I do not agree with your comparison to Russes. Russes are much more hampered by movement and range. russes full weapon load comes to play within 30 cm, and full AT is 45 cm. Russ companies often struggle all game to fire at something worthwhile and only shine firing at mixed formations.

HHs range and pop-up abilities make them much more protected than the armour save suggests. also, a good Tau player has a lot of markerlight options, making it almost a non-issue until late game. I have never seen HH fire without ML.

HH is a dedicated AT formation, cheaper than a Russ company with better long-range AT/model. Russ companies are a points-sink which forces you to build the rest of the army for russ synergy. HH is not. As a result, I see more HH formations than I see russ companies in play.

the perceived problem is all those AT attacks bouncing off RA. to some extent, I can understand it, but let us remember that this is what RA is for. the cure for RA, unless you have pointy ears, is crossfire and MW. MW generally comes with shorter range or CC. these antidotes make sure that Epic is about movement. giving HH disrupt sniper or lance would make Tau excel at taking out RA from a great distance. I could see lots of potential Broadside and HH abuse protected by fire warriors. If it was considered, I'd say a substantial cost increase would be warranted, and most importantly, is this a tau army we want to play? A rail gunline?

/Fredmans

Also sniper is not *always* better than lance, against 4+ RA, lance drops it to a single 4+ save, sniper gives 5+ RA which is slightly better..... in fact lance is better vs RA in every case, sniper shines vs non reinforced armour though

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No, sniper is equal against 5+ RA and better against 6+, and against 4+ the difference is minimal (44% vs 50% kill chance) - AND sniper gets to pick off the commissar and vanquisher.

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Yeah my maths was off there, still in the overwhelming majority of cases (4/5+ RA) lance is either as good or better, given the relative rarity of 3/6+ RA stuff

agreed on sniper being able to choose target being a nice bonus which I didn't consider

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I think the Ion Cannon HH could do with a boost (AP3+ maybe) but the Railgun one seems fine as is to me.

Yeah, I think I have to agree with this. On balance they seem ok, particularly when seen from the point of view 5ed and before 40k and the comparison with broadsides. If the list was to be updated to match 6ed 40k the railgun stats between these two units may well be reversed with broadsides taking a better multiple shot weapon to represent high yield missile pods.

I don't think a change is necessary but maybe the change in fluff helps explain why people feel they underperform, at least recently?

Ion cannons probably need a buff, it's a bit rough simply having an inverted target focus but reduced range. Either AP3+ or two shots at AP5+ AT6+ to increase their possible hit rate without changing the current chance to hit too much?

If I was hunting Russ, I'd probably be using the Fusion Hammerhead, not the Railgun one. the Railgun is great against light vehicles and regular AV, against RA and War Engines, I'd be using the gun with MW.

Much the same way as I look at Vultures and go "nope, not shooting at Land Raiders with those. those are for Rhinoes and Whirlwinds."

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It's funny, with all the arguments for "it's a tank hunting unit" etc I've never really seen that in all the games I've played. I've stated on more than one occasion that the Rail Hammerhead, as it stands, is not a tank hunter - it should be- but it's just not. It's an APC hunter. It absolutely smashes things with 5+ armour(sometimes 4+ but to a lesser degree), but put it up against serious armour (4+RA) as it's supposed to do and it fails 9/10 times. Granted, it may hit a lot but it often fails to destroy due to enemy saves. You can put all the hits on a target you want but I've lost count of the times I've had to take on Leman Russes with Marker Lights on target with the HHs sustaining and maybe killed one tank or two with unlucky rolls for the IG player. Crossfiring has helped on the occasion but to do that you often need to expose your formations to counter attacks, losing them in the process.

Now, so many times people have said "that shouldn't happen" but in play you're often forced to take actions because of enemy formation placement to try to effect the game or lose your important formations.


Yep, absolutely, however their range puts them in harms way a lot more and even with MW you aren't guaranteed to kill a lot of LRs - cross firing definitely adjusts this though. You are also often forced to double into range thus cancelling the ML advantage you may have. You also will only hit 50% with those circumstances. Given the MW shooting they are usually an early target for enemy artillery for me. Also the Railhead is supposed to be the staple antitank vehicle. If you need the Fusionhead to do this then the railhead is a fail....

But I digress, this is a discussion about Rail Heads.

Oh absolutely, the Fusionhead is a seperate issue with other drawbacks and it's much less likely to survive to make a second swing than a Railhead that can hang back, I'm just saying that comparing a Railhead to a Fire Prism and saying "why is the Fire Prism better at killing the thing it's best at than the Railhead is at killing the thing its not best at" isnt actually a great comparison. It's kinda like complaining that Assault Marines arent as good at killing skimmers as Devastators are (and yes, fusionheads are a prime artillery target, tau should get some sort of long range gun that excells at killing lightly armoured AV ;) )

Now, fluffwise, the Railgun on a hammerhead should be pretty good at punching up even the heavier tanks, but increasing its AT value will never get the job done. Vultures have an AT value of 2+, and every time I've taken them, they've been used to strip void/power fields, or destroy rhinoes (a job at which they excell) because shooting at a RA target is a waste of valuable missile. (8 shots kills maybe 2 guys)

Should we be trying to make Railguns the default choice they appear to be in 40k and the fluff?

I'd be willing to consider Lance as a fair upgrade to the Railgun hammerhead, since it helps out against RA targets but provides no benefit to its already quite significant Rhino killing ability. But maybe we should just be leaving serious heavy armour killing to the Fusionheads, and give Railguns a slightly more generalist vibe. Course, that plays into my next point.

The real uncertainty I have with hammerheads are most of the other variations, in particular the Fioka ones.

Fusion Cannons are great, but 30cm range aint all that. Still, they're solid, and a 45cm range would really likely be overkill.
Ion cannons are a bit off, it's generally considered that AT shots are more valuable than AP shots. so why do we have a gun that has the same to hit values as the Railgun, but reversed into the less valuable configuration, and have it also drop in range? Ion Cannons should have Disrupt. doubly so if the Railgun gets lance. Course, that would require them to be seperated from the Barracuda Ion cannons and whatnot (or not, are Barracuda's underperforming in the infantrymurder stakes?)

the Twin Plasma, however, is useless. Why on earth would I take the AP3+ shot at 30cm, when I could take the Ion cannon with an AP4+ shot at 60? and the 60cm one comes with AT5+?
There's some wiggle room between the Ion cannon and the Missile Pods (2 5+/6+ at 45 vs 1 4+/5+ at 60, though I'd probably stick with the Ion there unless I was really worried about horde management) but I cannot see a situaton where I'd want to use the Plasma. 2 5+'s are better than 1 3+ even before you factor in markerlights (which greatly favour the multiple shots) or the increased range, let alone the access to AT shots. Plasma Rifles are rubbish. They'd need to be 2 shots in order to maybe compete, but without an AT value, and without the range, I'd still be hard pressed to ever want to take them.

Depending on how you interpret the topic, this may be veering off it, but I am looking at a Fioka list in the near future, and it'd be nice to plan out my turret purchases before Deacon has another sale.

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+1 JTG

IMO the debate is almost akin to the arguments and tactics needed for the Eldar Cobra, and you definitely need to have particular targets and tactics in mind for the different formations. If you want to go RA hunting, you need two formations of 6x Fusionheads and be prepared to lose them to retaliation. The Railgun version is much better at long-range engagements against other targets.

Indeed you probably need four formations, two formations of 4x Railgun HH, two formations of 6x Fusionheads to allow the possibility of stripping shields and then moving in for the kill . . . (A very long way of saying that the correct tactics are paramount.)

Given the Tau coordinated fire, I am less sure that even Lance is necessary. Consider the effect of activating two formations of 6x Fusionheads and moving them ~20cm either side of a markerlit LR formation. Even if doubling, it is likely to score ~4 kills.

Can do. I am going out all day today, but I'll be back tomorrow and now I've made the tables and formulas it takes a only couple of minutes to input new vehicles and target combinations.

I can do a chart showing the vehicles' results weighted by cost, add other comparisons with vehicles that are weighted towards an anti-tank role, show what the results would look like if HH had tweaks like AT3+ or major improvements like Lance, what that would do to the results weighted by cost if HH prices increased, etc

This is a workshop rather than a complaints thread.

Thanks for the effort Matt-Shadowlord

My plan (until I realized how little money I got left now that I'm living on student loans) was to build a Fio'ka army. My thoughts were that a mix of Rail and Fusion Heads could be a good idea, Rails for long-distance sniping and BM placement, Fusions for close range hitting power. Has anybody tried that?

I really like the Railhead version in the game. It has clear function in the game which for me has been taking out shields or AV (without RA) like APC or predators. It's biggest advantage being the long range on both its AT-attacks (railgun + missile) making it so that it can usually stay back and advance order to pop up and be safe.

So from a gaming perspective I find quite alright and well worth its points. I think what you did Matt, in the Vior'la list, with lowering the price of the other versions was a good move. They are not worth as much as the railgun with its greatly increase survivability compared to the fusions and better weapon than ion.

But on the other hand I do think its a failed design from a fluff point of view. It should IMHO be better at hitting heavy tanks/WE. My preference would be lance. Giving it MW with the kind of range it has, ML and pop up ability would make it way to good. Of course giving them lance should increase the cost, perhaps even 75 pts?

Could be fun to test out in some of the newer lists, like vior'la or Fio'ka

As with the cobra saga, I'm not sure how useful it is to compare on the basis of having so many four formations in the army for them to be useful. Nobody should be expected to take four formations of six. And then activating them all in one go with coordinated fire, no less. Sounds like fantasy theorising (not least because hammerheads don't have coordinated fire themselves).

I can't really comment on their balance yet, but Lance seems reasonable for a rail gun, if it weren't an eldar special rule. I must admit though, I thought the railhead was considered the only one worth taking and therefore assumed the problem was with the others (ion especially).

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