Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Tau Sun Shark Rules Rundown

Here is a quick rules rundown of the Tau Sun Shark from the upcoming codex:
Armor/BS: 11, 10, 10, 3HP, BS3
160 points base
Weapons
  • Pulse Bomb Generator - S5 AP5, Large Blast, Bomb
  • Missile Pod - S7 AP4
  • Networked Markerlight
  • 2 Seeker missiles (S8 AP3)
  • 2 Interceptor Drones
5 points more nets you a twin-linked missile pod - so really, why not? You can also select vehicle upgrades from the armory but I'm not sure dumping more points into such a fragile unit is worth it.

For me, the most interesting thing about this flyer are the interceptor drones. These guys are armed with twin-linked Ion Rifles (30" S7 AP4, rapid fire) and come with a bevy of special rules:
  • Skyfire
  • Interceptor
  • Afterburners
  • High speed deployment
  • Supporting fire
First off, the ion rifles have an additional firing protocol which nets you a 30" S8 AP4, small blast at the expense of a Gets Hot! roll. Not too terrible when you consider the drones are only BS2 and twin-linked means you can re-roll the Gets Hot. 2 Strength 8 shots is enough to put paid to most side armor in the game.

Skyfire and interceptor should be fairly obvious - park these guys midfield and wait for a pot shot at your opponents Zooming flyer. Afterburners let these guys Turbo boost and High speed deployment allows the drones to disembark during the movement phase even if the flyer is in Zooming mode. Supporting fire is the new Tau special rule allowing fire support of friendly units in Overwatch.

What you end up with is a interesting flyer that can drop a decent strength large blast in the movement phase, disembark some fairly nasty little hornets, and still grab a shot at a different unit (with what appears to be a turret mount) with a decent, twin-linked, light armor killer. And did I mention the seeker missiles? Oh yeah and them too. Between the turret mount missile pod and the ability for seekers to reach out a touch anyone, anywhere it shouldn't matter which way the Shark ends up facing at the end of the movement phase.

The drones of course will make an easy target and likely get swatted pretty quickly. But with some judicious placement they could live long enough to do some damage to either a ground or air target.

Any thoughts on this interesting new unit? Would you consider running it?

As a footnote, the Razorshark has the same stat line but comes armed with:
Quad Ion Cannon - S7 AP4 4 shots
Burst cannon (S5 AP5 4 shots) or Missile pod for +5pts (S7 AP4 2 shots)
2 Seekers missiles

At 145 points, it's not a bad little Air to Air fighter but to me lacks the X factor of the drones. Still probably a better choice in the battle for air supremacy that has become 40k.

How are you going to build your 'shark kit? Are you even going to get one?

1 comment:

Judge Dredd said...

Getting 4 of these flyers on launch. I'll be magnetizing the heck out of them so I can field them in either configuration.