As I suggested earlier, while it is the best way to treat Markerlight, following the same principles as for cover still gives issues. (The principle being that the entire formation declares whether it is shooting at Markerlit targets or not).

1) Where part of the target formation is in cover, you now have to decide whether to shoot at targets in-cover or out-of-cover, Markerlit or not-markerlit with the relevant bonuses and deductions etc.

2) Most Tau vehicles with GMs also have Railcannon or other weapons that do not benefit from Markerlight, so some dice get bonuses while others don't, and you have some weapons that do not require LoS while others do on top of the skimmer visibility rules.

All in all, this just makes these formations horribly complex to shoot with and thus likely to slow the game down quite apart from not necessarily being 'fun' to play against.

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So perhaps for simplicity's sake we should change the rule to make the formation markerlit rather than individual units?

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Actually, I like to see what other peoples opinions and interpretations of the rules are, and I dont always have the absolute answer either.  

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What save does a deflector shield provide against lance weaponry?

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Not when combined with losing the turrets and GMs losing the unguided firing mode.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Because that is the case in the background, in both versions of the 40k list and the FW epic list.

It's also a neat ballancing move making ML more important, thus making the Tau player have to move more. Combined with the ability to ML whole formations at a time, ML becomes key to the list.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

In the background and all other rules versions for guided missiles they can only ever be fired when markerlit. Why is this list different?

+1 to hit is good, but currently not worth sacrificing units for. Make ML essential for GMs and the tau player won't be able to sit back in a bloody gunline anymore.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

From what others have presented, the Tau should be 'best' at medium range shooting and FF style assaults, so I strongly believe this emphasis on the use of Markerlight to permit 'long-range' shooting is the way to go, requiring the use of LVs and forward positioned troops to set up the relevant Markerlight zones which can then be hit by the supporting vehicles.

Currently GMs can still be fired 'unguided' at 75cms range which seems wrong, so to add to Zombo's suggestion, we would need to prevent GMs from firing unless Markerlit (in practice this would mean that GMs could always be fired if within 30cms of the unit as they all carry markerlight). Further possible restrictions would be to require the Markerlight formation to be unbroken for Markerlight to work, and/or to remove Markerlight from most of the vehicles carrying the GMs.

Treating the entire formation as markerlit is then a reasonable compromise. Equally, if we require GMs to be 'Markerlit' to fire them, then the stats should have the Markerlight bonus built in.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Percisely my reasoning.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Whilst I understand the reasoning behind your suggestion zombocom, it's not a very practical solution.
What would the Stingrays (yes I know they have their own Markerlight but at 30cm range they will not last long) and Scorpionfish do once all the Markerlight units are destroyed/broken (an obvious tactic...), use harsh language?

You cannot have hundreds of points worth of units that could be unusable with the removal of the spotter formations.
Is there a precident for that in any other list (genuine question)?

Keeping the present rules is much more prefferable/playable to this suggestion.

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