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tneva82 wrote:
Gw wants people to go away from fw to more profitable plastic.

I'm sure the people IN forgeworld don't agree, considering that's their job. And, like, if this were true, then why does forgeworld keep expanding its range? There are, indeed, things forgeworld does that is more profitable for them then citadel plastics.

Sigh. Fw caters mostly to collectors. That's what it was designed. To sell to people who rather than spam op stuff max amount wants to buy one of each cool models regardless of rules.


Those won't buy 10 boxes of op goodness so having fewer kits reduces your purchases from those. Having wide range of kits meanwhile increases.

Have 5 op plastic kit and 0 resin you sell 5 kits.
Have 5 op plastic kit and 5 resin kit you sell 10 kits.

Plastic is too expensive to sell small quantities so having niche units to sell for collectors is not good. Plastic good for selling op stuff for op tryhards though. Resin meanwhile is cheap to do small quanties with less startup price but expensensive to do in large quantities(plastic machine does whole thing automatically. Resin involves manual casting work).

It's simple kinder garden level of logic. Only hard to understand for people for whom sole reason to buy model is level of op'ness of rules.

tneva82 wrote:
Sigh. Fw caters mostly to collectors. That's what it was designed. To sell to people who rather than spam op stuff max amount wants to buy one of each cool models regardless of rules.


Those won't buy 10 boxes of op goodness so having fewer kits reduces your purchases from those. Having wide range of kits meanwhile increases.

Have 5 op plastic kit and 0 resin you sell 5 kits.
Have 5 op plastic kit and 5 resin kit you sell 10 kits.

Plastic is too expensive to sell small quantities so having niche units to sell for collectors is not good. Plastic good for selling op stuff for op tryhards though. Resin meanwhile is cheap to do small quanties with less startup price but expensensive to do in large quantities(plastic machine does whole thing automatically. Resin involves manual casting work).

It's simple kinder garden level of logic. Only hard to understand for people for whom sole reason to buy model is level of op'ness of rules.

So, have you NOT seen the number of people spamming Volkite Contemptors, or are you just being intentionally obtuse?

I haven't seen anyone spamming the original FW model
Most are either the old plastic ones, count as conversion or 3D prints

The railgun only gets one shot, guys. 8/9 to hit (assuming the reroll isn't replacing the BS3 of the current tank), 5/6 to wound (assuming you're shooting a light target), d3+9 damage. That's great for killing transports and dreadnoughts, but that's still only a 74% chance to pop one. Which is a pretty good return if you're shooting a ~100 point raider, since you're making about 50% of your cost back each turn.

But four lascannon devs cost a relatively similar amount and average 7.26 damage (this is with a reroll 1s to hit, but not taking a cherub or signum into account), which is only slightly less. More if you pop both. Yeah, you lose some to invuls or -1 damage, but devs aren't really a hot commodity, are they?. Attack bikes or eradicators, the things people might actually take, are pumping out 6-8 melta shots a turn, and that's significantly more damage (and no contest at 12").

So the hammerhead has range on it's side, but it's not a new height in raw damage. It's just "good-ish" damage in a super lethal game, with a few tricks tacked on.

People are unnecessarily losing their minds over the hammerhead.

All of your models don't have to start on the table with strategic reserves alone.

It has a 72" range, but 9th is the most terrain dense edition.

It doesn't ignore LoS

All of it's damage is tied up one to hit roll with the following up so for to wound roll so it's "a lot of damage and ignores saves". There are a variety of 200pt and less units on the game that put out this same or more damage already, yes you get to roll some saves but due to weight of dice the average result is still you taking 10-12 wounds, which a HH with railgun is only going to do if it hits and wounds and you have no feel no pain type saves versus wounds and or mortal wounds.

It's good, but this isn't changing the meta.

 Trimarius wrote:
The railgun only gets one shot, guys. 8/9 to hit (assuming the reroll isn't replacing the BS3 of the current tank), 5/6 to wound (assuming you're shooting a light target), d3+9 damage. That's great for killing transports and dreadnoughts, but that's still only a 74% chance to pop one. Which is a pretty good return if you're shooting a ~100 point raider, since you're making about 50% of your cost back each turn.

But four lascannon devs cost a relatively similar amount and average 7.26 damage (this is with a reroll 1s to hit, but not taking a cherub or signum into account), which is only slightly less. More if you pop both. Yeah, you lose some to invuls or -1 damage, but devs aren't really a hot commodity, are they?. Attack bikes or eradicators, the things people might actually take, are pumping out 6-8 melta shots a turn, and that's significantly more damage (and no contest at 12").

So the hammerhead has range on it's side, but it's not a new height in raw damage. It's just "good-ish" damage in a super lethal game, with a few tricks tacked on.

Yet again, I care little for how good it is at killing a Rhino. Lots of weapons do that well. I'm more interested in its ability to hurt Dreadknights, Daemon Primarchs, Hive Tyrants or anything else with a lot of wounds an an invul save.

People are very fearful whenever a pure shooty army gets a new codex. Rightfully so, as GW may accidentally create an army that can alpha strike you similar to Adeptus Mechanicus. Players do not want to lose on turn 1 and when you see a weapon profile like the railgun people start to believe that they have created a codex that has all the tools to alpha strike. I need more than just one weapon profile to hit the panic button, I need to see point cost.

I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.

I'm not sure they will need more than 4 of them.

We don't have a complete picture yet, the leaks/reveals to look out for are 9th edition FTGG, Tau Sept/FSE (2 previously strongest sub factions) and Riptides.

Nearly every Tau player has Riptides and most are probably built with Heavy Burst Cannons and they were an 8th edition staple. A common view is GW likes a good bit of churn between editions, what was good is now bad and what was bad is now good, so this should be one of the weaker weapons. But, if we see the new stats and they look good we know Fishy AdMech are here.

I think Mont'ka and airbusting fragmentation projectors are very scary. 2d6x9 str 4 ap 2 re-rolling 1 to wound ignoring line of sight, or the new flamers that can do something similar but auto-hit and they can auto-hit in combat. Who charges into 18d6+36 str 4 ap 1 hits? Then next turn they can shoot you with the flamers in combat. From what few rumors I know the railgun is the least of my concern.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.

They can't squadron now and I don't see why that would change.
Same with multiple shots.

 Ordana wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.

They can't squadron now and I don't see why that would change.
Same with multiple shots.

Wasn't there a Relic Railgun that gave them 2 shots?

 Ordana wrote:

 Trimarius wrote:
The railgun only gets one shot, guys. 8/9 to hit (assuming the reroll isn't replacing the BS3 of the current tank), 5/6 to wound (assuming you're shooting a light target), d3+9 damage. That's great for killing transports and dreadnoughts, but that's still only a 74% chance to pop one. Which is a pretty good return if you're shooting a ~100 point raider, since you're making about 50% of your cost back each turn.

But four lascannon devs cost a relatively similar amount and average 7.26 damage (this is with a reroll 1s to hit, but not taking a cherub or signum into account), which is only slightly less. More if you pop both. Yeah, you lose some to invuls or -1 damage, but devs aren't really a hot commodity, are they?. Attack bikes or eradicators, the things people might actually take, are pumping out 6-8 melta shots a turn, and that's significantly more damage (and no contest at 12").

So the hammerhead has range on it's side, but it's not a new height in raw damage. It's just "good-ish" damage in a super lethal game, with a few tricks tacked on.

Yet again, I care little for how good it is at killing a Rhino. Lots of weapons do that well. I'm more interested in its ability to hurt Dreadknights, Daemon Primarchs, Hive Tyrants or anything else with a lot of wounds an an invul save.

A railgun does just under 4 damage to Morty. So five of them (750-1000 points, depending on if the cost increases) is required to off him in one go and they're still rocking somewhere in the 50% to 66% return. Almost exactly the same points/shot return against a Hive Tyrant, with an average of 8.15 damage (and a 1/4 chance to one shot it). A little better than bikes, but rather worse than eradicators in short range (and about even at 24") against the tyrant. Morty, with his -1Damage ability, is a worse target for the multi-shot folks, as you would imagine, but is still taking 3.1 or 4.9 damage from some eradicators.

Dreadknights are even worse targets for the railgun, as they're wounded on the same 2+ as the Tyrant, but have an extra wound (so no chance of a one shot kill) and a 5++ against the mortals.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.

They can't squadron now and I don't see why that would change.
Same with multiple shots.

Wasn't there a Relic Railgun that gave them 2 shots?

There is yeah, forgot about that one. But have PA 'relics but not really' carried over to 9th codexes?

Let's look at the rest of the Tau codex before we jump to the conclusion this is op. I love the memes coming out from this though.

If this comes out and doesn't shake the meta. GW might come to the realisation that single shot high damage weapons on vehicles are too weak and accordingly buff all the rest of such vehicles, or lower their cost. I wouldn't mind further buffs or point reductions to Predator tanks, Land Raiders, CSM Daemon Engines, etc.

The problem is not that it might be OP, but that it is a big design change again

We got invulnerable saves to help with AP and mortal wounds to counter them
Now we have ignore invulnerable saves and will get something to counter that

Back to game design of 7th Edition and GW learned nothing from their past mistakes

 kodos wrote:
The problem is not that it might be OP, but that it is a big design change again

We got invulnerable saves to help with AP and mortal wounds to counter them
Now we have ignore invulnerable saves and will get something to counter that

Back to game design of 7th Edition and GW learned nothing from their past mistakes

The real issue is a bloat of special rules. Railgun is nothing new, it's the same design than V9 of 40k.

Seen more of inv saving high damage weapons in previous codexes then? Show one in marine/sob/necron codex then

tneva82 wrote:
Seen more of inv saving high damage weapons in previous codexes then? Show one in marine/sob/necron codex then

I mean, it's not a weapon but Null Zone is a thing that exists in the Marines book.

Turns off Invulnerable Saves within 6" of the Librarian if manifested.

 Kanluwen wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Seen more of inv saving high damage weapons in previous codexes then? Show one in marine/sob/necron codex then

I mean, it's not a weapon but Null Zone is a thing that exists in the Marines book.

Turns off Invulnerable Saves within 6" of the Librarian if manifested.

So no then

To be fair?
If those books have other ways of doing it via Psyker abilities, Miracles, or whatever...do they need guns that do it for them?

 Kanluwen wrote:
To be fair?
If those books have other ways of doing it via Psyker abilities, Miracles, or whatever...do they need guns that do it for them?

I thin a gun being able to ignore from 72" range is a bit different to having to get a character model within 6" of the target.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
To be fair?
If those books have other ways of doing it via Psyker abilities, Miracles, or whatever...do they need guns that do it for them?

I thin a gun being able to ignore from 72" range is a bit different to having to get a character model within 6" of the target.

A psyker character.

As in an entire phase worth of things that Tau don't have...

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
To be fair?
If those books have other ways of doing it via Psyker abilities, Miracles, or whatever...do they need guns that do it for them?

I thin a gun being able to ignore from 72" range is a bit different to having to get a character model within 6" of the target.

A psyker character.

As in an entire phase worth of things that Tau don't have...

Neither do Drukhari, yet dark eldar have survived 3 nerfs with a 60+ percent winrate.

I love the argument that not having Psychic powers or Melee justifies an army needing to be 3x as lethal in the shooting phase to make up for it.
Most armies that have Psychic powers and Melee do very little actual damage in those phases compared to their shooting phase. Eldar and Marines for example will only have a couple Characters with powers, often just buffs or a damage spell or 2, and will almost Never have more Melee than Shooting (GK potentially being the exception)

The fact is, shooting is and always will be the most powerful phase in 40k. And T'au, not having melee or psychic powers, will always come with more passive buffs to said phase because of that.
So it is understandable that people would freak out when they see a powerful weapon like the Railgun than ignores just about all defenses their big important units have against shooting.
Especially when we know that won't be the only weapon like it, nor the most powerful one in their army.

At least it seems GW is moving in the right direction for single shot weapons that have always struggled to reliably damage the targets they were designed against. D6 damage was always too unreliable and I like that they are adding weapons like D3+3, etc.
D3+6 ignore invuls with 3MWs is just a bit...egregious.
I think D6+3 ignore invuls would have been more palatable, with D3 MWs

-

Literally nobody has said that psychic is a super damaging phase.

It's always been home to heavy buffs/debuffs...and it's effectively always been a requirement to have something to counterplay them. Tau don't have that.

I could understand the problem with the railgun if these things were squadroned or if the submunitions was in addition to instead of or whatever. As it stands? It's strong. There's no arguing that.

But until we see if the Hammerhead can move and fire the railgun, until we see that it has Fly(it probably won't), until we see that it has a Grinding Advance or any number of factors I hesitate to call it the gamebreaking thing people are making it out to be.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Literally nobody has said that psychic is a super damaging phase.

It's always been home to heavy buffs/debuffs...and it's effectively always been a requirement to have something to counterplay them. Tau don't have that.

I could understand the problem with the railgun if these things were squadroned or if the submunitions was in addition to instead of or whatever. As it stands? It's strong. There's no arguing that.

But until we see if the Hammerhead can move and fire the railgun, until we see that it has Fly(it probably won't), until we see that it has a Grinding Advance or any number of factors I hesitate to call it the gamebreaking thing people are making it out to be.

Every army is home to tons of buffs, and what, really, is the difference between casting a spell for a buff and shooting a markerlight for a buff?

The Markerlight can be affected by more modifiers than the spell for one thing?

There are some units that can't be hit outside of a certain range, some units with negative modifiers to be hit, line of sight's a thing, etc.

Looks like we have some leaks via a Q&A from someone with an early codex on the Tau Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tau40K/comments/s3dafd/dynamic_entry/