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Ap-6 and ignore invulnerables, high damage as well as causing 3 mortal wounds?

What on is there in the game that gets a save against that? The reason why I'm asking is because they could have just made it dish out mortal wounds instead rather than unnecessary rules and bloat to say it ignores invuls etc.

Anyway, this is a massive issue of codex creep, yet again. I actually am not bothered by the amount of damage it can cause objectively, it should be able to comfortably one shot a rhino.

I am bothered that this is a huge leap in damage dealing potential halfway through the edition when nothing else in any codex is even close to this.

10 minimum damage after a hit and a wound.

I also really dislike how they are just throwing around invulnerable save ignoring weapons again now. This should be on 1 or 2 units in the whole game (not counting methods to cause mortal wounds). If invulnerable saves are such an issue that there must be multiple means to ignore them then there should be less invulnerable saves.

Hankovitch wrote:

 oni wrote:

It seems like this one weapon is going to place an extreme amount of importance on getting 1st turn.

It has Fly, doesn't it? The Tau player can put it anywhere out of LOS, and then not have to worry about getting into optimal firing position whether they go first or second.

I'm willing to bet that FLY has been removed for many the same reasons it was removed from the SM Repulsor and Repulsor Executioner.

I'm hoping that the Hammerhead is BS4 and has an innate rule that gives it -1 To Hit if it moves.

My Necron codex continues to cry in the corner. Tau gun does minimum 10 damage. Nightbringer a shard of the death god does somewhere between 1 and 6 depending on how lucky you are.

Every codex just leaves me wondering WTF they were thinking when they wrote the Necron book.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

I am bothered that this is a huge leap in damage dealing potential halfway through the edition when nothing else in any codex is even close to this.

Nonsense, tons of stuff can do this kind of damage just not typically in one single shot and only shot. A bunch of units can do more damage in CC than the hammerhead.

Tau being an army without any high damage melee units instead have so far one unpointed unit that is pretty fragile that can keep up with stuff like knights on damage output at range.

Save the salt for whatever broadsides become.

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
My Necron codex continues to cry in the corner. Tau gun does minimum 10 damage. Nightbringer a shard of the death god does somewhere between 1 and 6 depending on how lucky you are.

Every codex just leaves me wondering WTF they were thinking when they wrote the Necron book.

The curse of a start of edition book.

Does the broadsides use the same railgun?

Bc I got 6 of them. But no hammerhead.

 triplegrim wrote:
Does the broadsides use the same railgun?

Bc I got 6 of them. But no hammerhead.

Slightly weaker gun. So maybe d3+3 with 1MW or something.
But on a much more durable platform. And you get up to 9.

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
My Necron codex continues to cry in the corner. Tau gun does minimum 10 damage. Nightbringer a shard of the death god does somewhere between 1 and 6 depending on how lucky you are.

Every codex just leaves me wondering WTF they were thinking when they wrote the Necron book.

Nightbringer takes max 3 damage for phase. Nightbringer laughs at tau.

 triplegrim wrote:
Does the broadsides use the same railgun?

No, it has a rail rifle IIRC. But don't forget:

The railgun is not the only big hitter getting a major update in the new Codex: T’au Empire – would you believe it isn’t even the strongest weapon in their arsenal?

 BrotherGecko wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

I am bothered that this is a huge leap in damage dealing potential halfway through the edition when nothing else in any codex is even close to this.

Nonsense, tons of stuff can do this kind of damage just not typically in one single shot and only shot. A bunch of units can do more damage in CC than the hammerhead.

Tau being an army without any high damage melee units instead have so far one unpointed unit that is pretty fragile that can keep up with stuff like knights on damage output at range.

Save the salt for whatever broadsides become.

This. The Tau get crap for melee while other armies roll in with jet packs and thunderhammers getting 2 full rounds of close combat per turn.

Is it a hard counter to Imperial Knights? Maybe? If Hammerheads are still T7 W13 with no invulnerable save, knights will tear down Hammerheads faster than the Hammerheads can kill off knights. And when the new Knight codex drops it'll get counters to deal with this like half-damage strats and saves against mortal wounds.

But salt is gonna flow for sure.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Ap-6 and ignore invulnerables, high damage as well as causing 3 mortal wounds?

What on is there in the game that gets a save against that? The reason why I'm asking is because they could have just made it dish out mortal wounds instead rather than unnecessary rules and bloat to say it ignores invuls etc.

Anything with a 2+ save, a Stormshield equivalent, and cover.
On a 6+
Oh and wound-shrugs don’t care either.

So it's a not-so-invulnerable save now, eh?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
9th ed is just:

Buff units' defenses -> nobody can kill anything -> buff units' offense -> everything dies too fast -> buff units' defenses...

All done with an ever-increasing stack of special rules on every unit.

tneva82 wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
My Necron codex continues to cry in the corner. Tau gun does minimum 10 damage. Nightbringer a shard of the death god does somewhere between 1 and 6 depending on how lucky you are.

Every codex just leaves me wondering WTF they were thinking when they wrote the Necron book.

Nightbringer takes max 3 damage for phase. Nightbringer laughs at tau.

Tau will get a weapon which does damage beyond the X wounds per phase limit. Tau will get a weapon which will instant kill anything. You hit, you wound, target is removed from play.

tneva82 wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
My Necron codex continues to cry in the corner. Tau gun does minimum 10 damage. Nightbringer a shard of the death god does somewhere between 1 and 6 depending on how lucky you are.

Every codex just leaves me wondering WTF they were thinking when they wrote the Necron book.

Nightbringer takes max 3 damage for phase. Nightbringer laughs at tau.

But its not just the NB. Necrons guns are either D:1 or D: lol spin the wheel and find out! I don't criticise GW much for their rules writing because 40k can never be perfectly balanced but its like the folks writing the Necron COdex and the folks writing say the drukhari and Ad-Mech (and now Tau) codexes just never spoke to each other or anything. I mean how hard is it to say 'Look, maybe we shouldn't give so much random damage because some of the later codexes we are working on don't have it'. Why did GW even think that random damage was a good idea? I mean really the idea that a lascannon might only do 1 damage is laughable really.

wich is exactly the point why people criticize their rules writing, not because there must be perfect balance, but because they need to start to play their own game and talk to each other while doing that

and not just writing every crazy idea into a book and let people pay to playtest it

but as long as people like pay to playtest, why should they change it

They've never really grasped the idea that the entire edition (and all the books) needs to be treated as a whole and given constraints and limitations. Too often, the army books seem like a competition between egos, and one author has to 'surpass' the previous author, all at the expense of the game as a whole.

I don't think they've ever heard of design documents (or at least not doing them in advance).

Wonderful, this sounds like a ton of fun to play against

I am pleased that something other than stupid suits is getting something but yeah....thats not going to be fun.

High Damage and AP - all good. Ignore Invulns - hmm no.

So Basically Tau with a hammerhead can, with a single vehicle, destroy morty in two turns.

Tau bring some of these guys vs knights and it's not even a game is it?

Voss wrote:
They've never really grasped the idea that the entire edition (and all the books) needs to be treated as a whole and given constraints and limitations. Too often, the army books seem like a competition between egos, and one author has to 'surpass' the previous author, all that the expense of the game as a whole.

I don't think they've ever heard of design documents.

The sad part is they supposedly tested all the codexes with the play testers whilst writing the edition so they did write them together initially. The sadder part is they clearly didn't listen to the feedback - evidence abounds in the codexes we now have sight of and the play testers have also said as much publicly.

The railgun is bonkers and I hate almost everything about it. Reading the article I was thinking, is it April 1st already?

Strength 14, fine. AP -6, fine. Everything else, bonkers. Some amount of special sauce is fine, but ignoring invulnerable saves, dealing additional mortal wounds and having a high damage profile is just too much. It reads like the profile for and Eldar distortion weapon mounted on a super heavy chassis.

Can't wait to see what the stormsurge can do

Doohicky wrote:
So Basically Tau with a hammerhead can, with a single vehicle, destroy morty in two turns.

Tau bring some of these guys vs knights and it's not even a game is it?

It takes three Hammerheads to kill Morty in 2 turns, 80% of the time. It also takes three Hammerheads to kill a single Knight in a turn, ignoring hit and wound calcs. Given what's returning fire, the Knights almost certainly will trade up.

 BertBert wrote:
Can't wait to see what the stormsurge can do

That's the Lord of War, right? It'll follow the Mork(Gork)anauts and Monoliths into the bin and be worse.

It'll be (once again) Riptide o'clock.

Maybe the Sun Shark, too, if anyone can convince opponents of what the bombs' rules are (I'm envisioning an entire word salad at this point).

 Laughing Man wrote:

Doohicky wrote:
So Basically Tau with a hammerhead can, with a single vehicle, destroy morty in two turns.

Tau bring some of these guys vs knights and it's not even a game is it?

It takes three Hammerheads to kill Morty in 2 turns, 80% of the time. It also takes three Hammerheads to kill a single Knight in a turn, ignoring hit and wound calcs. Given what's returning fire, the Knights almost certainly will trade up.

Hammerheads, unless they get a big stat upgrade, are going to be glass cannons. You'll get one shot and then die. And who knows what the point cost on that gun will jump to.

So just plugging some stuff quickly into a simple mathhammer calc.

A hammerhead with a railgun, rerolling its shot does on average 5.5 damage to a knight. 50% of the time, even re-rolling hits, it will do nothing.

My leman russ demolishers will do 5.4 damage (with grinding advance) to a knight, with a much less swingy range of outcomes. (Thats with no re-rolls, regular russ.

Now the 24inch vs 72inch is a huge difference, and I don't know the rules for marker lights. But I could stick 3 multimeltas on my russ and average 9 damage a turn at 24 inch range, so it really would be a question of how many points is a hammerhead + railgun.

I think people are forgetting how good a one shot weapon needs to be to make it worthwhile, especially as the primary gun on the tank.

Obviously theres lot of strats, other units, combos that could make tau crazy overpowered, but the stats on this gun don't particularly scare me.

EDIT: Didn't realise the tanks hit on a 3+, was corrected below. Changes the maths a bit, but not enough to make me worried

Brad Gamma wrote:
So just plugging some stuff quickly into a simple mathhammer calc.

A hammerhead with a railgun, rerolling its shot does on average 5.5 damage to a knight. 50% of the time, even re-rolling hits, it will do nothing.

Doesn't it do D3+6 plus 3 Mortal Wounds if it wounds?

 Mr Morden wrote:


Doesn't it do D3+6 plus 3 Mortal Wounds if it wounds?

Yes a wounding shot will do 11 wounds on average, but only 75% of shots will hit (4+ with re-roll) and 33.3% of that will fail to wound, so on average it will do 5.5 damage.

You end up with

50% of doing nothing
16.7% chance of doing 10 damage
16.7% chance of doing 11 damage
16.7% chance of doing 12 damage

EDIT: Apologies they hit on a 3+, this is all wrong! Still not super worried.

Don’t they hit on a 3+?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Don’t they hit on a 3+?

Whoops, you are correct sir. i'll edit posts to say i was wrong.

So only like... a 40% chance of doing nothing

 JNAProductions wrote:
Don’t they hit on a 3+?

Currently:

Hammerheads hit on 3+

Longstrike also gives them +1 to hit

Longstrike hits on 2+ natively with +1 to wound rolls, for basically 2+/2+ before rerolls.

Some of those rules may have since changed of course.

More worryingly is how many other units have access to railguns that ignore invulns. Can Broadsides also do it with a bit less damage? What about Tidewalls or any FW units whose weapons get adjusted in line with the codex?

One shot can be quite swingy and unreliable. 10+ shots alongside getting first turn is a whole different situation.