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 Blackie wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
The counter to that is, vehicles also literally could not be wounded by a lot of weapons though.

Yes, and vehicles that used to die to a single heavy bolter/assault cannon it, also. My orky paper things are much tougher now and finally playable after a very long time; before that since 3rd we only had the 5th edition gimmick that provided 4+ to vehicles thanks to the KFF. Otherwise all our vehicles, including the most armored ones used to say goodbye turn 1 or 2 at most with little effort from the opponent.

As someone playing 4th edition against an Ork player, I wish I had the luck of your opponents. 3 AV 14 battlewagons is a lot to suffer from, especially stuffed full of badness like Meganobz.

Well, to be honest for the vast majority of 4th edition orks played with 3rd edition codex, when battlewagons were AV13/12/10 and most importantly 0-1 per army. 4th editon codex dropped a 5-6 months before the release of 5th. But even considering that codex, is it really that difficult to bring down open topped vehicles with AV12 from the side and AV10 from the back? KFF in 4th wasn't as effective as in 5th, when it provided 4+ to all vehicles. IIRC vehicles in cover only gained -1 to the damage table in 4th, not an actual save. Or maybe that was 3rd?

In 5th I played very often with 3 BW with 4+. Still one guaranteed dead wagon per turn. A single lascannon could do it.

It isn't that difficult to damage the side or rear, no. But that isn't happening on the first turn unless he deployed them sideways or something. It is very difficult to get side or rear shots Turn 1. And it only takes a turn or 2 for them to do their job.

In 5th with a 4+ save, a Lascannon hit has about a 3% chance to destroy a BW from the front. To reliably destroy one in a single turn your opponent would need to bring over thirty lascannons and fire them all at the same target and they all have to hit. It only takes about 16 lascannons in 9th.

In 4th with 4th edition's cover system (it can only glance) a Lascannon hit has a 5% chance to destroy a BW, so it would take about 20. Again, into the front.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
So per Goonhammer it looks like they're less than 160 points. That's a steal.

145, 155 with the 2x Accelerator Burst Cannons

This thing is cheaper than a sponsonless Sicaran? Seriously? And a Stormsurge is cheaper than a Cerberus. And the new and improved Wraithknight is probably going to be cheaper than a Baneblade or Fellblade based on its leaked power level. Boy, gw is really hitting a homerun with the balance lately. /s

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
So per Goonhammer it looks like they're less than 160 points. That's a steal.

145, 155 with the 2x Accelerator Burst Cannons

This thing is cheaper than a sponsonless Sicaran? Seriously? And a Stormsurge is cheaper than a Cerberus. And the new and improved Wraithknight is probably going to be cheaper than a Baneblade or Fellblade based on its leaked power level. Boy, gw is really hitting a homerun with the balance lately. /s

It's OK they'll have the itc winners in soon to tell them it's fine to leave their armies alone and never mention the baneblade because it's a "funnies unit".

I'm still shocked no one is bringing up how broken the yvahra battle suit is going to be.

300 points, nova 3d6 s6 -2 1 damage auto hitting, 2cp the weapon ignores invulns

Good by any and all invuln chaff units

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I'm still shocked no one is bringing up how broken the yvahra battle suit is going to be.

300 points, nova 3d6 s6 -2 1 damage auto hitting, 2cp the weapon ignores invulns

Good by any and all invuln chaff units

own no, a 300 point model will kill 8 chaff through their invul save? the horror....

Yeah the Hammerhead is half the points and kills half the models just with it's main gun, no invuln allowed.

The 16 strength 6 shots will kill something like 6 more models, even allowing invulns, which means the hammerhead is half the cost but kills MORE than the Yahvara

Dudeface wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
So per Goonhammer it looks like they're less than 160 points. That's a steal.

145, 155 with the 2x Accelerator Burst Cannons

This thing is cheaper than a sponsonless Sicaran? Seriously? And a Stormsurge is cheaper than a Cerberus. And the new and improved Wraithknight is probably going to be cheaper than a Baneblade or Fellblade based on its leaked power level. Boy, gw is really hitting a homerun with the balance lately. /s

It's OK they'll have the itc winners in soon to tell them it's fine to leave their armies alone and never mention the baneblade because it's a "funnies unit".

Yeah, which is just one of the problems that I have with letting "competitive" players have input on game balance: they'll only be interested in balancing "competitive" units. Anything even remotely obscure will go even further by the wayside. Like gw needed any help with that to begin with.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I'm still shocked no one is bringing up how broken the yvahra battle suit is going to be.

300 points, nova 3d6 s6 -2 1 damage auto hitting, 2cp the weapon ignores invulns

Good by any and all invuln chaff units

Lol the yvahra will be horrible unless it gets a new datasheet.

Quasistellar wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I'm still shocked no one is bringing up how broken the yvahra battle suit is going to be.

300 points, nova 3d6 s6 -2 1 damage auto hitting, 2cp the weapon ignores invulns

Good by any and all invuln chaff units

Lol the yvahra will be horrible unless it gets a new datasheet.

That holds true for most FW units. 2 Hammerheads can outperform my AX-1-0 for fewer points.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I'm still shocked no one is bringing up how broken the yvahra battle suit is going to be.

300 points, nova 3d6 s6 -2 1 damage auto hitting, 2cp the weapon ignores invulns

Good by any and all invuln chaff units

Be glad it's not still the 8th edition version - that was flat damage 3...

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
The counter to that is, vehicles also literally could not be wounded by a lot of weapons though.

Yes, and vehicles that used to die to a single heavy bolter/assault cannon it, also. My orky paper things are much tougher now and finally playable after a very long time; before that since 3rd we only had the 5th edition gimmick that provided 4+ to vehicles thanks to the KFF. Otherwise all our vehicles, including the most armored ones used to say goodbye turn 1 or 2 at most with little effort from the opponent.

As someone playing 4th edition against an Ork player, I wish I had the luck of your opponents. 3 AV 14 battlewagons is a lot to suffer from, especially stuffed full of badness like Meganobz.

Except they weren't AV 14. Even with the 4th edition codex it was AV 14/12/10 and the Side armor was....how can I put this...3x larger than the front armor? So realistically...no, unless you deployed multiple battlewagons next to one another to be able to angle them and protect side armor, there was almost no way you were going to use that AV14 turn 1. More importantly, no matter what side you looked at, in CC it was always AV10 which means SM's with their fists could hurt it, and it was open topped which meant they could theoretically kill it by dumb luck.

Back to Railguns vs Knights though. Its looking more and more like the HH is going to be a glass cannon unit that...believe it or not, functions as a glass cannon. Sadly I think they may have over tuned the cannon portion a bit and left the glass part a little bit too thick. I'm still going to reserve judgement on OP or not until after I see how it interacts with all the other parts of the codex.

My big issue with the HH railgun is that it ignores invulnerables. If it didn't had that I would be completely fine with the rest of the weapon. It is the largest single shot weapon in the game, and it is supposed to do absurd amounts of damage, but the ignore invulerables thing overtuned it.

That being side, a Knight player running into a HH heavy list should get their teeth kicked in, because HH are meant to be the best long range anti-tank in the game.

Its a flying unit with 12+D6 move assuming Mont'ka. Deploy behind LOS blocking terrain, jump out and shoot what you want.

Getting out a markerlight isn't free to be sure - but rerolling 3s to hit, potentially rerolling 2s or 3s to wound for 10-12 damage is nuts versus a whole range of targets.

And then with Mont'ka you can have 16 S6 AP-2 shots rerolling 1s to wound. Okay BS4+ etc, but that's effective versus a lot of stuff too.

Sure 155 points isn't that cheap and there are consequently lots of things that can very efficiently bring this down. But if you get to fire, I think you'd have to be unlucky not to make your points back versus lots of lists I can think of. The only argument I can see is that as the Tau codex looks DE tier pushed other stuff might be even more lethal.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
The counter to that is, vehicles also literally could not be wounded by a lot of weapons though.

Yes, and vehicles that used to die to a single heavy bolter/assault cannon it, also. My orky paper things are much tougher now and finally playable after a very long time; before that since 3rd we only had the 5th edition gimmick that provided 4+ to vehicles thanks to the KFF. Otherwise all our vehicles, including the most armored ones used to say goodbye turn 1 or 2 at most with little effort from the opponent.

As someone playing 4th edition against an Ork player, I wish I had the luck of your opponents. 3 AV 14 battlewagons is a lot to suffer from, especially stuffed full of badness like Meganobz.

Except they weren't AV 14. Even with the 4th edition codex it was AV 14/12/10 and the Side armor was....how can I put this...3x larger than the front armor? So realistically...no, unless you deployed multiple battlewagons next to one another to be able to angle them and protect side armor, there was almost no way you were going to use that AV14 turn 1. More importantly, no matter what side you looked at, in CC it was always AV10 which means SM's with their fists could hurt it, and it was open topped which meant they could theoretically kill it by dumb luck.

My opponent brings 3, and terrain in 4th is very generous with LoS blocking. It is generally possible to hide a BW either between area terrain or with terrain on one side and the board edge on the other.

Furthermore, close combat attacks hit the facing the model was in in 4th, rather than rear armor. One of the reasons I prefer it to 5th.

FYI, the two times LVO and ITC champion shared some hot takes and first impressions about the new Tau codex, a faction he knows decently well
Well, he considers the Hammerhead complete trash. "If you play against a good player, it's useless".

 Aenar wrote:
FYI, the two times LVO and ITC champion shared some hot takes and first impressions about the new Tau codex, a faction he knows decently well
Well, he considers the Hammerhead complete trash. "If you play against a good player, it's useless".

A hot take, indeed. He should amend his comment to "if you play against a good player, and superheavies/monsters/non-obscured big things are not in the meta, it's useless".

The Hammerhead is swingy, and is not hard to kill, but "useless" just felt like he was trying to get clicks, that's just not true.

Feels similar to Nanavati's "buggies won't work" theorising - and then they did.

Typically the best players don't like units which swing hard but occasionally fall on their face due to bad dice. They aim to win in the movement phase. So the assumption here is presumably you'll always keep critical units out of LOS against the HH despite its high M and fly.

Maybe so - but as we know if the stats are skewed enough, 60% of the time, it works every time. The only argument is that there are various other units in this book that potentially stack up even better.

Tyel wrote:
Feels similar to Nanavati's "buggies won't work" theorising - and then they did.

Typically the best players don't like units which swing hard but occasionally fall on their face due to bad dice. They aim to win in the movement phase. So the assumption here is presumably you'll always keep critical units out of LOS against the HH despite its high M and fly.

Maybe so - but as we know if the stats are skewed enough, 60% of the time, it works every time. The only argument is that there are various other units in this book that potentially stack up even better.

Right, I get why a pro player may not like Hammerheads, but objectively, the mathhammer is very, very good. And bringing multiples really amps up the reliability.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 Aenar wrote:
FYI, the two times LVO and ITC champion shared some hot takes and first impressions about the new Tau codex, a faction he knows decently well
Well, he considers the Hammerhead complete trash. "If you play against a good player, it's useless".

A hot take, indeed. He should amend his comment to "if you play against a good player, and superheavies/monsters/non-obscured big things are not in the meta, it's useless".

The Hammerhead is swingy, and is not hard to kill, but "useless" just felt like he was trying to get clicks, that's just not true.

It's the gatekeeper effect.

Jimbo at the local store takes 4 HH and crushes his Knight buddy.
Jimbo shows up at the tournament and faces Siegler and finds out that HH aren't as flexible as he thought.

Does that mean the HH needs a nerf? Not necessarily.

Pushing the HH too much will absolutely make it fall out of the game very quickly. Broadsides are GOOOOOOOOOOOD.

The thing that GW absolutely must address in the Feb dataslate is bodyguards. If you can't shoot Longstrike it's going to be some bs.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
One other point of consideration. HH ( as do Skyrays and Devilfish ) explode 6" and D6. If we still see Alpha Legion explosion strats it could be a risky unit in the back line.

Tau can force an explosion, too, which could make Devilfish a little extra scary.

Or take 1 hammerhead, and either use it for its intended purpose or as bait to get your opponent's heavy hitters into the open so you have an easier time killing them.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tau can force an explosion, too, which could make Devilfish a little extra scary.

I assume you're referencing Failsafe Detonator? That's for Battlesuits only. There is no means that I am aware of to detonate a Vehicle on command.

Sterling191 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tau can force an explosion, too, which could make Devilfish a little extra scary.

I assume you're referencing Failsafe Detonator? That's for Battlesuits only. There is no means that I am aware of to detonate a Vehicle on command.

Ah, thanks. That's good at least!

 Aenar wrote:
FYI, the two times LVO and ITC champion shared some hot takes and first impressions about the new Tau codex, a faction he knows decently well
Well, he considers the Hammerhead complete trash. "If you play against a good player, it's useless".

As already mentioned...yeah top players are absolutely not infallible. My personal favorite is when the top players who don't play orkz often at all try to weigh in as though they are experts. Orkz are a very...unique army. As are Tau to a degree. And playing a lot of Space Marines and Eldar isn't going to help you develop that 6th sense a lot of those diehard players have in regards to those 2 factions.

 Tyran wrote:
My big issue with the HH railgun is that it ignores invulnerables. If it didn't had that I would be completely fine with the rest of the weapon. It is the largest single shot weapon in the game, and it is supposed to do absurd amounts of damage, but the ignore invulerables thing overtuned it.

That being side, a Knight player running into a HH heavy list should get their teeth kicked in, because HH are meant to be the best long range anti-tank in the game.

Yeah I would be fine without that - as a lore nerd it does not just grate but shreds my soul

Time to check back in, 2 top placing Tau armies in a large GT. 1 hammerhead between them. Can we now admit to the overreaction?

Dudeface wrote:
Time to check back in, 2 top placing Tau armies in a large GT. 1 hammerhead between them. Can we now admit to the overreaction?

They don't have time to do that, they are busy overreacting to eldar leaks

Dudeface wrote:
Time to check back in, 2 top placing Tau armies in a large GT. 1 hammerhead between them. Can we now admit to the overreaction?

I'm more interested in seeing if their is a similar tau-outrage mob that demands immediate nerf to the Tau because they did really well in 1 GT.

Dudeface wrote:
Time to check back in, 2 top placing Tau armies in a large GT. 1 hammerhead between them. Can we now admit to the overreaction?

You really don't see how utterly dumb take this is?

"Thing X is better than 99.9% of the units in the game, which means unit Z, better than 99.5% of the units in the game, but skipped thanks to X unit spam, is totes okay and in no way OP". Gee, that's all right then!

Or, maybe, just maybe, people spam unit X instead of Hammerheads because they already have unit X but no HH thanks to WAAAC types ignoring HHs before (and HHs instantly selling out in store once people learned how broken gak it is). Gee, there being no time to buy and paint HHs sure means they are totes okay and in no way OP now!

Or, maybe, just maybe, people don't take HHs because their very threat deleted every single vehicle from the meta the tournament is on and there was little point to taking them. Gee, that also means they are in no way OP!

Want me to continue or you get how laughable your single point of anecdata with zero support behind it is?

 Jidmah wrote:
They don't have time to do that, they are busy overreacting to eldar leaks

Want me to save this post to say 'told you so' 6 months down the line once Eldar beat winrates DE had when their book dropped?

Ah, I forgot, apologists making inane excuses for laughably broken things, especially xeno armies, never cared about stuff like facts, math, or logic, and 6 months down the line they will be pretending they never said that (or ignore reality and still say broken gak is totes OK and in no way strong, see outright clownish lala land takes defending Reapers and quad fusion spam in 8th edition, or Riptide Scatspam in 7th)

Speaking of excuses, what are we on with Eldar, now? I kinda lost track. "Wait for points"? "Let us see all the rules first"? Or is it "It surely isn't as bad as points and rules indicate" already?

 Irbis wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Time to check back in, 2 top placing Tau armies in a large GT. 1 hammerhead between them. Can we now admit to the overreaction?

You really don't see how utterly dumb take this is?

"Thing X is better than 99.9% of the units in the game, which means unit Z, better than 99.5% of the units in the game, but skipped thanks to X unit spam, is totes okay and in no way OP". Gee, that's all right then!

Or, maybe, just maybe, people spam unit X instead of Hammerheads because they already have unit X but no HH thanks to WAAAC types ignoring HHs before (and HHs instantly selling out in store once people learned how broken gak it is). Gee, there being no time to buy and paint HHs sure means they are totes okay and in no way OP now!

Or, maybe, just maybe, people don't take HHs because their very threat deleted every single vehicle from the meta the tournament is on and there was little point to taking them. Gee, that also means they are in no way OP!

Want me to continue or you get how laughable your single point of anecdata with zero support behind it is?

So, this 13 page of woe and doom about how the hammerhead will wreck the game is less anecdotal than actual results, no?

I thought the "wait and see" crowd would wait for like three tournaments