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 Vineheart01 wrote:
they need to just release a generic faq about that and "mortal damage in addition to damage"
Orks with grot shields have the same problem and the ruling on it is so dang fuzzy it always sparks arguments.

I think they did though:

Q: If an attack inflicts a rules effect on a target unit (e.g. Tremor Shells in Codex Space Marines), and that attack is subsequently allocated to a Drones unit as a result of the Saviour Protocols ability, which unit is the rules effect applied to?
A: The Drones unit.

Tremor Shells is a stratagem that procs off an attack, right? So... SP redirects all rules effects to the Drone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Okay, after breathing into a paper bag for a few minutes, here is what I think happens:

1) You attack with Dakkabots with Wrath.

2) You speed roll hits.

3) You one-by-one roll wounds.
-You one-by-one roll them because if you speed roll them, the Tau player can choose which of the wound rolls he wants to SP.

4) Tau player may SP each wound roll.

5a) Successful SP allocates one mortal wound to the Drone. The attack sequence for this attack ends.
-Additional mortal wound as a result of the Wrath is cancelled out

5b) Unsuccessful SP allocates one wound and one mortal wound to the target.

EDIT: I edited this at least twice, but right now, I am wondering if Tau can FNP the mortal wound. If the attack sequence ends immediately after the SP roll, then this means they CANNOT. So this could be a stealth nerf just to Shield Drones...

i would be able to answer that based on grot shields but grots are Slain rather than given a mortal wound.
I would wager if the attack sequence suddenly ends before the mortal wound from the 6 wound roll is generated (since that is strictly looking at the roll, not if the target took damage) they also would not get to roll FNP since they still suffer the wound before rolling FNP.

Again, i wish they'd just blanket faq this crap. I didnt know about that SP faq you mentioned and it even contradicts itself with the new "ends attack sequence" bit.

i love the ability to shuffle wounds around to sacrificial units but man they did not handle it very well...

I think GW just killed Shield Drones.

I'm really interested in trying out a blob of 20 Jazz Hands Electro Priests and 4 Dakka Kastellans with a Dadelaus and the Graia forgewoeld - I love the idea of so many exploding 5s and both units being able to continue firing when locked in combat - it feels like it could do a great job of dominating the centre field.. Has anyone tried using anything like this? Does anyone have any opinions on whether you get plenty of bang for your buck?

Jazz Hands die very fast without a transport or deep strike to protect them, unfortunately.

 Suzuteo wrote:
Jazz Hands die very fast without a transport or deep strike to protect them, unfortunately.

Oh poo that's a shame - whats the consensus on massed Rangers/Vanguard - especially with Griai's ability to shoot in close combat and the 6+++? Are squads of 10 still the way to go?

Mass Stygies Vanguard with Calivers in Duneriders is very strong. Best AdMech at NOVA did that strategy.

 Suzuteo wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
they need to just release a generic faq about that and "mortal damage in addition to damage"
Orks with grot shields have the same problem and the ruling on it is so dang fuzzy it always sparks arguments.

I think they did though:

Q: If an attack inflicts a rules effect on a target unit (e.g. Tremor Shells in Codex Space Marines), and that attack is subsequently allocated to a Drones unit as a result of the Saviour Protocols ability, which unit is the rules effect applied to?
A: The Drones unit.

Tremor Shells is a stratagem that procs off an attack, right? So... SP redirects all rules effects to the Drone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Okay, after breathing into a paper bag for a few minutes, here is what I think happens:

1) You attack with Dakkabots with Wrath.

2) You speed roll hits.

3) You one-by-one roll wounds.
-You one-by-one roll them because if you speed roll them, the Tau player can choose which of the wound rolls he wants to SP.

4) Tau player may SP each wound roll.

5a) Successful SP allocates one mortal wound to the Drone. The attack sequence for this attack ends.
-Additional mortal wound as a result of the Wrath is cancelled out

5b) Unsuccessful SP allocates one wound and one mortal wound to the target.

EDIT: I edited this at least twice, but right now, I am wondering if Tau can FNP the mortal wound. If the attack sequence ends immediately after the SP roll, then this means they CANNOT. So this could be a stealth nerf just to Shield Drones...

I mean yeah, that works, but I feel like that would be rules as slow play. I hate Tau, but if I saw that in a tournament with not much context aside from the admech player doing it, I'd be inclined to agree that's slow play. I mean think about it, that's going to be like 60 dice you need to roll individually, and then have the Tau player react to. Would you ever make it past turn 3?

You could offer a HIWPI at the start and offer two choices:
1) I pick the SP roll order.
2) We do it one-by-one. I will roll to wound on my time and you SP on your time.

He can certainly try to accuse me of slow play, but these are no longer stochastically independent events. Technically, we are not allowed to fast roll them.

--

Thinking on the Shield Drones FNP rules confusion. One scenario that I can see FNP working is if the FAQ is VERY limited in scope. SP cancels out the wounds and mortal wounds caused by the weapon's attack. And it then allocates one mortal wound to the Drone and all other attack rules as well, continuing the attack sequence there.

Wrath of Mars is still not a part of the weapon attack. Does the Drone now just have to save two mortals? One from the SP and one from the Wrath of Mars rule, which now is targeting the Drone a la the Tremor Shells example?

Because in this example, they make it clear that it's the weapon that the SP is ignoring:

Q: How does the Saviour Protocols ability work when a T’au Empire unit is hit and wounded by a powerful weapon, like a lascannon, when it is near to some friendly Drones?
A: Let’s imagine a T’au Sept unit is targeted by a model firing a lascannon whilst a friendly T’au Sept Drone unit is within 3" of it. The hit roll and wound rolls for the attack made with the lascannon are both successful. The T’au Sept player then chooses to try and intercept the attack with a nearby drone unit and rolls one D6, scoring a 3. This is more than 2+, so the drone unit suffers 1 mortal wound and the lascannon’s attack ends (i.e. you do not take a saving throw, and the weapon’s damage characteristic is irrelevant).

And in this one, they make reference to an attack inflicting a rules effect from a stratagem:

Q: If an attack inflicts a rules effect on a target unit (e.g. Tremor Shells in Codex Space Marines), and that attack is subsequently allocated to a Drones unit as a result of the Saviour Protocols ability, which unit is the rules effect applied to?
A: The Drones unit.

Oh I agree, RAW that's how it needs to be done. I'm just thinking about it in terms of logistics and time at a tournament. Essentially just trying to think of how that would go down when you're 20 minutes into round 3 of a long day and you've got a Tau player who's stomped the first two people he went against, only to be told he now has to roll every save one by one because otherwise he completely shuts down a key part of your list. Even a good person is going to be annoyed most likely, but if they're cranky or a jerk I could definitely see issues.

Essentially, I'm not talking about tactics so much as soft skills and stats that affect tournament stuff that you can't really math out. You know, stuff like "hey, maybe 300 Ork Boyz would stomp most lists, but how do you plan on moving that army from table to table, rolling all the dice, and making sure you get a game past turn 3?" Or how something may be good, but playing it is going to annoy most opponents and make them be a lot less forgiving to you.

You know, like Tau

Hope I didn't come across mean there, you get what I mean right?

And yes, this Tau drone ruling is really annoying. I can't believe they get to FnP savior protocol in the first place but this is just rubbing salt in the wound. They're already stupidly powerful, the drones really didn't need a buff to begin with.

A mortal wound isnt a rules effect its effectibely a seperate attack the wrath of mars mortal wounds would require seperate 2+ to be transferred to drones at which the mortal wound on the target unit ends and the drone takes a mortal wound.

If a player has 3 drones its perfectly reasonable to role 3 dice at a time it will speed the game up over sequential and won't change outcomes

Play with a clock vs tau if they use up their time thats their problem.

From the new Big Rulebook Errata:

Q: Some attacks deal mortal wounds in addition to their normal damage. When are these mortal wounds allocated?

A: Any mortal wounds inflicted by an attack in addition to normal damage should be allocated after that attack has been resolved (note that this may prevent fast dice rolling when resolving attacks with this ability).

So indeed, the additional MW is not part of the attack sequence, and isn’t cancelled out when Savior Protocols ends the attack sequence. Instead the MW is resolved after SP. But the MW itself cannot be Savior Protocol’d because it does not have its own wound roll, and wound rolls are when SP takes place.

So in short, as I understand it from the above BRB FAQ and the wording on SP, MWs from Wrath of Mars pierce SP and do direct damage to the target unit, while SP can only try to block the regular attack damage.

I like Pomguo's explanation, that makes the most sense ive seen so far on this situation.

Yo! Quick questions - I've landed a bit of hobby money, and was wondering about a couple of things!

1. How are Secutarii Hoplites? I don't see 'em mentionned much, but I love the way they look. What do you do with them, and what kind of support do they need? Are they made redundant if I have like 10 rust stalkers as well?

2. The Tech-Thrall Covenant with Las-Locks don't have 40k rules, right? Again, I really like the models, but I'm not sure what I'd do with them, especially as I already have quite a lot of skitarii...

Pomguo wrote:
From the new Big Rulebook Errata:

Q: Some attacks deal mortal wounds in addition to their normal damage. When are these mortal wounds allocated?

A: Any mortal wounds inflicted by an attack in addition to normal damage should be allocated after that attack has been resolved (note that this may prevent fast dice rolling when resolving attacks with this ability).

So indeed, the additional MW is not part of the attack sequence, and isn’t cancelled out when Savior Protocols ends the attack sequence. Instead the MW is resolved after SP. But the MW itself cannot be Savior Protocol’d because it does not have its own wound roll, and wound rolls are when SP takes place.

So in short, as I understand it from the above BRB FAQ and the wording on SP, MWs from Wrath of Mars pierce SP and do direct damage to the target unit, while SP can only try to block the regular attack damage.

But then you have this gem in the Tau FAQ:

Q: If an attack inflicts mortal wounds on the target, and the attack is subsequently allocated to a Drones unit as a result of the Saviour Protocols ability, what happens to those mortal wounds inflicted?
A: They are cancelled. All damage and mortal wounds inflicted as the result of that attack is reduced to the mortal wound inflicted by the Saviour Protocols ability on that Drones unit.

I love how they manage to contradict themselves in so many places... my thinking now is that mortal wounds inflicted IN ADDITION are treated the BRB FAQ way, but mortal wounds inflicted INSTEAD or as a replacement are treated the Tau FAQ way???

If so, then crisis averted. We can speed roll again. Nothing has changed essentially, except that we MUST SP the normal damage first. And Tau cannot SP the mortals at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seems the Reddit crowd is adamant on the most favorable interpretation for Tau. So it looks like we're going to be slow-rolling wounds against them. Be sure to position your dice near the clock for easy access.

Hoplites are solid choices i use them regularly as screens

So... how do we beat these lists?

1) Iron Hands Repulsors
2) Iron Hands Relic Levi Dreads
3) Iron Hands Ven Dreads

Plus Scouts, Suits, TFCs, and Aggressors.

Wracking my brains, and I'm not even sure Robots can beat #1 and #3. They got superior range and strong anti-tank weapons.

Dragoons might be out of the equation entirely due to #3. They can't enter buildings to fight. (Maybe Grators can make up for it?)

We go into hiding and await the FAQ/nerfs when gw see the top 8 at tournaments is always iron hands

And Tau, by the looks of the new FAQ shutting down mortal wounds solutions.

Sigh. This is deja vu all over again. 7E became really stale once they started power creeping the crap out of formations.

Run stygies dont build around robots

Go first iron hands are still glass cannons

Stygies lacks long range damage output imho. It's more useful for infiltrating shenanigans.

And I don't think they are glass cannons. Just take those repulsors: 16 wounds with T8, 3+/5++, 6+ FnP and reducing incoming damage by 1. This mitigates so many good weapons in the game which tend to be damage 2.
Plus they basically ignore the damage chart of vehicles.

Even 6 Laschickens with Doctrina do just 11.5 wounds on average against a repulsor, which than will be healed by 6.

@Suzuteo
I feel that robots are the best bet against IH. You ignore their stupid -1 DMG thing, you deal MW and you put Levis back on their 4++. Plus those bots offer good survivability.

had a game yesterday in a 2v2, we were admech against iron hands. Making vendreads characters to protect them, having thunderfire cannons and whirlinds that can be hidden in a ruin yet still damage anything on the map is ridiculous.

We lost half of our army before even playing, and the guns we had left (6 kataphrons, 2 belleros and 1 icarus crawler) couldnt even target any of their heavy hitter. The powercreep has really turned me off of the game. I'm going to stick to friendly beerr and pretzel games and killteam from now on.

U02dah4 wrote:
Run stygies dont build around robots

Go first iron hands are still glass cannons

Iron Hands are NOT glass cannons. You need to play them before you say something like that. They hit like glass cannons, but their Repulsors and Relic Levis have as much durability as a Knight. And their Ven Dreads are even worse because they cannot even be targeted. They will sit back there burning through your army with Lascannons all game. That list is the one I hate the most. I've got nothing on them except to kill everything upfield and try to sneak Dragoons in with Dunestriders.

@VladimirHerzog
TFCs are abominable. I didn't have any Skitarii left by the bottom of Round 2 the first time I played them when I got back from Japan.

 Suzuteo wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
Run stygies dont build around robots

Go first iron hands are still glass cannons

Iron Hands are NOT glass cannons. You need to play them before you say something like that. They hit like glass cannons, but their Repulsors and Relic Levis have as much durability as a Knight. And their Ven Dreads are even worse because they cannot even be targeted. They will sit back there burning through your army with Lascannons all game. That list is the one I hate the most. I've got nothing on them except to kill everything upfield and try to sneak Dragoons in with Dunestriders.

@VladimirHerzog
TFCs are abominable. I didn't have any Skitarii left by the bottom of Round 2 the first time I played them when I got back from Japan.

yeah, 47 pts for the gun itself (since it comes with a techmarine) is just stupid.

and yeah, their infantry might be glass cannon but the rest of their army sure isnt, character ven dreads is particularly strong and in my opinion should never have been added to the game. our only answer to it is to run arquebuses / vindicaire spam. People were saying that the weakness of iron hands would be that they'd be a typical gunline so you can just hide from them. The thing is , they can bring cheap mortars. and if they need map control, they can still run infantry since their guns will just delete any threats.

Nah man. Iron Fathers and Chapter Masters are really hard to crack. And it's as you say. They will kill your snipers first thing with the TFCs.

 Suzuteo wrote:
Nah man. Iron Fathers and Chapter Masters are really hard to crack. And it's as you say. They will kill your snipers first thing with the TFCs.

thats what i mean, our best counter is so trivial for them to deal with that its not an actual counter. While i'm glad non blue marines are getting some love and becoming more playable, the amount of free rules they get just for picking a chapter is mindboggling.

Ignore penalty for moving (ok ,our heavy have that already)
an additionnal AP on all their heavy guns
Reroll 1's for their heavy guns (we have our canticle to give it for everything, but it usually only for one turn unless were playing mars)
Feel no pain 6+
Overwatch on 5+ (agripiina +++)

So all of this is free, now lets add the iron father to this
5++ bubble (our vehicles get this so ok)
Signum array
actually decent gun
heal for a flat 3 (can be used twice)
is only 110 pts

add in the psychic powers and the stupid ironstone relic and honestly im overwhelmed.

Stealth FAQ today.

Whirlwind Hyperios and Whirlwind Scorpius lost their Whirlwind keywords.

Everything else SM related is errata.

VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Suzuteo wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
Run stygies dont build around robots

Go first iron hands are still glass cannons

Iron Hands are NOT glass cannons. You need to play them before you say something like that. They hit like glass cannons, but their Repulsors and Relic Levis have as much durability as a Knight. And their Ven Dreads are even worse because they cannot even be targeted. They will sit back there burning through your army with Lascannons all game. That list is the one I hate the most. I've got nothing on them except to kill everything upfield and try to sneak Dragoons in with Dunestriders.

@VladimirHerzog
TFCs are abominable. I didn't have any Skitarii left by the bottom of Round 2 the first time I played them when I got back from Japan.

yeah, 47 pts for the gun itself (since it comes with a techmarine) is just stupid.

and yeah, their infantry might be glass cannon but the rest of their army sure isnt, character ven dreads is particularly strong and in my opinion should never have been added to the game. our only answer to it is to run arquebuses / vindicaire spam. People were saying that the weakness of iron hands would be that they'd be a typical gunline so you can just hide from them. The thing is , they can bring cheap mortars. and if they need map control, they can still run infantry since their guns will just delete any threats.

Well we will see personnally white scars still seem a more dangerous threat and certainly are the dominant meta choice where I am. Your right i havn't played vs the character leviathens but the ven dread are glass cannon for their pts if you can get to them and at -1 to hit because im assuming they are more than 12 don't pack all that much firepower for their points. Between dunecrawlers disintegrators hoplites and a knight crusader we have enough power to be easily winning going first but yes if they go first its going to be hard thats what makes them glass cannons.

If we go first or we have good LOS blocking terrain, we have a chance to win by just knocking out all of their frontline stuff. Then it's a Grator vs TFC duel while your dudes claim objectives and HODL.

U02dah4 wrote:
Well we will see personnally white scars still seem a more dangerous threat and certainly are the dominant meta choice where I am. Your right i havn't played vs the character leviathens but the ven dread are glass cannon for their pts if you can get to them and at -1 to hit because im assuming they are more than 12 don't pack all that much firepower for their points. Between dunecrawlers disintegrators hoplites and a knight crusader we have enough power to be easily winning going first but yes if they go first its going to be hard thats what makes them glass cannons.

If he has ven dreads odds are they are characters. So to shoot at them you need to clear everything in front of them first. Albeit if you can do that then you have pretty much wiped out his army already so won game.