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From what I can tell, statically speaking the Deathrain isn't really all that great. Its beaten by a number of suites at shooting at Arm 10 & Arm 11 though it has the edge in efficiency there. Against Arm 12, its loses out in efficiency and in percentage kills to anything with a Railgun or Fusion Blaster.

It general, it looks best to shoot Missile Pods at Armor 10 & 11, Railguns at Arm 12 & 13 & Fusion Blasters at arm 14. Thats easier said then done though, as you need to get quite close to make those fusion blasters sing, and FB Piranhas are pretty big targets.

I think I'm less inclined to take Deathrains in general. Their efficiency is terrible against infantry, and they aren't THAT much better than Fire Knives against Arm 11 & 12.

Also, the Railhead just isn't very efficient at all, but you kind of need them floating around when you're bringing along Devil Fish and Piranhas for the extra armor saturation.

How about some more Mathhammer? This time, lets look at how the sunfire works vs the Dread Knight and if Marker Light Drones are viable from an efficiency standpoint.

I have recreated the OPs Dreadknight numbers, though my Cyclic Ion Blaster numbers seem to be slightly better than his. Something interesting happens on the 3 weapon suites when we start looking at 2+ Saves on T6 -- the 3 weapon suites ideal configuration is generally more efficient than the other 2 options. For example, the Sunfire is 3 configurations all merged into one suite -- the Helios (FB, PR), the Fire Knife (MP, PR), and the Fire Surge (MP, FB). The Helios is much more efficient against T6 2+ saves -- so much so that the 3 weapon suite is more efficient than either the fireknife or the fire surge.

Sunfire (FB, PR, MP, HWMT) Numbers
Team Leader -- BS 3 -- .61 Dread Knight wounds. 129.3 wounds per point
'Vre -- BS 3 -- .61 Dread Knight wounds. 137.5 wounds per point
'El -- BS 4 -- .82 Dread Knight wounds. 121.5 wounds per point.

The nice thing about the Sunfire here is that, unlike a helios, it isn't useless early in the game, still acting as a fireknife until the big nasties get in close.

Markerlight drones are something else that I took a look at.

*Edit*
Removed due to faulty calculations. Marker drones are BS 3, not 4. Doh!

swap gun drones for shiled drones and i would be terrified at this, currently my head is saying drop a battle cannon on them at 72" range, to avoid losing the squad you need to have more shield drones over the gun drones, which probably arnt going to be doing much anyway, i play against tau frequently and he always disembarks his gundrones from his DF's and they do jack diddelly, even when he gets inrange for a shot or two, Honestly not worth it with all the fearless stuff floating around these days, if they had an extra shot drop the pinning fine but no, they arnt good here, take ur shield drones

been testing bladestorm suits and man they are nice especially when you need some extra points got my local tourny this saturday should be fun.

thanks for the mathhammer break down im running 2 bladestorms and a leader fireknife they have it all

One of the mathematical problems that the math doesn't show is the problem of wound allocation. As a reminder, you can stack wounds how you like. This means that mixing weapons is sometimes horribly ineffective because of the way allocation works. Case in point:

I shoot nothing but plasma at 2 plague marines not in cover. One plague marine is the sergeant. Sadly, there is no saving the plague marines.

I land 5 plasma wounds and 4 burst cannon wounds on the 2 plague marines. I stack all 5 plasma wounds on the normal marine and stack all the burst cannon wounds onto the sergeant. The sergeant gets his armor save and feel no pain against all 4 wounds.

You would actually be better off not shooting any of the nonap2 weapons.

Also, The chart is skewed because it doesn't factor in range. Consider that the deathrain has the most range and it's efficiency goes up. The extra range means more available shots and less risk to the suit in general.

scuddman wrote:One of the mathematical problems that the math doesn't show is the problem of wound allocation. As a reminder, you can stack wounds how you like. This means that mixing weapons is sometimes horribly ineffective because of the way allocation works. Case in point:

I shoot nothing but plasma at 2 plague marines not in cover. One plague marine is the sergeant. Sadly, there is no saving the plague marines.

I land 5 plasma wounds and 4 burst cannon wounds on the 2 plague marines. I stack all 5 plasma wounds on the normal marine and stack all the burst cannon wounds onto the sergeant. The sergeant gets his armor save and feel no pain against all 4 wounds.

You would actually be better off not shooting any of the nonap2 weapons.

Also, The chart is skewed because it doesn't factor in range. Consider that the deathrain has the most range and it's efficiency goes up. The extra range means more available shots and less risk to the suit in general.

I agree with all of this. I was cringing at some of the conclusions because a factor of range and wound allocation. Because of this I feel that some suits are getting a better rating than they should.

Its pretty easy to adjust for range in the excel, and I believe the OP did show the math for different range bands.

The big thing with the math hammer is that it can show you the optimal layouts. All you have to do is play it well

For example, who would have guessed that, on average, a squad of crisis suites is more efficient with a marker drone that without? I wouldn't have.

Endgame, you stated that marker drones hit 66% of the time, but drones are BS2 and the marker drone has a TA for BS 3, making it hit only 50% of the time, right?

SO, adding a single marker drone is only half as effective for 3 suits as buying TA for the 3 suits (in terms of BS improvement) while also giving you a t3 s4+ model in the unit that causes a morale check if it dies in your 3 suit 1 drone squad.

In any event, your statement about a crisis suit squad being more efficient with marker drones is demonstrably false all the time. You never want marker drones ever if your only goal is points per hit. You would need to redefine what you find efficient in the context of suits with marker drones other than points invested on the squad for damage payoff.

Take a suit with missile pods, plasma rifle, multitrack. You get 1 missile hit and 1 plasma hit for 62 points.

If you take a leader with 2 marker drones, the cost per model in a 3 model group is 65/3+62, or about 84 points.

25% of the time, you will get no marker hits. 25% of the time, you will get 2 marker hits. 50% of the time you will get 1 marker hit.

With 1 marker hit, the average marker hit you get for 22 extra points, you end up with 1 plasma hit and 1 missile hit for 62.75 points per hit. Seeing as the suits without the leader were 62 points, the extra points you spent did nothing to increase your damage output. And seeing that Tau can field 9 such suits, unless you are playing a very large game you are simply better off buying more suits and support elements than by overspending on the existing suits you have.

I'm going to need to check the codex -- I thought for sure the Marker drone was BS4 with the integrated targeting array, but I never considered using them before due to the 30 pts each. I'm quite confident they are a waste if they are only BS 3, since after a quick check in excel as it drops their efficiency below that of just running extra suites.

I wouldn't factor the cost of the leader into the cost of the drones though, since you'll be taking the team leader upgrade anyway. Still, at 10 points per suite, you just don't pull ahead efficiency wise (though you still will get extra kills which might be important for one shotting a squad).

Endgame wrote:I'm going to need to check the codex -- I thought for sure the Marker drone was BS4 with the integrated targeting array, but I never considered using them before due to the 30 pts each. I'm quite confident they are a waste if they are only BS 3, since after a quick check in excel as it drops their efficiency below that of just running extra suites.

They are BS 3.

Marker Drones do sort of have a place if you run out of suits (9 being the magic number).

Why do you take a team leader anyway? Whats wrong with 3 regular suits?

As to DarknessEternal, I agree that marker drones start becoming an option if you run out of efficient shooting options elsewhere... BUT isnt that a pretty high point game?

9 suits is ~550 points, 9 broadsides ~700 points, hq for 100 if your going cheap, troops 200+ points, more likely to be 500ish points. I think I would rather pathfinders and HQ bodyguard suits before marker drones... much cheaper/better I would think.

DevianID wrote:9 broadsides ~700 points,

Broadsides are mostly nonsense. I would never take more than 3.

Well considering that MSU is king, and MSU is weak versus broadsides, I disagree.

This is really good work, thanks man

DevianID wrote:Why do you take a team leader anyway? Whats wrong with 3 regular suits?

Per the OP data, Team lead with Targeting array is always more efficient point per point than a stock suite. Its also an upgrade you're going to take if you want to bring drones, or have bonding for some reason.

For Fire Knife and Helios variants, the 'Vre w/ targeting array is also more efficient than a stock suite, so if you're running 6 Fireknives, you may want to consider 2 'els with body guard units before you dip into the elite slots.

I agree about the leader for drones, but the issue with targeting array is that if you plan on using markerlights then its not as useful, since it caps out at BS5 anyway.

I would run 2 deathrain squads anyway, who dont benefit from the targeting array 'vre, with the third suit squad still up in the air, but the 3rd would benefit from the 'O who has shield drones.

Why the love for the Deathrain squads? A stock deathrain (TLMP + Flamer) is the least efficient all comers config you can buy outside of twin linked fusion blaster. The only time it takes the lead in points per kill is against Arm 11 and thats at long range (Helios & Firesurge are more efficient at 12" and less). I understand running one unit just to hang back at long range and lob missiles across the board, but multiples seem like a bad buy unless your adept at always keeping the enemy over 24" away. Honestly, if you're wanting to kill Rhinos, a squad of Firestorms will probably do the trick at long range while having substantially more anti infantry punch at 18".

*Edit*
I get the thing about the Marker lights, but how many are you packing in a list? Normally I don't see more than one squad benefiting from the marker lights, so ideally I think you want one big squad to take advantage of that (2x Els + 1 Elite Slot of 3 Suites) and then the other squads with a targeting array to keep the number of kills up.

Deathrain is so well loved because of the exact reason you said... arm11 at range. To put it in perspective at the last few events I have been to the winning list was 3 rhinos 6 razors and 3 dreads all packing psycannons or death cult. So getting close is really bad and with 9 arm 11 vees you need the most efficient tool for the job which is death rains

So after play with lots of bladestorms at my tourny on saturday i got to say they are very nice wounding is slightly better than PR MP combos and saves alot of points basicly i did 2 bladestorms 1 PR MP leader for my crisis squads and they performed well above expectation esepecially against orks and nids the extra shots help eat them up, and against deamons dropping right in my face the combind 14 shoots fomr eat team melted them back to the warp.

DevianID wrote:Deathrain is so well loved because of the exact reason you said... arm11 at range. To put it in perspective at the last few events I have been to the winning list was 3 rhinos 6 razors and 3 dreads all packing psycannons or death cult. So getting close is really bad and with 9 arm 11 vees you need the most efficient tool for the job which is death rains

What do you do when you pop the vehicles though? My experience has been that I kill the Rhinos and then the missiles just bounce off the Marine Armor. One unit of Death Rains w/ Targeting Arrays seems to be plenty since you'll still have missile pods on the other builds, they just aren't quite as efficient against ARM 11.

DarknessEternal wrote:

DevianID wrote:9 broadsides ~700 points,

Broadsides are mostly nonsense. I would never take more than 3.

That is... terribad advice.

Broadsides are the best unit in our codex. Hands down.

Im surprised at bladestomes efectivenes. Hadent tried it out. Theyl be in my next game

MrTau wrote:Im surprised at bladestomes efectivenes. Hadent tried it out. Theyl be in my next game

You'll like em. Just be careful, 18" is dangerous territory these days.

18'' is dangerous territorry sure but i run two blade storm one fire knife and its nice. MP for transports and harrasing them one they close in the volume of fire chews them up especially daemons and hordes i find that one marines get close i can keep them at 24-18 inchs for a few turns usually eating through the squads before they can so much but this also works best with suit teams working in units of two. as long as your broadsides are hitting (believe me when they miss on turn 1 and 2 it hurts ALOT) you can easly engage marines in the peek-a-boo shooting and the back up shooting and hold down 3 squads at once if your full mech tau leaving you rails/ion guns and fusion blasters free to reach the damn dev squads. i find that to be the case for my list but it depends on broadside set ups hammer head and if you use pirhanas (love these guys)!

the deal with MP is they CAN kill light armor sure but when you need volume after the transport is gone or the gibbering horder of 18inch infiltrated nids/ DS daemons is right at your front door the volume will mean more

To all saying bladestorm is great again I say run stealth suits with gun drones. 50 points for 5 s5 with 2 being tl and pinning. Goes amazing with marker lights from pathfinders as with 2 lights you have 30 shots hitting on 2+ or better

stealth are to expensive and take up elite spot that should go to crisis suits they also lack utility

Atlas_garon... I think you missed most of the topic.

The current discussion is around bladestorm crisis suits. 58 points. 3 bs3 burstcannon shots and 2 s6ap2 plasmarifle shots at 12 inches.

My recommendation is 50 points. 3bs3 burstcannon shots and 2 s5ap5 tlbs2 pinning shots at 18. Stealth field. Infiltrate. Longer range for all 5 shots. More wounds. Lower cost per suit with larger squad size.

So cheaper, not more expensive like you said, same slot for the same firepower utility but with more options.

I would agree if we were comparing, say, deathrains to stealth suits, but we are comparing bladestorms as your 3rd elite in place of more deathrains or fireknives.

DevianID wrote:Atlas_garon... I think you missed most of the topic.

The current discussion is around bladestorm crisis suits. 58 points. 3 bs3 burstcannon shots and 2 s6ap2 plasmarifle shots at 12 inches.

My recommendation is 50 points. 3bs3 burstcannon shots and 2 s5ap5 tlbs2 pinning shots at 18. Stealth field. Infiltrate. Longer range for all 5 shots. More wounds. Lower cost per suit with larger squad size.

So cheaper, not more expensive like you said, same slot for the same firepower utility but with more options.

I would agree if we were comparing, say, deathrains to stealth suits, but we are comparing bladestorms as your 3rd elite in place of more deathrains or fireknives.

you mention further up stealth suits with gun drones ................ thats not bladstorm suits thats what im talking about any time tau lose a PR it hurts against mech thats my point that the blade storm keeps the PR and give a great volume my comment is on your steath suit suggestion with gun drones. its never woth the loss of our bread an butter PR.

back to my privious remarks after more testing of bladestorm against an our local ork player who won our tourny a few weeks ago its was beautiful wish i played him during the tourny would have been an easy win so many shots piling up and everything was killing his boys all the points save for the extra shot has been great while still keeping plenty of plasma chewing up MEQ armies. make balanced listing much eayer.

Ont he discussion of bladestorms vs Stealth Suites, the stealth suite averages 59.02 points per kill while the Bladestorm averages 49.3 points per kill. The only area where the steal Suite is more effective is vs Guard EQs -- everywhere else the Bladestorm is more efficient and generates more kills.

However, I think an argument can be made for running Stealth Suites with Marker drones as another marker light generating unit. Running a team of 3 with Teamlead w/ Markerlight & TA, and 3 Marker Drones runs 205 points and can rack up a few marker light hits pretty safely from a distance. There is also the option of maxing out the squad in larger games to not only provide marker hits, but to provide a ton of accurate burst cannon shots when the enemy closes, but I don't think I'd increase the number of stealth suites until after I had maxed out HQ Crisis squads and run a pair of Elite squads as well.

What sort of stuff would you use against a daemon prince? Fast targets like him with high t seem to give me grief. Similar to the dreadknight problem but with lower toughness and a 4+ Invulnerable (is that right?). your other finds might get spliced into my lists.