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Yeah warp spiders wound basically everything on 2's. So Necron warriors are about twice as durable as marines vs them when they are in decurion. In 4+ cover vs low AP weapons they are exactly twice as durable. That aint saying much though - marines aren't at all durable. Warriors are just durable enough to not be worth shooting at - at any point in the game though. Not to mention Ghost arcs can bring them back to life.

Limiting your use of MCs is nice but doesn't entirely deal with the Tau's op codex. Plus giant robots is half the point of playing Tau. In pug's I'd make sure your opponent brought the most cut throat list possible. PUGs are always gonna be hard to manage. Secondly try lowering all units Ld by one. Its not crushing and its simple enough to implement.

 Red Marine wrote:
Plus giant robots is half the point of playing Tau

The sad part is Tau use to not be about gundam size robots but instead about combined arms tactics and unit synergy. Even the old fluff had bits about how Tau thought giant robots (titans) where really impractical.

 Vankraken wrote:

 Red Marine wrote:
Plus giant robots is half the point of playing Tau

The sad part is Tau use to not be about gundam size robots but instead about combined arms tactics and unit synergy. Even the old fluff had bits about how Tau thought giant robots (titans) where really impractical.

It is true. Essentially the riptide that GW made easy to spam to the bane of every Tau hater, literally is supposed to be used in the most desperate of measures. Not to mention there are actually very few of them.

Using the retaliation Cadre as an example... If a battle was desperate that's probably the force that would be deployed.

I wouldn't even care if the rules for the Riptide weren't so OP.

I'm not sure if the fluff ever specifically said the Tau would never, ever make a giant robot, but it strongly hinted that it's not something they were likely to do. Their philosophy was supposed to be that you could overcome any foe with superior firepower and smarter tactics. So when they encounter one of the Imperium's titans, instead of building one of their own and having a giant robot kaiju fight, they would probably use concentrated firepower from units like hammerheads and broadsides, finding weak points and focusing on them. Or do a bombing run with the tigershark AX-1-0, which was hastily developed to help deal specifically with titans. Mantas could probably snipe them with their own railguns before dropping the cadre off on the ground in the first place, if need be.

They even bring this up in the riptide's fluff in the 6th edition codex; they ironically quote Puretide in the description and mention how Puretide basically believed that bigger wasn't better, as explained above...and then they just build it anyway, saying that if Puretide were still around he would totally have seen a need for it. It's so...stupid. In my opinion it would be like if you acknowledged the Black Templar fluff saying they really hate psykers, in the description for a new BT-only combat psyker unit that you came up with because you were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for Space Marine kits and needed something new to sell, and then you try to justify it by claiming the Black Templars just changed their mind in the middle of some random battle where an allied psyker helped make their swords extra choppy, and as such they've developed a newfound respect for them, and even started training psykers of their own.

Maybe it's not quite as directly contradictory in the case with the riptide (or now even larger suits), but it's pretty fething close. Like Vankraken said, the combined arms tactics were a pretty obvious theme, and kind of what the whole army revolved around, as that whole "working together for the Greater Good" thing that's oft repeated in the fluff would lead you to believe. Now it's all about spamming those fething robots and your army might as well not have any infantry or vehicular support at all for all the good it would do you.The riptide and friends were clearly GW making an excuse to sell large robot kits, whether they "belong" in the army or not, because fething every army started getting them around the same time.

And I doubt the riptide is supposed to be "rare" anymore, I haven't bothered reading much of the new codex but I bet you anything they changed the fluff so that the riptide was put into full production after successful testing. Makes you wonder why they bother wasting resources producing stuff like crisis suits or hammerheads anymore, or even broadsides, since riptides pretty much replace all three of them. And now there's the stormsurge on top of that, like the broadside is to the crisis suit.

1. Taus are OP deal with it. Everyone knows it..

2. Avoid using units like stormsurge... I mean come on..

3. Play for fun, warhammer isnt a game to destroy friendship

Yeah, but the argument is that in order to "play for fun" you can't bring Tau at all, because of point #1. People "deal with it" by effectively banning Tau from the table.

Which is bullgak.

 Sidstyler wrote:

funny that. The sad thing is that if riptides (and the larger supremacy suit\stormsurge) didn't exist, there is fluff justification for fielding freeblade knights alongside our tau.

 Sidstyler wrote:
Yeah, but the argument is that in order to "play for fun" you can't bring Tau at all, because of point #1. People "deal with it" by effectively banning Tau from the table.

Which is bullgak.

You expect rationality from the people who used to call Tau OP even back in fifth?

Or that think every single thing in the Tau codex is OP? from fire warriors, to crisis suits, and hammerheads? heck I've heard someone call the DEVILFISH overpowered.


Honestly, I can count all the things that are really OP about tau in on hand.
1-Riptide's Ion Accelerator
2-Broadside's HYMP. (broadsides in general are poorly made at the moment. no syncronization between model and rules, terribad inner balance with one amazing gun and one pathetic gun on both the main and secondary slots, etc.)
3-Riptide Wing
4-RAW firestorm


That's it. everything else ranges from "meh" to "nasty, but within reason", with the majority sitting in the "pretty good" zone. not even the RAW hunter contingent is overpowered (if you ever played with or against it, you'd see just how little the rule sharing actually effects things)

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Yeah, but the argument is that in order to "play for fun" you can't bring Tau at all, because of point #1. People "deal with it" by effectively banning Tau from the table.

Which is bullgak.

You expect rationality from the people who used to call Tau OP even back in fifth?

Or that think every single thing in the Tau codex is OP? from fire warriors, to crisis suits, and hammerheads? heck I've heard someone call the DEVILFISH overpowered.


Honestly, I can count all the things that are really OP about tau in on hand.
1-Riptide's Ion Accelerator
2-Broadside's HYMP. (broadsides in general are poorly made at the moment. no syncronization between model and rules, terribad inner balance with one amazing gun and one pathetic gun on both the main and secondary slots, etc.)
3-Riptide Wing
4-RAW firestorm


That's it. everything else ranges from "meh" to "nasty, but within reason", with the majority sitting in the "pretty good" zone. not even the RAW hunter contingent is overpowered (if you ever played with or against it, you'd see just how little the rule sharing actually effects things)

5) EWO being 5 points
6) SMS ignoring Cover and Line Of Sight(one or the other wouldn't be an issue) and being a virtually free choice on all platforms.
7) Markerlights granting Ignores Cover on demand.

what is the firestorm?

He's meaning Coordinated Firepower.

 Kanluwen wrote:
He's meaning Coordinated Firepower.

He could have also meant the firestream formation. A quick search of google revealed a burst cannon\missile pod equipped crisis suit, which sounded a bit outdated.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Yeah, but the argument is that in order to "play for fun" you can't bring Tau at all, because of point #1. People "deal with it" by effectively banning Tau from the table.

Which is bullgak.

You expect rationality from the people who used to call Tau OP even back in fifth?

Or that think every single thing in the Tau codex is OP? from fire warriors, to crisis suits, and hammerheads? heck I've heard someone call the DEVILFISH overpowered.


Honestly, I can count all the things that are really OP about tau in on hand.
1-Riptide's Ion Accelerator
2-Broadside's HYMP. (broadsides in general are poorly made at the moment. no syncronization between model and rules, terribad inner balance with one amazing gun and one pathetic gun on both the main and secondary slots, etc.)
3-Riptide Wing
4-RAW firestorm


That's it. everything else ranges from "meh" to "nasty, but within reason", with the majority sitting in the "pretty good" zone. not even the RAW hunter contingent is overpowered (if you ever played with or against it, you'd see just how little the rule sharing actually effects things)

5) EWO being 5 points
6) SMS ignoring Cover and Line Of Sight(one or the other wouldn't be an issue) and being a virtually free choice on all platforms.
7) Markerlights granting Ignores Cover on demand.

5) yep, should cost more. I'm thinking 6 points... Maybe 7.
6) SMS are scary? Umm... Okay.
7) not really 'on demand' though is it? Still gotta hit with them. Are AM orders 'on demand'? Or psychic powers? Or those cheesy Scitarii stuff? Oh wait.... Those are. Maybe we should all complain about those?

To be fair SMS is very scary, and why they aren't a hard counter to warp spider spam I don't know (although I'll be the first to tell you I don't know enough about Tau)

Secondly yes ignore cover on demand is significant, psychic powers are a pile O gak because they are so random and perfect timing requires your psyker to be in the unit and as such has limited utility.
AM orders would be scary if the faction itself wasn't a useless Tau downgrade

EWO should cost roughly 35 points on a riptide. The same cost of the drop pod that has been completely invalidated by it's existence. Then it might not be an auto include and more of a choice.

 Torus wrote:

Spoiler:

SGTPozy wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Yeah, but the argument is that in order to "play for fun" you can't bring Tau at all, because of point #1. People "deal with it" by effectively banning Tau from the table.

Which is bullgak.

You expect rationality from the people who used to call Tau OP even back in fifth?

Or that think every single thing in the Tau codex is OP? from fire warriors, to crisis suits, and hammerheads? heck I've heard someone call the DEVILFISH overpowered.


Honestly, I can count all the things that are really OP about tau in on hand.
1-Riptide's Ion Accelerator
2-Broadside's HYMP. (broadsides in general are poorly made at the moment. no syncronization between model and rules, terribad inner balance with one amazing gun and one pathetic gun on both the main and secondary slots, etc.)
3-Riptide Wing
4-RAW firestorm


That's it. everything else ranges from "meh" to "nasty, but within reason", with the majority sitting in the "pretty good" zone. not even the RAW hunter contingent is overpowered (if you ever played with or against it, you'd see just how little the rule sharing actually effects things)

5) EWO being 5 points
6) SMS ignoring Cover and Line Of Sight(one or the other wouldn't be an issue) and being a virtually free choice on all platforms.
7) Markerlights granting Ignores Cover on demand.

5) yep, should cost more. I'm thinking 6 points... Maybe 7.
6) SMS are scary? Umm... Okay.
7) not really 'on demand' though is it? Still gotta hit with them. Are AM orders 'on demand'? Or psychic powers? Or those cheesy Scitarii stuff? Oh wait.... Those are. Maybe we should all complain about those?

To be fair SMS is very scary, and why they aren't a hard counter to warp spider spam I don't know (although I'll be the first to tell you I don't know enough about Tau)

Secondly yes ignore cover on demand is significant, psychic powers are a pile O gak because they are so random and perfect timing requires your psyker to be in the unit and as such has limited utility.
AM orders would be scary if the faction itself wasn't a useless Tau downgrade

The SMS is 4 S5 Ap5 shots... And only available as Broadside units' side arm, Riptides and Tau tanks. Whist not bad they aren't exactly good either (at least in my opinion).

I know it is, but it isn't exactly 'on demand' as you have to hit with them and keep them alive in the first place. Whilst easier and more reliable than psykers, they still aren't automatic.
AM have some awesome FW stuff though, like those earthshaker cannon artillery pieces. So ignores cover on them is pretty powerful.

Stuff like SM chapter tactics and the Skitarii things are 'on demand'; things like marker lights and orders are [b]almost[/] on demand

 Xenomancers wrote:
EWO should cost roughly 35 points on a riptide. The same cost of the drop pod that has been completely invalidated by it's existence. Then it might not be an auto include and more of a choice.

you never drop empty?

 Xenomancers wrote:
EWO should cost roughly 35 points on a riptide. The same cost of the drop pod that has been completely invalidated by it's existence. Then it might not be an auto include and more of a choice.

We could also reverse that; a drop pod should cost 110 points because of the 10 man Pathfinder unit it just invalidated.
Or 250 points because of the Leman Russ your grav cents just destroyed

SGTPozy wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
EWO should cost roughly 35 points on a riptide. The same cost of the drop pod that has been completely invalidated by it's existence. Then it might not be an auto include and more of a choice.

We could also reverse that; a drop pod should cost 110 points because of the 10 man Pathfinder unit it just invalidated.
Or 250 points because of the Leman Russ your grav cents just destroyed

Don't all these units have their own turns they get to shoot in? Are they shooting in Their turn and yoours? Nope.

Forgive me if I'm wrong (again I should really buy the Tau codex if only for research purposes) but can't you get SMS on the Stormsurge platforms? In any case S5 vs T3 fragile units (such as WarpSiders) seems like a strong counter considering it invalidates the flickerjump and on plaforms like the ones you listed, you're not really going out of your way to get them.

In any case don't the drone nets increase the BS of markerlights, and drones with relentless means very little snap shooting would surely make them more reliable, and the fact that any Tau unit may utilize those markerlights is...unfortunate.

As for AM forgeworld, again not that frightening. I can always deepstrike onto those artillery platforms and kill them no problem or simply out shoot them with anything thats not Orks, Nids or Chaos... In comparison Tau do everything better than them

The Drone Net increases the BS of all Drones... this means the Marker Drones may shoot with a BS of 3 instead of 2.

 Xenomancers wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
EWO should cost roughly 35 points on a riptide. The same cost of the drop pod that has been completely invalidated by it's existence. Then it might not be an auto include and more of a choice.

We could also reverse that; a drop pod should cost 110 points because of the 10 man Pathfinder unit it just invalidated.
Or 250 points because of the Leman Russ your grav cents just destroyed

Don't all these units have their own turns they get to shoot in? Are they shooting in Their turn and yoours? Nope.

If you shoot with interceptor, you don't get to shoot the next turn.

And no, they don't, not if you drop a pod in T1 and eradicate them from existence.

Until the absolute bonkers bullcrap that is practically army wide, near zero risk deep strike for 35 points is addressed, no SM player has a right to whinge about an undercosted rules upgrade.

Drop pods have almost no counters. EWO is one of them. Deal with it.

SGTPozy wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Yeah, but the argument is that in order to "play for fun" you can't bring Tau at all, because of point #1. People "deal with it" by effectively banning Tau from the table.

Which is bullgak.

You expect rationality from the people who used to call Tau OP even back in fifth?

Or that think every single thing in the Tau codex is OP? from fire warriors, to crisis suits, and hammerheads? heck I've heard someone call the DEVILFISH overpowered.


Honestly, I can count all the things that are really OP about tau in on hand.
1-Riptide's Ion Accelerator
2-Broadside's HYMP. (broadsides in general are poorly made at the moment. no syncronization between model and rules, terribad inner balance with one amazing gun and one pathetic gun on both the main and secondary slots, etc.)
3-Riptide Wing
4-RAW firestorm


That's it. everything else ranges from "meh" to "nasty, but within reason", with the majority sitting in the "pretty good" zone. not even the RAW hunter contingent is overpowered (if you ever played with or against it, you'd see just how little the rule sharing actually effects things)

5) EWO being 5 points
6) SMS ignoring Cover and Line Of Sight(one or the other wouldn't be an issue) and being a virtually free choice on all platforms.
7) Markerlights granting Ignores Cover on demand.

5) yep, should cost more. I'm thinking 6 points... Maybe 7.

Try 10-15.

6) SMS are scary? Umm... Okay.

They're a weapon which ignores cover and line of sight rules. That can be given Interceptor.

You're giving a perfect example of how Tau players not understanding how their own rules work or how their army has obscene amounts of synergy cause most of the issues that others have with Tau players.

7) not really 'on demand' though is it? Still gotta hit with them.

So? It's not like there aren't formations which boost up Markerlight hits or bonuses allowing them to be shared or formations which boost up the Ballistic Skill of a Markerlight platform.

Oh wait. There are.
Ranged Support Cadre makes it so each Markerlight Counter is doubled for the Broadsides in the formation, Coordinated Firepower allows for participating units to share Markerlight benefits, and the Drone Net boosts the Ballistic Skill of [b]all Drones[/b by 1](including Drones that are not part of the Formation) as long as at least two units from the Formation are on the battlefield.

Oh yeah, and the Drone Net gives them Interceptor, Jink, Outflank, Precision Shots, and Split Fire. If someone seriously wanted to--you could run a Drone-Net of nothing but Marker and Shield Drones, firing Markerlights as Interceptor weapons and Split Firing them off for Markerlight saturation during an Interceptor shooting spree.

Plus there's the Air Superiority Cadre, which gives you D3 Markerlight counters that can be placed on any enemy units on the battlefield as long as one model from the formation is on the battlefield.

Are AM orders 'on demand'?

I always love this comparison.
There's a difference between passing a Leadership test that can lock you out of Orders for the remainder of the turn and firing a laser pointer. And let's not forget that specific Orders are tied to specific units--i.e. Ignores Cover is ONLY available on the HQ choice for Guard. Don't pretend it can be spammed like Markerlights can.

Or psychic powers?

Do you want a Markerlight Perils Table? Maybe if you miss, you have to take a Blind test?

Or those cheesy Skitarii stuff?

For every point of Ballistic or Weapon Skill beyond plus 1, the gain is balanced out by minus 1 to the other stat. And it's one use per game barring a specific formation mandating 3 of every unit type and the only genuine choices you have are loadouts for the infantry and Onager plus do you want Ironstriders or Dragoons.

Let's make it so that Ignores Cover works both ways, a unit firing Markerlights loses any Cover benefits they have and for every point of Ballistic Skill beyond 1 that a unit utilizing Markerlight Counters gains, they lose a point of WS or Initiative.

Balance, yo.

Oh wait.... Those are. Maybe we should all complain about those?

Tau players whine nonstop about Psykers.

Pskyers are pure garbage (except invis) compared to what Tau can do. Just sayin.

 Torus wrote:

Forgive me if I'm wrong (again I should really buy the Tau codex if only for research purposes) but can't you get SMS on the Stormsurge platforms?

Ok so ..

fire warriors can bring a turret for 15? pts that has sms as an option.. they can only use it if they dont move.. and the entire unit including the turrent is firing at the target *for the most part.. i realize the sarge could potentially have splitfire.. but your again buying a ton of upgrades to do this..

Broadsides come with them for free but its weird as some targets you want to target with SMS the HYMP are overkilling or can't fire at because LOS, and the other way.. SMS doesnt hurt the target the HYMP can.. still a good offensive unit though.

Devilfish and Hammerheads and skyrays may upgrade their attached drones to SMS for 10 pts. Now.. on a hammerhead this means your railgun/ion is shooting the same thing as the SMS . Its good on a skyray because you can launch all your seekers and then just use the SMS. devilfish is very viable for this upgrade as that would be their only weapon.

Stormsurge has one.. but is that really what the opponent would be worried about with the stormsurge? probably not.. and that platform is over 400 points with a shield

 Torus wrote:

In any case S5 vs T3 fragile units (such as WarpSiders) seems like a strong counter considering it invalidates the flickerjump and on plaforms like the ones you listed, you're not really going out of your way to get them.

It doesn't invalidate them. They would still be able to flicker jump, potentially out of range.. but yes it is a very good counter as they can't jump out of LOS, and not needing LOS means Tau can use that to stop any deepstrike in their bubble and force a flicker choice.

 Torus wrote:

In any case don't the drone nets increase the BS of markerlights, and drones with relentless means very little snap shooting would surely make them more reliable, and the fact that any Tau unit may utilize those markerlights is...unfortunate.

Drone net is a minimum of 224 points.. just tossing in information for the discussion here. 4 units required of 4 marker drones (minimum) if you choose that. They are only +1 BS in "your shooting phase" so any intercepting markers will be at BS2.. so your looking at maybe 2-3 marker hits maybe 4-5 if you cascade them on a single target (note.. single target)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OH and obviously riptides have them available.. but anyway

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
EWO should cost roughly 35 points on a riptide. The same cost of the drop pod that has been completely invalidated by it's existence. Then it might not be an auto include and more of a choice.

We could also reverse that; a drop pod should cost 110 points because of the 10 man Pathfinder unit it just invalidated.
Or 250 points because of the Leman Russ your grav cents just destroyed

Don't all these units have their own turns they get to shoot in? Are they shooting in Their turn and yoours? Nope.

If you shoot with interceptor, you don't get to shoot the next turn.

Warhammer 40,000: The Rules wrote:
Interceptor
At the end of the enemy Movement Phase, a weapon with the Interceptor special rule can be fired at any one unit that has arrived from Reserve within its range and line of sight. If this rule is used, the weapon cannot be fired in the next turn, but the firing model can shoot a different weapon if it has one.

Unless there's some FAQ I missed, EWO granting Interceptor to ALL of your weapons(not just giving the model Interceptor--it grants each of their weapons Interceptor) means that you do not have to fire all of your weapons as Interceptor.

So yeah, if you shoot with Interceptor you do still get to shoot the next turn. Just not with the guns you fired.

And no, they don't, not if you drop a pod in T1 and eradicate them from existence.

So you drop a pod in T1 and get your alpha strike EWO'd.

Smooth move, Iceman?

Until the absolute bonkers bullcrap that is practically army wide, near zero risk deep strike for 35 points is addressed, no SM player has a right to whinge about an undercosted rules upgrade.

Drop pods have almost no counters. EWO is one of them. Deal with it.

Until EWO forces you to fire at the Drop Pod itself rather than Space Marines, Tau players have no right to whinge about an undercosted rules upgrade.

I find that the "threat" of interceptor is often worse then what the actual interceptor does.. often times it makes my opponents play slightly less aggressive and I don't intercept them anyway because lack of BS.

A riptide scatters a blast 4" on average, with out markerlights.. and has a 1/6 chance to not fire anyway.. so generally speaking unless I have BS5 or more its averagely bad to fire a large blast off a riptide, if you intend to hit your target. If you want to scatter then its great lol

 Grizzyzz wrote:

 Torus wrote:

Forgive me if I'm wrong (again I should really buy the Tau codex if only for research purposes) but can't you get SMS on the Stormsurge platforms?

Ok so ..

fire warriors can bring a turret for 15? pts that has sms as an option.. they can only use it if they dont move.. and the entire unit including the turrent is firing at the target *for the most part.. i realize the sarge could potentially have splitfire.. but your again buying a ton of upgrades to do this..

Broadsides come with them for free but its weird as some targets you want to target with SMS the HYMP are overkilling or can't fire at because LOS, and the other way.. SMS doesnt hurt the target the HYMP can.. still a good offensive unit though.

Devilfish and Hammerheads and skyrays may upgrade their attached drones to SMS for 10 pts. Now.. on a hammerhead this means your railgun/ion is shooting the same thing as the SMS . Its good on a skyray because you can launch all your seekers and then just use the SMS. devilfish is very viable for this upgrade as that would be their only weapon.

Stormsurge has one.. but is that really what the opponent would be worried about with the stormsurge? probably not.. and that platform is over 400 points with a shield

Way to miss his point. It's far more widespread than "Broadsides, Riptides, and Tau vehicles" isn't it?

So yeah. Fire Warriors get them "if they stay still" as a 15 point upgrade. If they move--they have to wait a turn before the turret comes back.
But guess what? The turret comes back. Any other army with a squad based HW, that 15 point upgrade is gone if it goes away. Enemy models also cannot attack or affect a DS8 Tactical Support Turret.

Broadsides come with them for free, Riptides get them base, Stormsurges cannot exchange them for anything else, and any non-Devilfish vehicles are paying 0 points for them. A Devilfish pays 10 points for them.

Ten points for Ignores Cover S5 AP5 Heavy 4 with the ability to ignore Line of Sight restrictions.

 Torus wrote:

In any case S5 vs T3 fragile units (such as WarpSiders) seems like a strong counter considering it invalidates the flickerjump and on plaforms like the ones you listed, you're not really going out of your way to get them.

It doesn't invalidate them. They would still be able to flicker jump, potentially out of range.. but yes it is a very good counter as they can't jump out of LOS, and not needing LOS means Tau can use that to stop any deepstrike in their bubble and force a flicker choice.

Yes, they can jump out of range--but they can't jump out of LOS.

How do you not understand that is a huge advantage? It means there is a 30" bubble of "NOPE!" around any units equipped with SMS and EWOs. You can't Deep Strike or Outflank in without potentially taking casualties before you ever get to use the unit.

 Torus wrote:

In any case don't the drone nets increase the BS of markerlights, and drones with relentless means very little snap shooting would surely make them more reliable, and the fact that any Tau unit may utilize those markerlights is...unfortunate.

Drone net is a minimum of 224 points.. just tossing in information for the discussion here. 4 units required of 4 marker drones (minimum) if you choose that.

How many points is it to upgrade to Marker or Shield Drones?

Oh right. Free.

They are only +1 BS in "your shooting phase" so any intercepting markers will be at BS2.. so your looking at maybe 2-3 marker hits maybe 4-5 if you cascade them on a single target (note.. single target)

Okay fine, so they're intercepting at BS2. Oh noes!

That's still a pretty hefty advantage when taking into consideration that the heavy hitters in your army(Broadsides, Crisis Suits, Riptides, Stormsurges, Ghostkeels) can all take Early Warning Override at its amazingly steep points cost of 5 points and benefit from Markerlights during the enemy's turn.