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So what is the rule for tau drones disembarking? Got my ass kicked by Tau again, and I am convinced that I lost because I could not kill all the drones. 8 piranhas and all the devilfish had their gun drones disembark and form 12 separate 2man units and subsequently wreck all my rhinos and charge almost every unit I had in their deployment zone, and we all know it sucks to have a few 300pt units of Thousand Sons each stuck in close combat with 2 drones they can't kill. Also dumb to have to rapid fire on 2 drones and then be stuck in front of the rest of the tau army because you couldn't charge anything else.

As I recall, Drones from a single vehcle unit (e.g. a unit of Piranhas) must all detach at the same time and form a single unit, not separate units of two Drones each.

 Brometheus wrote:
So what is the rule for tau drones disembarking? Got my ass kicked by Tau again, and I am convinced that I lost because I could not kill all the drones. 8 piranhas and all the devilfish had their gun drones disembark and form 12 separate 2man units and subsequently wreck all my rhinos and charge almost every unit I had in their deployment zone, and we all know it sucks to have a few 300pt units of Thousand Sons each stuck in close combat with 2 drones they can't kill. Also dumb to have to rapid fire on 2 drones and then be stuck in front of the rest of the tau army because you couldn't charge anything else.

Here is the full rules for Vehicle Drones...

VEHICLE DRONES
Attached Drones: Whilst attached to the vehicle, drones are embarked passengers (that don’t take up Transport Capacity). While attached, they can shoot as passengers using their location for line of sight, range etc., but must shoot at the same target as the vehicle. If a vehicle is destroyed with attached drones, the drones are destroyed too.

Detaching Drones: During friendly Movement phases, drones may detach like Infantry disembarking an
Open-topped Transport. All drones from a unit must detach together.

Drones cannot re-attach, but can later embark in the same way as other drones.

Drones that start attached to a vehicle do not award Victory Points when destroyed and only the vehicle needs to be destroyed to get its Victory Points.

So, assuming your opponent was running squadrons of Piranhas, all Drones in the squadron would detach together to form one unit of Drones. I'm guessing the 8 Piranhas were in 2 squadrons of 4 each. The Drones would detach to form 2 units of 8 Drones each in this case. The Devilfish Drones would certainly detach as a unit of 2 Drones since Devilfish don't have the option for a squadron.

In other words, I'd bet money your opponent played this wrong. The only way he played this correctly is if he had 8 seperate 1 Piranha units. That would be 8 Fast Attack choices and would require 3 Combined Arms Detachments to accomodate. He would need a minimum of 6 Troops and 3 HQs to accommodate this.

And I'm not sure why you can't kill a couple of Drones in combat unless you're rolling very poorly. They're Toughness 4, have a 4+ Save and only 1 Wound. At Weapon Skill 2, they're also very easy to hit. Killing them in close combat is usually super easy. I play Tau and assaulting with Drones is usually either a last ditch effort to kill something or a delaying tactic. They almost never survive an assault.

Watching someone detach 24 drones and moving, shooting, and assaulting/jetpacking every turn is more annoying time-wise than someone playing a demon summoning factory.. Even more so when they shoot you up. By the time drones charged into combat or something they were only going up against a few Thousand Sons which of course fight melee like a suit of armor in a museum. It's totally realistic for me to get charged by a few drones and be tied up for turns with my 1 attack per dude. Which is what happened here.

I guess he played it wrong. In any case, it wasn't because I couldn't kill stuff. I removed 2 full squads of Kroot, 2 crisis suits and some fire warriors from Ahriman alone in a single turn with Cleansing Flame and Shriek. The drones are a hell of a speed bump if they can all be 2man units.

Thanks.. I will inform him of this.

Also, remember that you can't disembark and assault from A Devilfish. You can from a Piranha since they are open topped.

Thanks for your Tau wisdom. Your Taudom?

 Brometheus wrote:
Thanks for your Tau wisdom. Your Taudom?

The Way of the Taurrior

Tau legit to q'uit

Umm if the quoted rule is correct why couldn't they assault.
Detaching Drones: During friendly Movement phases, drones may detach like Infantry disembarking an
Open-topped Transport. All drones from a unit must detach together.

If it's from an open top transport they can assault.

Sargow wrote:
Umm if the quoted rule is correct why couldn't they assault.
Detaching Drones: During friendly Movement phases, drones may detach like Infantry disembarking an
Open-topped Transport. All drones from a unit must detach together.

If it's from an open top transport they can assault.

Because, Devilfish aren't Open-topped.

Pathfinders are the only Open-topped vehicle with drones that Tau have.

I think I understand why he feels that all detaching drones should be able to assault. The quote given says, "...drones may detach like infantry disembarking an open-topped transport."

The way it's written, it sounds like they detach from any vehicle the same way infantry disembark from an open-topped vehicle.

They disembark like Infantry disembarking from an Open-topped vehicle - meaning the no specific access point. However, when it comes time to charge, the drones did not disembark from an OT transport.

I do understand the confusion though.

Yeah, as Happyjew pointed out, they DISEMBARK like infantry disembarking from an open-topped vehicle. They don't charge like infantry who disembarked from an open topped vehicle.

I understand that but they aren't embarked like normal infantry. The only reference we have is how they disembark. They are also not embarked on the transport. If they were nothing else would be able to enter the transport. They detach so they don't even disembark and as far as i am aware detaching has no restrictions on assaulting.

Sargow wrote:
I understand that but they aren't embarked like normal infantry. The only reference we have is how they disembark. They are also not embarked on the transport. If they were nothing else would be able to enter the transport. They detach so they don't even disembark and as far as i am aware detaching has no restrictions on assaulting.

Do you have any actual rules to support that they disembark differently than normal infantry?

 Ghaz wrote:

Sargow wrote:
I understand that but they aren't embarked like normal infantry. The only reference we have is how they disembark. They are also not embarked on the transport. If they were nothing else would be able to enter the transport. They detach so they don't even disembark and as far as i am aware detaching has no restrictions on assaulting.

Do you have any actual rules to support that they disembark differently than normal infantry?

well they constantly use the word detach and re-attach ( with that being disallowed ) instead of saying they are actually dis-emarbing/embarking. Is the restriction of assault on disembarking units not detaching ones ?

My understanding of them disembarking as if from an open-topped vehicle is that they can disembark from any point on the hull. This is important in that it means the Drones don't have to leave from an access point.

When it comes to assault, they still disembarked from a non-assault, non-open-topped vehicle, and so can't assault same turn.

kambien wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

Sargow wrote:
I understand that but they aren't embarked like normal infantry. The only reference we have is how they disembark. They are also not embarked on the transport. If they were nothing else would be able to enter the transport. They detach so they don't even disembark and as far as i am aware detaching has no restrictions on assaulting.

Do you have any actual rules to support that they disembark differently than normal infantry?

well they constantly use the word detach and re-attach ( with that being disallowed ) instead of saying they are actually dis-emarbing/embarking. Is the restriction of assault on disembarking units not detaching ones ?

You're ignoring the rules for fluff. What the rules actually say is "... drones are treated as embarked passengers..." and "... in the same way as Infantry disembarking from an Open-topped Transport..." As embarked passengers, when they disembark they are not allowed to assault that turn unless the vehicle is open-topped, they can simply be placed anywhere within range of the hull.

what happens when a piranha in a squadron of piranhas is wrecked and the drones emergency disembark? Do they have to keep coherency with the rest of the piranhas or do they form their own unit?

peirceg wrote:
what happens when a piranha is wrecked and the drones emergency disembark? Do they have to keep coherency with the rest of the piranhas or do they form their own unit?

Neither. The rules are clear on what happens.

peirceg wrote:
what happens when a piranha is wrecked and the drones emergency disembark? Do they have to keep coherency with the rest of the piranhas or do they form their own unit?

Attached Drones are destroyed when their Vehicle is destroyed.

ahh thanks!