" your right, however it also says it CAN be locked in combat if the unit contains a character, thats where my confusion came in.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
I was reading our esteemed Ork colleague's battle reports from the Las Vegas tournament and I came upon his Pylon nonsense.

According to his opponent his deathstar isn't shooting so it can shoot you even when in CC and a whole bunch of other stuff that it can do,

I want a Dakka forum opinion on this, how can something engaged in CC fire a massive artillery weapon and kill 20-30 ork boyz that are attacking it?

Because the rules for the artillery piece say so?
Surely your "esteemed Ork colleague" read the rules for it, yes?

 Nyghoma wrote:
I think that's an over-embellishment. Most of the broken and ridiculous units in the tournament scene come from no-frills, standard GW books. Don't get me started...

"me being an avid pylonstar player"- yes I am sure you think its over-embellishment. Please continue to explain how you use this FW unit commonly because its not very very over the top for its 135pts cost.

The Death Ray is a shooting weapon. It has alternate rules, just like the Doom Scythe had. It is a weapon as it had a weapon profile and is even said to be firing. You would need a rule actually stating you can shoot it in any phase other than the shooting phase.

Edit: Ignore, continued posting cleared up my missing coffee brain.

The Pylons are essentially treated like an immobile vehicle in how it shoots and gets hit in CC - I don't see how that is problematic. It is accepted that the unit can be engaged in CC (and thus not shoot) if any ICs are attached, so that clarifies another potential issue.

I have more trouble in the way the Death Ray works, assuming it is not treated like the Doom Scythe Death Ray.

Does it roll to it?
Can it target a unit that is more than 24" away?

My answer would be yes to the first question and no to the second question.

The Sentry Pylon is only really a problem if you make it relentless so it can reposition/deep strike then shoot, or if you go with the wonky rules reading that it hits every unit twice the number of times as the total number of models under the line instead of two times for every unit member under the line.

Otherwise you just have a very large bubble of board denial on a 3 wound T7 frame.

blaktoof wrote:

 Nyghoma wrote:
I think that's an over-embellishment. Most of the broken and ridiculous units in the tournament scene come from no-frills, standard GW books. Don't get me started...

"me being an avid pylonstar player"- yes I am sure you think its over-embellishment. Please continue to explain how you use this FW unit commonly because its not very very over the top for its 135pts cost.

Ok so you're the guy who got his arse handed to him by pylons because you probably didn't know the rules and was forced research them....NOTED.

First off, i insisted for my opponents to read the entry and errata before deployment every single time. So please stop trying to spin my story. The addition of TO lipservice was due mainly to people's lack of reading comprehension.

Second. Pylons are probably one of the least used units in the competitive scene, here on the east coast. Not to mention i was the singular player using them in Adepticon and Templecon. 90% of the players either never encountered or even played against them at all. So please spare the hyperbole.

Lastly, as much as you think you know about focused deathrays, you still don't know enough. They're not 135 points, they are a minimum of 160 pts each, vanilla flavored. With additional bells and whistles, they can cap out at 210 pts each with upgrades. Making a unit of 3 a VERY expensive endeavor at 480-630 pts, respectively. The FDR rules don't need to be changed to a blast attack, like it's lofty cousin, the doomscythe. Just because their wargear shares nomenclature, doesn't mean they need to absolutely parrot each other. Does a las destroyer function the same as a lasgun or cannon for that matter? The examples are manifold. Just as the examples i can flag, in every single codex, to compare to other insanely cost efficient units.

The only front i can concur with you is the lack of clear and thorough addendum/errata on the matter.

Everyone calm down or im going to stop making topics for questions i have :-P

The way the tournament rules read makes me think that GW needs to spent a few days fine tuning the rules for those things. They look super OP! almost makes me want to give up my orks and try my hand at Necrons....but then I couldn't krump things with a giant Power Klaw and I can't live my life without krumping things.

My experience running Death Ray Pylons outside a Deathstar is that it effectively forces the opponent to cede a flank or hug cover like crazy, unless they have a sufficient long range firepower to remove it from the inevitable 4+ cover area it would be placed in.

I've yet to have a rematch with it as I don't deploy them very often, but I imagine they'd be a huge turn one fire magnet the second time they were deployed.

That said, what it doesn't do used that way? Score a huge kill tally unless really lucky. Having to lance across no man's land means a low target saturation and decent chance of being foiled by cover. If it lives to late turns, be prepared to spend a mindgame turn having it try to sprint back to a relevant firing position as the battle moves away from it.

blaktoof wrote:
They are artillery, but never need crew- can move and fire without them.

They can't be locked in combat- but are hit automatically.

This part actually makes sense to me. They are basically vehicles with T instead of AV and without additional vehicular shenanigans. Sounds not that senseless as IMO nothing is wrong with not directly linking together the way unit takes damage, the way it attacks and additional things it can do for arbitrary reasons - at least in principle.

As for the rest, I don't really know those rules. FW had a habit of making some messy rules, but they are fairly good at fixing their stuff, although it takes them time. As of late, they started to write them less from fluffy standpoint assuming that opponents can agree what they mean and became more RAW-focused. I like that.

Since they actually read their mail, it may be worthwhile to offer them your thoughts on why their rules cause troubles and arguments, although I feel that points like "it doesn't behave as normal things from codexes do" aren't of considerable interest to FW designers. Creating units that work in unique way is pretty much their thing.