Gpsman Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Help me! Me and my friend just started playing warhammer 40k ( I play astra militarum and he plays Tau) and for our first game we are playing a 500p game and I was wondering what is the best way to destroy a Tau hammerhead? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chefzilla Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Lascannons and Vanquisher cannons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hendrik Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 if he brings longstrike you're in for a world of hurt, as that guy is the best tank hunter in the game imo,especially versus guardsmen. loots and lots of troops are your best way to avoid such casualties, however that also means you let one unit dictate how you build your army. as you just started playing, can you give an overview of the models you have available to you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreyCrow Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 One thing you have to remember when playing is that (usually) Heavy Support slots are not "meant" for killing units, but to dictate engagements. Obviously, they have the weaponry to destroy stuff, but they are usually slow (or immobile) enough that they can be avoided. And the enemies will try to negate the firepower of your heavy support units. So, they are great tools to shape the battlefield and affect enemy placement and movement. With that in mind, if he gets to deploy first, you have the opportunity to counter deploy so that you negate or severly hinder the performance of his Hammerhead. In similar fashion, if you deploy first, your heavy support choices will dictate where the enemy should be placed if he wants to survive them. Now, in order to funnel the Hammerhead somewhere, S9+ weapons are needed, because at that strength level you're starting to reliably penetrate. You'll need more than one lascannon though to scare him off ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeGrunt Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 Fire at it when it's in the open to force it to Jink. If it's Snap Shooting, it's worthless unless he pours Markerlights into it. Alternatively, you could use Lascannon Weapons Teams buried in Platoons to take it out with the Fire On My Target or Bring It Down orders. Overall though, the Hammerhead is a bit rubbish, and you're looking at 190pts in one unit if he takes Longstrike. Against an army lacking in tanks it's simply worthless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
march10k Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 Overall, pasquisher is better, due to having that second (lascannon) shot, and due to longstrike only being AMAZING against guard...between the two of them, it depends on who gets the first shot, but against all comers, pasquisher is better. At 500 points, longstrike fits in a list, pasquisher doesn't, so that's pretty crappy...500 points should come with a "no named characters" caveat! Still, longstrike is a crapton of his points at 500, I would load up on autocannons. Ignore longstrike, deploy in ruins, and kill his markerlights, then you're getting a great save against his submunitions. Just kill the rest of his list! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chefzilla Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 Longstrike is a paper tiger. I'll take Pask over Longstrike any time. Yeah Longstrike is Preferred Enemy IG but that's still only rerolling to hit and to wound rolls of 1. I'm not sure if he gets any other little rules like Pask. If I remember correctly, the thing is only armor 12. Heavy weapons teams with lascannons and krak missiles will ruin Longstrike's day. One of my favorite things to do is to Deep Strike my Scion squad on top of stand off weapons, like the Hammerhead. Always deal with the markerlights first. At 500 points spamming lots of squishies (infantry) will negate any effect Longstrike has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeGrunt Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 He gets Tank Hunters and BS5, as well as the ability to fire Overwatch. Pretty decent overall. Also, the Hammerhead chassis is AV13/12/10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chefzilla Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 Thanks CoffeeGrunt for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
march10k Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 Yeah, he's slightly more likely to hit than pask and his ability to autopenetrate AV14 is similar to pask in a vanq...the major difference, if you're not pitting them against one another is his AV13 versus pask's AV14 and his jink...Pask doesn't have that option, but since you have to decide whether or not to jink as soon as you are hit, before penetration is rolled, longstrike is usually going to panic and jink as soon as he's tagged by a lascannon, even though only 1/3 of lascannon hits will pen him...that puts him on snap shots with a heavy 1 gun, which is like volunteering for "crew shaken" in the hope of preserving a hull point. OTOH, Pask not only has less to worry about with that extra pip of AV, he doesn't even have the option of screwing himself over out of cowardice! Plus, Pask's preferred enemy is valid against the codex of his choosing and transfers onto his mandatory squadron mate(s). All in all, vastly superior to longstrike. Longstrike, on the other hand is far more helpful to a tau army than Pask is to a guard army, simply because longstrike is the only viable ranged anti-AV-14 shooting in the tau codex...a generic railhead is only marginally better offensively than a generic vanquisher, and suffers all of the same comparisons (AV13, temptation to jink), and other than railheads, Tau have nothing other than meltaguns (ahem, fusion blasters) that are up to the task. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarriorFish Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 Don't forget there's always the option to strip hull points away, Guard can do that well with volume of fire. Otherwise I can't add to the good posts already made :tu: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elmo Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 A couple of things that have been overlooked... Smart missile system giving a high strength, cover ignoring boost to the submunitions plus decoy launchers and disruption pods plus if you want to go to extremes then you can have seeker missiles but this is all getting expensive in points. The point of the Tau is inter-unit cooperation. Separate units support each other and there is no be all and end all use of a unit. Marker lights with pathfinders or the Mark'O suit, deep striking fusion suits, Railsides etc. It is not the best to compare Longstrike to Pask as they are not the same thing. Back to the OP, if you are always playing against Longstrike at 500 points then the methods mentioned above with loads of high strength shots (Lascannons and Autocannons) will, at least, eventually glance him to death. Spread them around to try for the weaker side armour. Also having loads of boots rather than hulls will count against the hammerhead as long as you spread out. Play to the Guards strength... he has invested a high proportion of his 500pts on longstrike so may not have much else to use against a horde. It would be interesting to see the rest of the Tau list... Edit: Know your enemy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
march10k Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 It is not the best to compare Longstrike to Pask as they are not the same thing. As a player of both tau and guard, I disagree...named character tank commanders who excell at auto-penetrating AV14...what's not to compare? Also, I think I did a decent job of explaining the difference in context, guard has lots of long range AV14 killers, Tau has...longstrike. So even though pask is better against all comers, longstrike's impact is greater. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunmonkey88 Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 Don't assume that a hammerhead without Longstrike isn't dangerous though, as mentioned above, even if you don't have any armor, the submunitions and smart missile system can put out a world of hurt, especially on low armor infantry like the guard. Having played a lot of Tau previously, I'm having difficulty seeing how he would be able to bring more than 2 maxed firewarrior squads or three medium squads plus an HQ if he's also bringing Longstrike, I'd stick to as many heavy weapon teams as possible, use the guard's numbers to just overwhelm them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elmo Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 It is not the best to compare Longstrike to Pask as they are not the same thing. As a player of both tau and guard, I disagree...named character tank commanders who excell at auto-penetrating AV14...what's not to compare? Also, I think I did a decent job of explaining the difference in context, guard has lots of long range AV14 killers, Tau has...longstrike. So even though pask is better against all comers, longstrike's impact is greater. If you notice the linky thingie in my sig - I am also a Tau player and I think we will just have to agree to disagree on this ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeGrunt Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 Longstrike hardly auto-Pens AV14, he needs 5s on a single dice, even with a reroll that's only about a 55% chance. Pask in a Vanquisher is vastly superior in that regard. In my experience Longstrike often let me down, he became a joke locally because of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyderPirate Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 Commander Longshot, Commander Nostrike or Commander Nohope - no worries! Take a vulture, vector dance round to his rear and tickle his bum with Punisher cannons. If he's rude enough to hide his rear armour, the vulture should make a mess of his marker lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
march10k Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 Longstrike hardly auto-Pens AV14, he needs 5s on a single dice, even with a reroll that's only about a 55% chance. Pask in a Vanquisher is vastly superior in that regard. In my experience Longstrike often let me down, he became a joke locally because of it. Well...Pask isn't exactly immune from letting you down, although your math on pen chances is spot-on...In a recent game, he shot at a monolith for four full turns with his vanquisher cannon and his lascannon...yielding two hull points. The lascannon never did anything, and the vanquisher suffered one clean miss and one failure to penetrate. Both pens that I did get were twos, final answer three, for a "shaken" result. My plan never involves "and that's when Pask will give me a "destroyed" result on the top of turn one," but I do count on being able to take down an AV14 vehicle or two over the course of six turns! Apparently, even that is too much to ask, sometimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gpsman Posted May 22, 2015 Author Share Posted May 22, 2015 Thanks for the help! after reading these comments and going through the codex I have decided to take Knight Commander Pask in a Leman Russ Vanquisher Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
captain sox Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 Take a vulture, vector dance round to his rear and tickle his bum with Punisher cannons. Possibly the best thing ever written on this website! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulrik_Ironfist Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 First, It seems that there are quite a few guard players that also play tau. It would also seem that I play weird versions of both armies (Mobile, hard hitting, and lacking most of the things that everyone says to take). I'm going to go out on a limb and say melta vets, or min melta stormies. 2-3 meltas to the side or rear armor should do the trick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
march10k Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 Deepstriking melta is an excellent answer to ANY tank, not just a hammerhead, and the best deepstriking melta that IG have is 5 stormtroopers with 2 meltaguns for 90 points. But you'd better be taking two squads, because scatter will ruin your plans. And 180 points out of a 500 point list is a lot to "invest" in killing a single hammerhead. That said, a hammerhead is a huge investment at 500 points, so it's not a bad idea, per se... /edit/ Honestly, given scatter and given his AV12 side armor, I'd be tempted to go with plasma instead...scatter has less of an impact and S7 is ok against AV12, especially when you have 4 shots per squad... It's also good against anything else he might field! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulrik_Ironfist Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 Plasma would be tempting and probably not a bad choice. Good thing Tau don't really have anything with armor 14 (at least to my knowledge). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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