Hi!

Magnus, your grasp on the Tau and interpretations are very solid.

When this army list was made we had a dedicated group that tested and created it. Alas, I don't know if any of them are still around, its been 10 years or more since then.

I don't play 40k, so I cannot provide any input from that quarter.

If you think I should modify or clarify anything Magnus, Let me know since this army list and the Necrons are two lists are had no part in creating.

Primarch

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Hi Magnus and thanks for your reply, I hop you did not consider my post as a "rant" about previous discussions....I'm sorry for not being more involved in the last years but with 2 daughters of 1 & 3 years old, most of my time and energy is devoted to them.

I will not quote your reply as quotes of quotes of quotes does not make things easy to read.

First, yes, I collect Tau at epic & 40K scale.

OK for your explanation on the Command HQ stand within a standard unit. I did not remember there were some similar situation in the game (despite I play Squats since 20 years and more than 10 years at NetEpic...).

About the Skyray markerlight: for sure, skyray do not need the Turret ability on it's main weapon as it has the AA Ability (that includes the 360° arc of fire). The "problem" is that the skyray marker lights are mounted on the turreted weapon carrying the AA missiles. At the moment, according to markerlight description, it works as a weapon (it has a firing range, a to-hit dice, can be used to snap fire or in fire segments) so I supposed that it also has an arc of fire. There's no problem on infantry/cavalry with marlerlights as those units have a 360° arc of fire from their sizeclass. The only problem is for the Skyray that is the only vehicle with markerlight and I wanted to know if I can use its markerlights to mark fliers ?

About the "AA seeker missiles", I think I should have tried to clarify better my point of view. I think the "AA" as Anti-Aerial for those missiles is not the right term. I think those misiles should be "Air-to-Air" Missiles:
Air-to-Air= Can only target fliers/floaters in 180° front fire arc without penalty.

Third: OK, you're right, I did not look about the chassis but I did not say anything about changing the cost of skyrays. I just compare to others units that have a 100cm AA weapon range and a standard chassis.
I play various armies: IG, SM, Chaos, Necrons, Squats & Taus, I fight against very various armies too and sometimes with a huge number of fliers so when I build my army, when I pick a unit with AA ability, it's for its AA ability, not for the chassis. Most of the army lists have a single dedicated AA unit, you don't have many choice. Dedicated Tau AA Ability unit is the Skyray, with 2 shots at 4+ for the detachment, you can not say that a single or two detachments will protect you from your opponent fliers.
After reading your previous discussion with Peter, I thought you were going to simply remove the possibility from TigerShark & Barracudas to fire their "AA seeker missiles" at flying target, maybe I was wrong ?

Have a nice week-end all

Thanks for the reply, scream, that clears up a few things. Agreed, quotes of quotes of quotes does get difficult to follow after a while. While I don't have children myself, both of my siblings do, so I've seen that effect. No problems there.

Hmm, yes, I guess that Markerlights are a rather weapon-like ability. Somehow I missed seeing that last time I looked. I personally would be fine with allowing the Skyray to use it's Markerlights on Flyers as it has a weapon with a 360 arc of fire, despite being a Vehicle-class model. Further, I'd say that there should be a change to a description specifying that, as otherwise someone will dispute it. Whether the description change should be in the Markerlight entry or the Skyray entry I'm not quite sure. Probably in the Markerlight entry would be best, as then if someone makes a custom vehicle with Markerlights this situation will be covered.

Missiles shooting at Flyers. I agree. The question then is should this be specified in the entries for the Barracuda and Tiger Sharks themselves (saying that they can shoot at Flyers and only at Flyers, thus making them unique to Tau), or should the entry for the limitations for who can shoot at Flyers (in the Core Rules) be modified (to say that any and all Flyers & Floaters can shoot at other Flyers & Floaters without penalty, thus making the change apply across the board). I'd be inclined to change the core rules to allow Flyers & Floaters to target other Flyers and Floaters without penalty.

Gotcha. Well, as they are currently written, neither the Barracuda nor either Tiger Shark are allowed to shoot at other Flyers at all as none of their weapons are Turreted, AA, or otherwise fire 360. Thus there is nothing for me to remove. In actuality I was adding the AA ability to the Barracuda so as to allow them to do so, but as you have pointed out no Flyer should have the AA ability at all as they should not need it. Which I agree with. See the paragraph just above this one for what to do about that.

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Hi!

Just let me know what you two decide as far as wording and changes so I may edit the necessary files.

Primarch

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Thanks for your replies Magnus & Peter.

About the "air-to-air", I remembered that I already read something about it in a codex. After a quite long search, I managed to put my eyes on it It's the Mechanicus Codex, Imperial Dropship profile: it has Air-to-Air and Air-to-Ground weapons.

I agree with you Magnus that changing the Flyer to give them the 360° arc of fire is not the way to go. Floaters already have a 360° arc of fire as per stated in the profile (All-around Firing). Flyers vs Flyers "should" be resolved by Close Combat (I wrote "should" because close combat between flyers is quite rare in battles).

So, if I can resume (unless I misunderstood something):
- Markerlight would gain the 360° arc of fire (you can shoot at fliers with a -1 to-hit penalty if on first fire)
- Barracudas/TigerShark "AA seeker missiles" would become "Air-to Air Seeker Missiles*" with "*Guided missiles, *Air-to-Air" with no penalty to shoot at fliers. It's needed to change their name to avoid just having "Seeker Missiles" because Scorpionfish has a "Seeker Missiles" weapon entry that should not be able to shot at flier.

In addition to all those questions, I had a question about the description broadside smart missiless (page 14):
"Smart Missiles may be fired at any target within 50 cm, as long as any other Tau (not Kroot or allies) unit can see it. This is much like calling in an indirect barrage, except the spotter does not give up the ability to fire."
Does the "much like calling in a indirect barrage" mean that you have to roll the scatter dice when firing at a unit Broadside does not see ?

Hi,

few more things about the current Tau Codex:

1) Pathfinder Snipers seems a bit overcosted at 150 points for 2 sniper stands & 1 devilfish.
Pathfinder Snipers have exactly the same stats as IG Ratling Snipers that costs 100 points for 4 stands so a quick calc Tau Pathfinder Snipers should be ~50 points for 2 stands.
The Transport Devilfish is ~25 points (support devilfish card is 50 for 2 units), even if the Pathfinder Sniper Devilfish gains Infiltrate (as per the standard Pathfinder Devilfish), we could state that for 2 Sniper + 1 Devilfish, cost should not exceed 100 points for the card or 150 points for twice the contents (4 sniper stands & 2 devilfish).

I propose to reduce Tau Pathfinder Snipers card to 100 points, BP 2(3), Morale 3, VP 1(2), Cost 100 (200)

2) Sniper Drone Detachment: it seems weird that the Sniper Drones do not even have the Sniper ability. Maybe the Drone Controller should gain it to be able to mark an HQ stand to allow the sniper drones to shot at it. It will involve adding some text to Sniper Drone description and add Sniper Abilities to Drone Controller.

3) Sha'o Commander card cost is really high at 450 points for 3 Sha'vre + 1 Sha'o.
1 Sha'vre stand cost about 50 points (stats are close to the XV8 Crisis Battlesuit 1) so this brings the Sha'o cost to 350 points...I agree that Sha'o has nice stats but should it costs so much ? I think reducing the cost to 200 points for the Sha'o and 350 points for the whole card would make it closer to reality.
Card entry values should become: Morale 2, VP 4, Cost 350

Thanks for reading

Hi!

Given my inexpereince with the Tau, I have no grounds to disagree with anything you propose.

If no one else has anything to add we'll go with these.

Primarch

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Hi Peter,

as I mentionned previously, I'm building a Tau army and since several monthes I'm really digging in the codex to "debug" it.

Hi Guys,
reading this discussion with growing interest.

I always and from the beginning played it like that, that Flyers ARE able to shoot at other Flyers.

Where in the rules is it written that it´s not allowded?


And yes the Skyray is a weak(er) AA unit

I would welcome, that the AA seeker missiles are prohibited for ground targets and only be used against Flyers/and Floaters

As far as costs based on Gold are concerned, go nuts. Try a few games with the alternate points values and see if they work.

As far as the Points Formula is concerned, a Pathfinder Sniper formation is 153 points (or 229 if focused). A Guard Ratling formation comes out to 266 points. They do not have "exactly" the same stats, as Ratlings are Independent, Ignore Coherency, have a Move or Shoot restriction, and a TSM of 0. The Pathfinder Sniper's weapon has a TSM of -1 Thus while they are similar models, but not identical, the Gold value for the Tau Pathfinder Sniper formation is probably a bit high.

Adding the Sniper ability to Sniper Drones would be an interesting addition. The points formula shows that adding the Sniper ability to the Drone Controller model would increase the cost of the formation by about half. More specifically, without it the cost is 47 and with it the cost is 69. Thus in Gold, the formation should cost either 125 or 150 with the Drone Controller having Sniper.

Yes, the Shas'o formation is expensive as they are strong models. While the Shas'vre is similar to the XV-8s, it is not identical to either of them. In the formula, the XV-8 Mk1 has a model value of 81, the Mk2 is 79, and a Shas'vre is 104. The Shas'o has a value of 297 on it's own. The formation has a total value of 360. How that relates to Gold, I'm not quite sure.

Actually, that brings up a good point. It would be helpful if you were to use the Points Formula values for building a Tau army. Perhaps not your primary army list, but at least a secondary one. The formula values could use some good play-testing.

@ulric: As default, Flyers cannot fire at Flyers. Open the NetEpic Gold Core Rules pdf and go to page 24. This page has the primary rules for Flyers and Floaters. Look at Floater ability 6: Hard Targets. This entry specifies which models may fire at Floaters. Infantry on First Fire and models with the AA ability only. No mention of Flyers. The next column has a few additional rules for Flyers, but otherwise they follow the rules for Floaters. Page 25 has Alternate rules for Floaters. Here there are no restrictions on models that may target Floaters. Page 26 has Alternate rules for Flyers, point 8 "Hard Target" is the entry that specifies which models may fire at Flyers. Note that Flyers are not listed, while Floaters are. Thus Floaters may fire at Flyers (if on First Fire and at -1), but Flyers may not. Unless the Flyer has the AA ability or the new Anti-Air ability, which very few have, it may not fire at other Flyers.

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Thanks Magnus, never interpreted the rule(that I ofcourse know) that way.
I always assumed, that Flyers of course ARE able to shoot at other Flyers, who else?

Thats why the Overlord armoured Airship is IMO one of the best AA units at all, being able to shoot during the FF phase at other flyers:D

So my proposed amendments seems correct ?

- reduce tau sniper pathfinder detachment to 100 points
- add drone controller the sniper ability (can use sniper ability for the sniper drones, but drones will lose the sniper ability)
- reduce Sha'o special card to 350 points instead of 450
- add in the markerlight description that they are 360° "weapons" or at least this could be stated in the Skyray description

I also have some ideas to improve a bit the skyrays, just some ideas thrown there:
- limited missiles: Skyray is equiped with 6 missiles, players could fire 2 missiles per turn if on FF and 1 missile on Advance. Keeping a D6 dice behind the mini to know how many missiles are left.
- extra markerlight: Skyray mini is also equiped with 2 markerlights we could increase the number of markerlight to 2.
With this adjustments, the cost per detachment should be increased to 200 or 250 ?

Hi!

Let me know when a consensus is reach to tag them for future inclusion.

Primarch

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I would not say that your proposals are "correct" as such, but they are interesting.

Reducing the Pathfinder Sniper formation cost is probably fine.
As the Drones themselves do not currently have the Sniper ability, they cannot lose it. Adding it to the Controller should be fine, but the cost of the formation would have to increase as it's power and usefulness is increasing. Probably to either 125 or 150.
The Shas'o formation might be overpriced, but I doubt it. They are powerful models. Still, if you are certain that it is overvalued, perhaps lower it to 400?
As to Markerlights gaining 360 degree fire arcs, that should be fine. For wording, perhaps say that "All models with Markerlights may target other models as if the Markerlights are in Turrets."

I'll have to think about the other two ideas.

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You're right, I don't know why I thought that a Sniper Drone did not have the Sniper ability
125 may be better but the 25 is boring in an army with cards mutilple of 50 (need 2 detachments of sniper drones to be on a multipe of 50).


A fire warrior cadre company costs 500 points. It contains 4 detachments of firewariors (100 each when picked as support), 2 Sha'vre and 1 Sha'el.
As per the company "big card bonus", I considered that there was a reduction of 100 points for the while card, leaving 100 + 100 = 200 points for 2 Sha'vre stands and 1 Sha'el.
I estimaded Sha'vre to 50 points per stand, leaving 100 points for 1 Sha'el.

So from those points, Sha'o Commander Card that contains 3 Sha'vre + 1 Sha'o estimates the Sha'o cost to 300 points (450 - 3*50).
300 points for this single unit is quite high, for 300 points, other armies can pick a small titan or I can get an XV-8 battlesuits detachment for 200 points...
That's why I thought that 200 points for the sha'o would be more reasonable and reducing the card cost to 350 points would be closer to what it should cost.
In conclusion about Sha'o, I say let's try first your proposition of 400 points before going lower.


Or just "Markerlights have a 360° fire arc"