Well, the Tetra is 15cm faster than the Sentinel, has skimmer instead of walker (We'll call that even), but also coordinated fire and markerlights. Oh and it has 5+ armour instead of 6+, and SR3 instead of SR2.

Assuming you don't want to be shooting at anything (Neither formation has that as part of their mission profile) then the Tetras are superior.

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Would it be worth trying to squeeze in one formation of Hammerheads to utilise their Skimmer ability....this would have to give some advantage over Broadsides in some circumstances....

Thanks for the report and follow up discussion.

I may have missed this with the sheer amount of pages devoted to Tau. I'm not sure how it is in 6.3, can't find those rules, but is there a reason the Recon formation is 6 choose your own instead of hard-locked to the pack size of 2 Piranha and 3 Tetra?

They're not officially released yet. However the army developer Honda has let us know what changes will be in there.


FW used to do the packs in 6's for one thing.

For another, I guess the free choice is just because that's what the players demanded.

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I completely agree. It's why I don't think the points drop is the way to go and a bit of a cop-out because we couldn't decide on a decent weapon upgrade. HHs are still average anti armour vehicles (only good for killing 5+ armour with regularity), when the fluff (and the mission staement - shooty death etc)clearly seems otherwise.


Completely agreed.


Skimmer is a fairly over rated ability nowadays due to the rules. It's far weaker than it used to be. In fact in terms of your question it really doesn't give much advantage at all (apart from speed) and taking non-RA as opposed to RA in a shooting fight with armour is a bit of a negative IMO.

The problem is that upping the power of the railguns solves nothing, as broadsides are armed with a twin version of the same weapon. Whatever the stats of the railgun, there'll be an internal balance issue between the HH and BS.

Relevant question here i'd think, but why is the Skyray 100 bloody points? Is it because of the Markerlight? the closest analogue I've found to it is the Ork Flakwagon, which has same speed and armour, better FF and CC, and looses slightly on the shooting, but comes in at a whopping 35 points. I'd give 15 to the Skyray for it's better shooting and skimmer (I'd honestly prefer the Flak's transport though), but is the ML really worth that extra 50? Seeing as how the only two formations that can take it are the Hammerhead and Firewarrior Cadre, would it be possible to encourage HH use by encouraging Skyrays? Or have they been abused some way before?

Not sure I understand your analogy. Skyray has twice the AA firepower, and approximately four times the coverage (11309cm^2 vs 2827cm^2). That's a fairly significant difference.

The Markerlight issue in addition is fairly significant, as a Skyray is the cheapest ML upgrade (Pathfinders are 175). Which has a big impact on the usefulness of the formation, rather than Markerlights in a separate formation.

Morgan Vening

It could solve everything. The HH is just meh. Better gun equals better tank and price remains 250 - simple. A name change and a design note about targeting etc etc perhaps to explain the difference...bingo. Weapons are the easiest thing to adjust in this game. If we didn't stick so rigidly to things for the sake of doing so, army lists might actually get finished and with a lot less to-and-fro.

Well there goes that idea then. And Dobbsy does have a point. Formations are build using the 'standard' loadout of wargear for each unit, right? With the addition of Drones for those that can use them. But, much as I'd hate to say it, in 40k, the Hammerheads are standard BS4, with Broadsides BS3, twinlinked. Unfortunatley, I'm pretty sure this has been pointed out sometime previous, and if it hasn't made it into the list by now, I doubt a change reflecting it ever will.

Epic doesn't really "do" Ballistic skill, for example, a Marine Lascannon and an IG Lascannon has the same AT5+ to-hit stat.

Dobbsy: why not do a playtest or two with your ideas for modifications and post the reports?

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Yeah will do E&C. I'm hoping to start getting some games in soon.

Correct. Even my WhES doesn't use the BS. The expection are really poor BS (2 and less) which give a -1 to hit on all non-Ordnance weapons (only Orks [but not Grots] and Tau Drones have BS 2).

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Still at 150 points Recon are the same points per base as FW's with worse stats but better abilities which feels about right in the context of the list. I think the comparison with Sentinels demonstrates that Sentinels are overpriced and IG players pay a surcharge for them.