I'm more inclined to consider sniper drone teams in 6th. As far as I can tell:

+ The stealth field buff means they are more survivable.
+ New wound allocation means you should hopefully be able to put your spotter at the back to avoid one-shot-death. Of course a precision shot can get him, but he'll still probably be getting a 2+ cover save as long as you are at least obscured.
+ The preciousness of heavy support slots is less severe with multi-detachment games being a locked down rule rather than general advice.

Over all they now seem to stand a better chance of surviving, are good value for points and are a good distraction for marine players who tend to get upset at things with AP3 (even though they *should* probably be targeting fire warriors instead).

Am I missing anything important that should hold me back from getting some for the first time?

They have indeed got better IMO... but are still competing against Railguns for that Heavy Support choice. I think they're worth taking in small games (when you can't afford Railguns, and there's no armour to shoot at anyway) and maybe they're worth taking in big games (when there's lots of FOC slots available) but... can you really conceive of a time when you might have too many 72", S10, AP1 guns? If you can, sure, look at SDTs. Otherwise... moar Broadsides please.

You might actually have too many railguns now. Missile pods should easily torrent rhinos to death, where in 5th edition they would shaken it and blow the bolter off. Even firewarriors could put the finishing glance on a rhino.

Railguns are going to be used primarily to target av12 and av13, and av14 if melta isn't available. That means in a typical non-ig list you're looking at 2-3 vehicles that are either 12/12/10 or 13/11/10.

It will depend on your meta but I don't think railheads are a must buy. I've been experimenting with two cheap ionheads, three broadsides, and missile pods and haven't had any trouble yet with mech.

Snipers will help kill heavy infantry and monstrous creatures - a list with 2x2 broadsides and 2-3 sniper teams would be very effective.

Unless your metagame is extremely Paladin or Deathwing heavy, I'd much rather have 3 sniper teams and 2 broadside teams than 3 broadside teams, and both possibilities are very similar in points cost. I'm not certain what I'd choose between snipers, broadsides and Hammerhead vs 2x broadside teams and a Hammerhead, but I think it really depends on your metagame. Are you getting buried in vehicles whose armor isn't paper thin (Orks, Deldar)? If so, more Broadsides. Otherwise, Snipers are survivable enough these days to make a serious contribution to anti-infantry fire, and your Broadsides might start running out of stuff to shoot.

I was pleased by the Ionheads performance last game, so I might reconsider units like Sniper teams or even Vespid. 5th Ed. prevalence of 4+ cover saves and kill points scenario made me sceptic about AP3 weapons and small units. I was easier to concentrate on torrent of small arms fire and save markerlights for large Helios units. Sniper teams are still inaccurate on their own and an inefficient markerlight or divination users, and 1 in 6 games they are juicy victory points for melee or cover ignoring units, but all in all look better than in 5th Ed.

SDTs have to be wary of barrage units - especially any that can benefit from the Ignores Cover! special rule.

A barrage marker placed on the spotter for a sniper drone team will force the spotter to take every single test until he fails one, and that removes the entire unit. As the FAQ does not change his type to a character, he cannot Look out, Sir! the wound off of himself either.

You can get one SDT for the price of a single broadside with a targeting array, which isn't really a horrible trade off at all. Personally, I will still prefer the broadside as he has both a higher shot count against hordes, but also a better weapon for dealing with non-MEQs (Terminators, Vehicles, multi-wound models) and I generally have plenty of anti-marine firepower sitting around anyways. It's usually the extra shot count for hordes, or ability to deal with high toughness or multi-wound models quickly that is in short supply.

Good to hear other peoples thoughts!

Not considered the barrage thing, guess that's something to worry about for stealth warriors as well.

Of course the other thing I'd say that's a plus for snipers right now is the fact that now that Tetras are awesome we tend to have more markerlight coverage, so we're more likely to have some spare to reduce LD for pinning tests from the rail-rifles. With a lot more units running at us rather than speeding up in transports being able to reliably pin is surely another handy trick?

Nice catch on this one, STS17.

E.

The biggest savior to stealthed teams is that those cover ignoring barrages scatter an extra D6", so barring a direct hit, there is a high chance the blast is gonna go way over 'yonder.

It seems slightly silly to disregard them because something CAN kill them. In 5th ed I found great value in my SDT's. The ability to spread them out that far around the table is so very useful. Plus, MEQ players HATE them, and after you kill one Marine they spend too much time focusing one your SDT, and ignoring the FW making an objective grab.

I love the models, I think they are very effective, but they compete with my broadsides and hammerheads. I would like to see this unit moved out of the heavy F.O.C. I believe it could fit fluff wise into elite, course I don't want it there either. In my Tau wet dreams it is a troop choice.



Thurgen

If they move to elites, we start running into the issue that a lot of power armor codexes have: too many good elite choices and not enough slots. If we move them to troops, we have a very small, usually immobile, ultimately fragile unit that's probably never going to score on anything. In Heavy Support, yes they're competing against railguns, but they also do things that railguns don't; namely knock down heavy infantry like tenpins, being both more numerous than Broadsides and AP 3.

They're also cheap compared to our other options, allowing us to potentially free up points elsewhere in the list (like more scoring units, or shield drones on your crisis teams). With drones able to effectively screen their controllers again and Jet Packs now able to make thrust moves on the turn they arrive from Deep Strike, we may find a new utility for Deep Striking Sunforge or Helios teams. If we have the Crisis teams handling the heavy anti-armor work, that means we can move infantry suppression and anti-power armor work to our heavy support, and SDTs are a lot more cost-efficient than plasma-armed Crisis units are for that job.

Surely there's only a small sweet spot of list sizes where this is true? At low points you can't always afford to fill heavy slots with Broadsides and hammer heads and at 2000+ points you've got the potential for six heavy support choices! So the game would have to be a LONG way over 2000 points to make it contentious because again broadsides and hammerheads cost so much.

Also where you have the points to get more than one SDT they are good slot value because you can get several units worth for one slot.

As far as I can see the only way Railguns are keeping Rail-Rifle-Drones out of your list (because of slots anyway) would be at 1999 points. Much above or below that and I'm not feeling that as a pressure.

I think that pressure is greatest in the 1500-1999 range, where the game is large enough to warrant multiples of the really big guns but not large enough to take the slot-limit pressure off. Unfortunately, that's also the point range where most games are played.

Also, your quote is misattributed. Might want to fix that.

I guess it's different for everybody's list style, and depends on what you face.

I think under 6th, with the tempting options for second detachments and allied detachments game sizes are going to go up. Already under 5th most marine players I have contact with wanted to play well over 2000 because that's where they get the best out of their codex. Under 6th I'm tempted to stop arguing the points down because of the juicy prospect of bringing 2 FOCs worth of battlesuits!



Oops! Thanks for pointing that out.

My local crowd reacted exactly the opposite way: normal game size three weeks ago was 2000-2500, now it's 1850. Maybe that'll change as people soak up the new rules, but for right now nobody wants to put up with the shenanigans that become possible with the second FOC. The top-tier armies don't want other people to be able to knock them down a peg by doubling up on their good combos, and the weaker armies don't want to let the top-tier guys widen the gap by being able to double up on their good combos.

I wonder how long it's going to be before one of them hits on the idea of playing 1999-point games. Once that gets suggested, I suspect it'll become the standard at my store.

We've been playing 1000-1500 while we get used to the new rules but there's already talk of 1999 as the new standard.

1999 is the new standard it seems at my store as well. Someone tried to suggest a "1999+1" game and people said that was silly. I don't really get what the big deal is, most of what people can spam by being able to double up on FoCs gets shut down hard by 18 broadsides, perhaps that's my codex-bias talking though.

I've also seen an irrational fear of allies at my store as well - almost all games, and certainly all the formal events so far (all one of them!) have been "One FoC, no Allies, Aegis Defense Line is the only legal fortification you can take" which doesn't make any sense to me. Last two games I played where my opponent had allies saw them tabled with minimal loss on my behalf (played at 1850 points).

Any and all "cheesy" allies combinations requires a very specific interaction between a very limited number of units, and likely a list designed around whatever mechanic they're trying to abuse. Remove even one of those units early on and their list crumbles.

I've run in a lot of the 500pts combat patrol games, with the limits on vehicles and such. In those, most people load up MEQ. Sniper drones are amazing then, and Broadsides useless.

I can certainly see Sniper Teams being particularly good in small games. Not a lot of blast weaponry compared to how many snipers you're going to have, more MEqs than transports... might have to give that a try.



You know, "no allies, Mat Ward codexes only, no mysterious terrain" sounds a lot like "no items, Fox only, Final Destination". Apparently, interesting metagames have been uncool for awhile.

If someone tells you they aren't using the core rules, you should feel free to take whatever liberties you want with regards to FAQs. After all, you're not playing GW-sanctioned 40k anymore. Broken stuff always existed, now it's just different. If you can, just tell them to man up, or drill holes through whatever examples of "cheese" they come up with (usually by mentioning the points cost of something like 18 Vendettas; have fun fitting that in less than 3k, and god help you if the enemy has even one unit with Skyfire). As far as I can tell, the 2nd force org opens up possibilities for self-crippling over-specialization more than anything.

...remember when special characters stopped having obscene prerequisites on them and people thought it would be the death of 40k? Good times. 40k changes, adapt or find a new hobby. Amazing how many people take issue with that.