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Now that we have all had some time to use them quite a bit, what do you all think of them? I find that they end up underperforming as far as killing things for the points but they are good harassing units that draw fire away from my firewarriors/crisis suits.

I've only played against them, but they are a good distraction unit in Mech Tau forces.  If they move fast up the flank and are armed with fusion guns.  They are a target that cannot be ignored, thus drawing fire away from the rest of the vehicles.  If they can bag a tank they are worth it, but as you've said they attract a lot of fire.  I still think they are one of the best light skimmers in the game.  Its also a good way to get a few annoying suicide drones buzzing around.

They completly lack firepower when compared to other fast gunships such as land speeders or vipers.
However, they are immune to all small arms fire (with the expection of pulse fire) making them the most annoying of all light vehicles. With front armor 11 they are suprisingly hard to take down. If you take a vehicle heavy force then they are impossible to kill as most anti tank weapons will be aimed at the other, more dangerous vehicles.
If they are the only vehicles you have on the table they will drop quickly if you cant keep them out of LOS.

I personally love them. They make great objective grabbers, kill tanks so my tanks can spend their days shooting troops, force lots and lots of target priority tests, and generally annoy the hell out of my oponent.

I notice the word "annoying" is in every post so far. There's some value in annoyance.

I think they're stronger against traditional heavy-tread tank armies than skimmer armies, where their extra penetration is irrelevant. Also against armies with a wealth of str 6-7 firepower (Eldar, Guard) they are necessarily weaker. But they're a good value compared to, say, Eldar vypers, but slightly less so than SM speeders.

In exactly 3 games where I had to deal with them as the opponent, I found them to be generally easy VPs, but not ignorable.

I think that as high rof mid-strength weapons increase in numbers to deal with mechanized Eldar, piranahs (and mech tau in general...) will become less viable because there is so much out there that will stun/shake them so often that they won't be able to do what they want. I play mechanized guard and I pack 13 heavy bolters and 7 multi lasers on vehicles. That's a world of hurt for an AV 11 skimmer.
cheers

as a mech-tau player i see thier usefullness in adding more anti-tank into a FOF list hammerheads are nice but mech-tau tend to be more anti infantry than anti-vehicle in my experience.

 

 

personally i would love to take a TX42 advanced prihana from FW as a tank bust with the twin linked fusion balster hitting on 3s ...oh and front & side av of 11 is nice to unfortunately it still counts as opened topped