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 pumaman1 wrote:
Piranhasx5 with 2x seeker missile 405 pts, 3x hammerheads 2x seeker missle ~543 pts, Longstrike with 2x seeker missiles 201 pts, and 2x max squad of path finder 160 pts,
Oh, and go first, because you can just do that (sarcasm)
1309 so far, and 10 seeker missles on 4+ rerolling 1s, 8 seeker missles on 2+ rerolling 1s, so roughly 12-15 mortal wounds, alpha strike down 1 or 2 super markerlighted units, and then have 4x hammerheads benefitted from longstrike to destroy any and every armor. and each piranha still puts out 12 shots (thanks to embarked drones) s5 to chew through infantry

could even be made more efficient rather easily with markerlight strategem etc, but something spit out quick

A worthwhile suggestion, I'll keep that in mind. Seeker missiles might be useful if applied en masse.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

 pumaman1 wrote:
Piranhasx5 with 2x seeker missile 405 pts, 3x hammerheads 2x seeker missle ~543 pts, Longstrike with 2x seeker missiles 201 pts, and 2x max squad of path finder 160 pts,
Oh, and go first, because you can just do that (sarcasm)
1309 so far, and 10 seeker missles on 4+ rerolling 1s, 8 seeker missles on 2+ rerolling 1s, so roughly 12-15 mortal wounds, alpha strike down 1 or 2 super markerlighted units, and then have 4x hammerheads benefitted from longstrike to destroy any and every armor. and each piranha still puts out 12 shots (thanks to embarked drones) s5 to chew through infantry

could even be made more efficient rather easily with markerlight strategem etc, but something spit out quick

A worthwhile suggestion, I'll keep that in mind. Seeker missiles might be useful if applied en masse.

The whole 1 mortal wound.. has to be en masse enough.. with enough surviving ML to at LEAST let them shoot at user BS

wait...

two russes, one basilisk, two sentinels?

So, if you had a vehicle out of line of sight, you would be at risk of being hit by...one basilisk.

That changes the ball game somewhat. The reason I was totally discounting longstrike here is I was picturing something more like the ultra-optimized guard list mentioned above, with at least 4 ignores LOS anti-tank weapons, which would be capable of easily cleaning longstrike's clock and leaving you with an unbuffed Hammerhead Pal. With just one 'lisk opposite you, longstrike should be included all day every day. Stick some drones next to him, he won't have a scratch on him.

Basically I think your biggest issue here is just not having enough downrange anti-infantry firepower. I honestly think with the few vehicles he's got with him, two commanders and longstrike should be more than enough to deal with what needs dealing with. He's got a turn of making his LR's real obnoxious with that psyker trick, but smoke launchers are only one turn. If he pulls it turn one with Strike and Shroud, you pop the commanders down turn 2 and on turn 1 you just shoot Longstrike at a sentinel or something.

Basically my advice would be:

1) Make sure everything valuable has a couple drones next to them. Commanders, Longstrike, other vehicles. Use those to eat battlecannon/lascannon wounds.

I've tried this. The result, invariably, every time is that my opponent fires smaller guns at the drones, take them out, and then fire lascannons etc at the priority target. Saviour Protocols being useful is a rarity to me.

2) More anti infantry firepower, SMS would be particularly helpful for their anti-mortar capabilities, but in general it seems like he's skewed wayy hard towards infantry but they're not incredibly optimized, which is good news for your points efficiency taking them out.

SMS is definitely a good idea.

3) if you continue to have problems, consider my proposal of putting absolutely everything that is vehicular off the board turn 1 and plopping it down in the form of commanders when the time is right. I always tend to assume a general tau player has at least 6 Crisis Suits - there's your 6 Commanders.

I definitely will. I realise I have to change the way I think if I want to win. My issue is that I usually like to learn one catch-all playstyle that is reasonably good against most things and then learn that as best I can, rather than specialising a list toward any one thing- which is usually the way to go if you like to play tournaments (which I do, for local stuff).

I don't buy that this Guard list with heavy bolter infantry squads and conscripts and lascannon scout sents is so optimized that it is undefeatable by an optimized tau list. I'm not making a dig at you with that - I'm telling you as a guy who's still using indexes for most of my armies I have taken on guard lists far more optimized than that and won. Maybe not pure, 100% perfect tournament competitive, nothing but a wall of upgrade-less infantry, 15 mortars, plasma scion copy/pasta and 8 basilisks/manticores, but I have taken on the pretty dang competitive cadian list I described several times now.

I should add that our terrain was not the most intense. We had a few LOS-blockers, a few cover spaces, a chunk of partial LOS-block, but there weren't super many places to hide. A factor, I guess, although I'm not sure it would have drastically changed the outcome. More LOS-block would have affected me too.

To clarify: both of us, in the game in question, were playing non-optimised lists. It's just that even in a less than optimised situation it completely mirrored every experience I've had with guard up till this point- optimised guard murderkills me, less optimised guard murderkills me slightly less. But the outcome is the same.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hollow wrote:
Ahh, the often forgotten, but incredibly fun Piranha.

I actually think they're pretty decent for what they can do. They just get overlooked a lot.

Also I freaking love the design.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just to add real quick, before I make myself look like an idiot: I am indeed kinda new to the game. I've played a good number of games in 8th but I definitely have a lot left to learn.

I'm opinionated and tend to express myself very strongly, which isn't something I do on purpose. If I get something completely wrong, feel free to tell me.

outrider detachment, 2 fireblades, 3x 5x piranhas with 2x seeker missile, 1299 pts,
2nd outrider detachment, 6x 10 pathfinders 2 fireblades,
1863 pts for 34+ average ML hits and 30 Seeker missile opportunity. An eggs all in 1 basket approach, but probably would be silly-good fun and extremely surprising to your opponent.
Heck upgrade a squad of piranha to fusion blasters to make it 2000 ish points to have anti tank after you launch ze' missiles

 pumaman1 wrote:
outrider detachment, 2 fireblades, 3x 5x piranhas with 2x seeker missile, 1299 pts,
2nd outrider detachment, 6x 10 pathfinders 2 fireblades,
1863 pts for 34+ average ML hits and 30 Seeker missile opportunity. An eggs all in 1 basket approach, but probably would be silly-good fun and extremely surprising to your opponent.
Heck upgrade a squad of piranha to fusion blasters to make it 2000 ish points to have anti tank after you launch ze' missiles

Sir I tip my hat to you. That sounds outrageously silly but it also sounds like it could be fun!

Kroot only suck in this match up, and then only if you go second. You need hounds, there are cheap GW hounds of various sorts on ebay from the old fantasy days, doesn't have to be the expensive actual models. Have to learn the value of screeners and throwaway units.

As for the fact that he can blow away your drones before you kill his chaff, that's the crux of your problem. Tau certainly have the answers for eliminating infantry. Gun drones with DC are basically twice as good as FW. That's what the Stealths are for, homing beacon is just a bonus. If you are taking Suits and Vehicles, you are hamstringing yourself.

but, his list has no mortars, unless you didn't mention them. And drones come in units of 2s and 3s. They're also very, very easy to hide behind the exact thing they're protecting unless you're letting someone sight to the flyer base.

As your opponent I would definitely try to hit the drones if possible, but there is a crap-ton of good ways to hide a couple tiny duo units out of line of sight on a battlefield. drop a commander next to a ruin, pop the drones 3" away totally hidden behind the ruin walls and between the commander and the opposing army. Boom, your opponent now needs to kill those dudes somehow or there is absolutely no way for him to target the commander they're next to.

"but scotsman! Mortar teams!" 3 mortars kill one single drone in cover per turn, and in an optimal situation all the SMS' in your army have spent two turns dropping everything they've got on them. 2 SMS', 1 dead mortar team * 2 turns. Any that he can't cram out of LOS should be taking fire however you can deliver it to him, and the rest you can target with SMS. If you can figure out a way to fit 6-8 drones in an inconvenient spot for him to hit the turn you drop your commanders down, he's very likely to not have enough mortars left to clear them out.

Please don't think I'm trying to be disparaging here: it freaking sucks to have the weakest rules around, and these are the same kinds of things I had to work out with my Dark Eldar. Different units get settled on as useful (Flyers, Scourges and splinterboat venoms are my go-to competitive units) but you can make the same calls. And the upshot of the commander and fire warrior spam strategy is that if the codex drops you've just got yourself a whole bunch of really generalist Tau models.

but, his list has no mortars, unless you didn't mention them. And drones come in units of 2s and 3s. They're also very, very easy to hide behind the exact thing they're protecting unless you're letting someone sight to the flyer base.

I could have sworn I mentioned the mortars. There were three of them. Drones are also nigh on impossible to completely hide out in the open.

As your opponent I would definitely try to hit the drones if possible, but there is a crap-ton of good ways to hide a couple tiny duo units out of line of sight on a battlefield. drop a commander next to a ruin, pop the drones 3" away totally hidden behind the ruin walls and between the commander and the opposing army. Boom, your opponent now needs to kill those dudes somehow or there is absolutely no way for him to target the commander they're next to.

Not a bad idea in theory, but highly situational. It relies on there being a ruin to hide them behind in the relevant area.

"but scotsman! Mortar teams!" 3 mortars kill one single drone in cover per turn, and in an optimal situation all the SMS' in your army have spent two turns dropping everything they've got on them. 2 SMS', 1 dead mortar team * 2 turns. Any that he can't cram out of LOS should be taking fire however you can deliver it to him, and the rest you can target with SMS. If you can figure out a way to fit 6-8 drones in an inconvenient spot for him to hit the turn you drop your commanders down, he's very likely to not have enough mortars left to clear them out.

Please don't think I'm trying to be disparaging here: it freaking sucks to have the weakest rules around, and these are the same kinds of things I had to work out with my Dark Eldar. Different units get settled on as useful (Flyers, Scourges and splinterboat venoms are my go-to competitive units) but you can make the same calls. And the upshot of the commander and fire warrior spam strategy is that if the codex drops you've just got yourself a whole bunch of really generalist Tau models.

I honestly don't think we have the weakest rules. I've faced off against plenty of competitively built lists and done fairly well, and even when I've lost I usually had a good idea what went wrong- it's just that in this case I have no idea what to do because I don't actually know what I could do differently.

So, something like this https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/e/e4/Gun_Drone2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120915035542

That has to be 3" away from something like this
https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/600x620/99120113028_TauHammerhead01.jpg

and you're saying it's "nigh on impossible" for you to figure out a spot to put the first little guy where he is not visible to the bulk of the enemy army.

and I'm assuming you've tried "behind the second big guy"?

If this was a bigger unit of bigger models I would totally buy it - there's not always enough LOS blocking stuff to go around after all. But drones, at least the kind that come with vehicles and commanders, are itty freaking bitty and there's two of them. and you just need one in the right spot to create a huge pain in the butt for your opponent.

I guess it's just so difficult for me to figure out how there's perfectly sufficient room for an opponent to fit 9 60mm mortar team bases and a basilisk completely perfectly out of sight of your deep strikers and troops with 30" range guns, but how it's highly situational for there to be a ruin or small rock somewhere near where you could put a commander down.

I'm sorry to keep bringing up my Dark Eldar, but I usually have about five venoms full of splinter warriors in my competitive dark eldar list. Each one on average can dish out 22 poison shots at BS3+ if they get within 12", and they fly 16" and shoot at full BS, so typically turn 1 I'm hunting for good spots to put them out of sight of any major gunline elements. Any that survive can fly up and unload, and within 12" they deal 6 wounds and lower LD by 1 so they can pretty much sort a guard squad each. They don't need to be invisible to everything, but I want them split enough that my opponent can't get more than 2-3 anti tank shots off at any given one. I can almost always accomplish that with a small tank. 1-2 small infantry sized characters, it's usually pretty trivial.

So, something like this https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/e/e4/Gun_Drone2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120915035542

That has to be 3" away from something like this
https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/600x620/99120113028_TauHammerhead01.jpg

and you're saying it's "nigh on impossible" for you to figure out a spot to put the first little guy where he is not visible to the bulk of the enemy army.

and I'm assuming you've tried "behind the second big guy"?

Saviour Protocols applies only to keywords infantry and battlesuit. Hammerheads cannot make use of them, unless there's been an FAQ update I haven't heard of.

I guess it's just so difficult for me to figure out how there's perfectly sufficient room for an opponent to fit 9 60mm mortar team bases and a basilisk completely perfectly out of sight of your deep strikers and troops with 30" range guns, but how it's highly situational for there to be a ruin or small rock somewhere near where you could put a commander down.

So far my experience has been: mortar teams parked behind a ruin, close to the table edge, with infantry squads fanning out around it, completely denying deepstrike. What's highly situational isn't there being a ruin to park your commande within- it's there being a ruin to park your commander within that is within the '18 range of your fusion blaster that makes it less than reliable.

Play Maelstrom missions and use more LOS blocking terrain. Parking lot armies don't have it so easy then.

Fair. Just one more reason not to present any vehicle targets at all turn 1 I suppose. I wasn't aware that savior doesn't work on vehicles.

The mortars are definitely more of a problem that others face than me I'd guess. Razorwings sit way high up, I've never had a problem getting sight on mortar teams with them, or basilisks/manticores for that matter, and they come with the beautiful "Mortars-B-Gone" missile profile of assault D6, S6 AP- D2.

Figuring out what targets you can deny presenting in a gunline meta is supremely important. if turn 1 everything facing the enemy is chaff infantry, every basilisk, manticore, lascannon and russ is worthless. That's what some of the powerful chaos soup lists do - everything, EVERYTHING that matters is a character standing behind brims.

the_scotsman wrote:
Fair. Just one more reason not to present any vehicle targets at all turn 1 I suppose. I wasn't aware that savior doesn't work on vehicles.

The mortars are definitely more of a problem that others face than me I'd guess. Razorwings sit way high up, I've never had a problem getting sight on mortar teams with them, or basilisks/manticores for that matter, and they come with the beautiful "Mortars-B-Gone" missile profile of assault D6, S6 AP- D2.

Figuring out what targets you can deny presenting in a gunline meta is supremely important. if turn 1 everything facing the enemy is chaff infantry, every basilisk, manticore, lascannon and russ is worthless. That's what some of the powerful chaos soup lists do - everything, EVERYTHING that matters is a character standing behind brims.

I'll 100% make sure to pay more attention to terrain as the board is being set up. Cover seems essential.

Just asking: Longstrike and 2 hammerheads, all with railguns. With his +1, and markerlight #3, (ignore heavy penalty) they'd all hit on a 2+, rerolling 1s. Longstrike wounds vehicles on a 2+, the others on a 3+. -4 AP. If they all wound, that's 3d6 damage. That would be somewhere in the realm of 520ish points. Worth it?

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Fair. Just one more reason not to present any vehicle targets at all turn 1 I suppose. I wasn't aware that savior doesn't work on vehicles.

The mortars are definitely more of a problem that others face than me I'd guess. Razorwings sit way high up, I've never had a problem getting sight on mortar teams with them, or basilisks/manticores for that matter, and they come with the beautiful "Mortars-B-Gone" missile profile of assault D6, S6 AP- D2.

Figuring out what targets you can deny presenting in a gunline meta is supremely important. if turn 1 everything facing the enemy is chaff infantry, every basilisk, manticore, lascannon and russ is worthless. That's what some of the powerful chaos soup lists do - everything, EVERYTHING that matters is a character standing behind brims.

I'll 100% make sure to pay more attention to terrain as the board is being set up. Cover seems essential.

Just asking: Longstrike and 2 hammerheads, all with railguns. With his +1, and markerlight #3, (ignore heavy penalty) they'd all hit on a 2+, rerolling 1s. Longstrike wounds vehicles on a 2+, the others on a 3+. -4 AP. If they all wound, that's 3d6 damage. That would be somewhere in the realm of 520ish points. Worth it?

Sadly... no.

Not to keep riding the "guard are ridiculous" train, but the current Gold Standard in First-Rate Anti-Tank is the Shadowsword, which, for 404 points, brings a 6-shot Heavy Bolter and a 3d3 shot Str. 16 AP-5 D 2d6 gun. 520 points will get beaten by this 404 points every game, and that's just how it is because guard are really good.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Fair. Just one more reason not to present any vehicle targets at all turn 1 I suppose. I wasn't aware that savior doesn't work on vehicles.

The mortars are definitely more of a problem that others face than me I'd guess. Razorwings sit way high up, I've never had a problem getting sight on mortar teams with them, or basilisks/manticores for that matter, and they come with the beautiful "Mortars-B-Gone" missile profile of assault D6, S6 AP- D2.

Figuring out what targets you can deny presenting in a gunline meta is supremely important. if turn 1 everything facing the enemy is chaff infantry, every basilisk, manticore, lascannon and russ is worthless. That's what some of the powerful chaos soup lists do - everything, EVERYTHING that matters is a character standing behind brims.

I'll 100% make sure to pay more attention to terrain as the board is being set up. Cover seems essential.

Just asking: Longstrike and 2 hammerheads, all with railguns. With his +1, and markerlight #3, (ignore heavy penalty) they'd all hit on a 2+, rerolling 1s. Longstrike wounds vehicles on a 2+, the others on a 3+. -4 AP. If they all wound, that's 3d6 damage. That would be somewhere in the realm of 520ish points. Worth it?

... No. but as long as longstrike is there, they can move and shoot at normal bs just becuase he's within 6(?)", even better with the markerlights helping. Longstrike personally gets to reroll to wounds versus monster and vehicle. so better chance to not do 1 or 2 wounds with him.
At least that they all have sub-munitions by default is nice, if you need to punch infantry.

... No. but as long as longstrike is there, they can move and shoot at normal bs just becuase he's within 6(?)", even better with the markerlights helping. Longstrike personally gets to reroll to wounds versus monster and vehicle. so better chance to not do 1 or 2 wounds with him.
At least that they all have sub-munitions by default is nice, if you need to punch infantry.

Well, so much for that idea. I'd really like to try an infantry-and-tank style gunline myself, though.

Also I just checked the rules, Longstrike does not get to re-roll wounds according to index, just +1 to wound.

If you don't at least try a game with no suits and tanks, I'm not sure why you started the thread. You lose the vehicle battle, but win the infantry one. So why fight a tank battle?

xmbk wrote:
If you don't at least try a game with no suits and tanks, I'm not sure why you started the thread. You lose the vehicle battle, but win the infantry one. So why fight a tank battle?

Hey, I definitely intend to take some advice from this thread if what I'm doing continues to not work, buddy. This has been some useful advice even if it took a while to get there.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

... No. but as long as longstrike is there, they can move and shoot at normal bs just becuase he's within 6(?)", even better with the markerlights helping. Longstrike personally gets to reroll to wounds versus monster and vehicle. so better chance to not do 1 or 2 wounds with him.
At least that they all have sub-munitions by default is nice, if you need to punch infantry.

Well, so much for that idea. I'd really like to try an infantry-and-tank style gunline myself, though.

Also I just checked the rules, Longstrike does not get to re-roll wounds according to index, just +1 to wound.

1/3rd of the time he'll get d3 mortal wounds, tanks to (ha, dad pun) on 5s and 6s with that
They are good BS seeker missile platforms, and only other reasonable way to get mortal wounds. And we don't have much better choice, so i'd still take them. Pick your poison. Suits (besides commanders and to a degree stealth) are not good, why on earth Hammerheads didn't get supremacy rail-guns (like the tidewall), who knows. Possible upgrade in upcoming codex, but for now, work what you have.

Commanders, longstrike, kroot hounds, vespids, stealth suits, ghostkeels?, under rated piranhas.

If you do get LOS blocking terrain, you only need to expose the tiniest portion of vehicle to shoot, not like the old days

1/3rd of the time he'll get d3 mortal wounds, tanks to (ha, dad pun) on 5s and 6s with that
They are good BS seeker missile platforms, and only other reasonable way to get mortal wounds. And we don't have much better choice, so i'd still take them. Pick your poison. Suits (besides commanders and to a degree stealth) are not good, why on earth Hammerheads didn't get supremacy rail-guns (like the tidewall), who knows. Possible upgrade in upcoming codex, but for now, work what you have.

Commanders, longstrike, kroot hounds, vespids, stealth suits, ghostkeels?, under rated piranhas.

If you do get LOS blocking terrain, you only need to expose the tiniest portion of vehicle to shoot, not like the old days

Screw me, I completely forgot about the way modifiers work. Mortal wounds on a 5+ is pretty dang good.

Commanders=absolutely. Piranhas=planned on getting more than one anyway. Kroot hounds... maybe. Ghostkeels seem pretty decent but I'm unsure of their role here, they're not the best at killing loads of infantry (although with burst cannons... maybe).

Man, a supremacy railgun... if you had 2 shots instead of 1, it would be so good.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:


Screw me, I completely forgot about the way modifiers work. Mortal wounds on a 5+ is pretty dang good.

Commanders=absolutely. Piranhas=planned on getting more than one anyway. Kroot hounds... maybe. Ghostkeels seem pretty decent but I'm unsure of their role here, they're not the best at killing loads of infantry (although with burst cannons... maybe).

Man, a supremacy railgun... if you had 2 shots instead of 1, it would be so good.

Kroot hounds role is almost exclusively to sprint as fast as possible across the board, and tie up heavy guns/effective melee units. at 4pts per, and 12" move no gun so always advance. They fulfill the meat shield role well, but aren't great at doing that much damage.
Ghost keels I actually agree, but i read others with more success. -2 to hit outside of 12" helps, but the drones are helpless and dead turn 1 if visible.
Supremacy railgun seems to obvious to not have it as an upgrade, but who knows. If not that at least let a character aim the supremacy rail-gun again, none of this 5+ only closest unit nonsense.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

This has been some useful advice even if it took a while to get there.

You have received plenty of good advice you didn't want to hear. The pure arrogance of your asking for advice, because you don't know what to do, because your thought processes have lead you to a dead end, and then proclaiming to tolerate some advice that doesn't fix your underlying issue. Amazing. Hope your games get better. Perhaps in the future you could not ask for help, but instead tell everyone what you want to hear so we can echo it for you. It would save a lot of time.

 greatbigtree wrote:

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

This has been some useful advice even if it took a while to get there.

You have received plenty of good advice you didn't want to hear. The pure arrogance of your asking for advice, because you don't know what to do, because your thought processes have lead you to a dead end, and then proclaiming to tolerate some advice that doesn't fix your underlying issue. Amazing. Hope your games get better. Perhaps in the future you could not ask for help, but instead tell everyone what you want to hear so we can echo it for you. It would save a lot of time.

I'm talking about people repeatedly saying "but just use stealth teams and a couple fusion commanders" when I know that isn't going to cut it. There were a lot of useful perspectives in here- like the idea of skipping markerlights, or massing infantry, or skipping tanks- that I'll definitely be taking into consideration. But some of the suggestions were no good to me and I don't mind saying it. If that makes me "arrogant"... well, whatever.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Fair. Just one more reason not to present any vehicle targets at all turn 1 I suppose. I wasn't aware that savior doesn't work on vehicles.

The mortars are definitely more of a problem that others face than me I'd guess. Razorwings sit way high up, I've never had a problem getting sight on mortar teams with them, or basilisks/manticores for that matter, and they come with the beautiful "Mortars-B-Gone" missile profile of assault D6, S6 AP- D2.

Figuring out what targets you can deny presenting in a gunline meta is supremely important. if turn 1 everything facing the enemy is chaff infantry, every basilisk, manticore, lascannon and russ is worthless. That's what some of the powerful chaos soup lists do - everything, EVERYTHING that matters is a character standing behind brims.

I'll 100% make sure to pay more attention to terrain as the board is being set up. Cover seems essential.

Just asking: Longstrike and 2 hammerheads, all with railguns. With his +1, and markerlight #3, (ignore heavy penalty) they'd all hit on a 2+, rerolling 1s. Longstrike wounds vehicles on a 2+, the others on a 3+. -4 AP. If they all wound, that's 3d6 damage. That would be somewhere in the realm of 520ish points. Worth it?

Sadly... no.

Not to keep riding the "guard are ridiculous" train, but the current Gold Standard in First-Rate Anti-Tank is the Shadowsword, which, for 404 points, brings a 6-shot Heavy Bolter and a 3d3 shot Str. 16 AP-5 D 2d6 gun. 520 points will get beaten by this 404 points every game, and that's just how it is because guard are really good.

Disagree. 3 Hammerheads with Long-Strike are well worth taking. I have done so several times and they have been very effective. Just because something doesn't exactly match the potential damage output of one of the strongest Anti-Meq choices in the game, doesn't automatically make it a non-starter. Everything isn't as good as everything else. Synergy, tactics etc all need to be taken into consideration.

Disagree. 3 Hammerheads with Long-Strike are well worth taking. I have done so several times and they have been very effective. Just because something doesn't exactly match the potential damage output of one of the strongest Anti-Meq choices in the game, doesn't automatically make it a non-starter. Everything isn't as good as everything else. Synergy, tactics etc all need to be taken into consideration.

That's what I was thinking. It's worth trying at the very least.

Watch Rule #1 here, folks.

While I like the hammerhead models and their synergy with Longstrike. The damage is capped pretty low making it hard for a group of 3 to duke it out with enemy armor, especially imperial tanks or super heavies. The big advantage seems to be either movement with markerlight support or the ability to switch and put some hurt on infantry without wasting too much firepower so I'd love to hear your results and how they performed; been looking for an excuse to buy a few hammerheads and devilish for an mechanised Tau list.

A 6 man stealth team with 2 drones in cover, has 14 wounds, a 2+ save, and is -1 to hit.

Lasguns have a 1.8% chance to wound them.
Motars have a 2.8%
Battle Cannons have 14%
Las Cannons have 18%

I've had an entire 1500 point Guard army concentrate their fire into a single stealth team on turn 1 and fail to remove it.

 adamsouza wrote:
A 6 man stealth team with 2 drones in cover, has 14 wounds, a 2+ save, and is -1 to hit.

Lasguns have a 1.8% chance to wound them.
Motars have a 2.8%
Battle Cannons have 14%
Las Cannons have 18%

I've had an entire 1500 point Guard army concentrate their fire into a single stealth team on turn 1 and fail to remove it.

Bear in mind the Drones are a separate unit, don't benefit from cover unless 50% obscured, and aren't the -1 to hit. Its pretty easy to pick off the drones before going after the Stealth Suits so you can't use Savior Protocols. Don't get me wrong, Stealth Suits got really good in 8th edition, like really good, but generally I see Drones as a bad investment on them outside of getting an extra pair of Shield Drones into the midfield for a Manta Striking Commander to grab or to get a pair of Marker Drones in a good position for a turn before they inevitably get killed. I'd rather invest those points into Support Systems on the Stealth Suits personally, but to each their own.

 Sleep Spell wrote:
While I like the hammerhead models and their synergy with Longstrike. The damage is capped pretty low making it hard for a group of 3 to duke it out with enemy armor, especially imperial tanks or super heavies. The big advantage seems to be either movement with markerlight support or the ability to switch and put some hurt on infantry without wasting too much firepower so I'd love to hear your results and how they performed; been looking for an excuse to buy a few hammerheads and devilish for an mechanised Tau list.

I think when you start talking about superheavies then I agree, the game changes and you need to dig a little deeper within the T'au bag of tricks to take care of them. I rarely (If ever) come across superheavies in sub-2k games (As should be the case). If however, a player insists on taking superheavies then you are really forced into Fusion commander spam.