The heavy support section used to be just Broadsides. Now it's just Broadsides but you're more depressed about it. The Broadside nerft to their Railgun is completely unwarranted and further hampers Tau ability to put the hurt on tougher units that they always had trouble dealing with. They now have almost nothing to stop the Land Raider and now have only 1 weapon that can Instant Death T5 models. The Hammerhead as good as it was before, it's just not as expensive. Still not impressed. Skyrays are pretty good at taking out flyers and possibly vehicles but you'll need some Markerlight help in my opinion. Sniper teams are not heavy support by any means and having a 50/50 chance to wound someone and a 1/6 chance of Rending a vehicle makes this unit exceptionally luck-based. I mean, sure, you'll hit a lot, but killing it is a total crap-shoot. So overall, another point at which Tau kinda flops but still useful when combined with other units in the army. Let's take a look.
Broadsides
The new model is sick as all hell. Loving that they took a common conversion and made it even better. They also changed from having Smart Missile System to TL Smart Missile System which is a change i'm humdrum about. Mostly because they change doesn't make the unit more effective versus MEQ. They still can't move and shoot which just boggles the mind now that their model is huge. A terminator somehow has more stability than a Broadside? And the broadside is firing a magnetically accelerated weapon meaning it experiences no recoil...and if the missile system just opens up a hole at the back of the launcher they'll find that that loses recoil too. Hmmm, guess Tau haven't captured any RPGs from a WW2 tech-level species yet. Guess they have to stay in place so they can aim the automagically homing missiles. Whatever, aesthetics aside they've suffered a massive nerf to their main weapon and it blows.
Their stats are the same but they're 5 points cheaper. Their railrifle is now S8. You go from getting a 1+ to glace Rhinos on the rear or 2+ on the front or side and 4+ to glance a Land Raider to 6+ to glance. Yuckkkkk. Gonna need that Puretide Engram HQ to join these guys so they have a chance of hurting the big guns. Against Nob Bikers or Thunderwolf Cavalry they are really boned now. Instead of '1 shot 1 kill' you'll have to have your whole unit fire to kill 1 guy. With 3 Railrifle shots you'll have 3/4 to hit because of re-rolls, and 2+ to wound leaving you with 1.875 wounds average. The likely outcome is 1 dead with a whole units shooting when normally that would be 2 dead and the unit near halfway to making up it's points cost. Now, you have a 67% chance of killing 1. Ha. 1/3 of the time you won't kill 1 due to too few wounds. Har har. Hope they didn't bring Storm shields or Mad Doc's Cybork body.
The other option with Broadside is the ridiculous-looking Missile Fists. It's 4 TL-Autocannon shots per guy which is really nice and you can make them Skyfire which is also really nice. But here's the kicker: that unit costs 255 points. 0.o Scheiße. That's a Land Raider + extras. Against an AV11 flyer you're getting 4-5 glances average which is good but is it Land Raider points? Ahhh so frustrating. A unit of Havocs with 4 Autocannons is 115 points. Meaning you can field two of them and have 25 points left over for the cost of 1 broadside unit. Very off-putting.
You can take Missile drones but they don't benefit from a drone controller (p. 68) and thus have BS2 which is awful. For 72 points you can have 6. Oh boy. What do those 12 shots get you against MEQ? 1.1 wound average. Come on. Against a tank? 1.33 glances if it's AV12. AV11 it's 2 glances. Superb. No thanks from me.
I'm totally put off by the change but I will say this: you're gonna take Broadsides. With a Velocity Tracker each. So now you have 3 TL Railrifles that can Skyfire. Definitely awesome. Too bad you can't take multiple support systems. It would be nice to have Interceptor too. Popping the Flyers right when they come on the board will be convenient.
The broadsides are a unit you'll take regardless of being the main army or the ally army. They're great against flyers and still pretty damn good against Light Vehicles. They aren't nearly as good as before but I won't hold that against them too much. Just kidding, yes I will. Fuck you Broadsides. Get a cool model and now you suck? Get off my board. Also watch out for Lascannons. Getting one-shotted is no fun.
Hammerhead Gunship
The only way you can reliable hurt Land Raiders. Unfortunately your railgun is not Twin-linked nor can you take enough of them to guarantee a dead Land Raider or effectively stop a Nob Biker squad but meh. If you're taking one of these you're going to have to spend the extra points to get the template. You need it if this is your heavy support. Othewise you're firing 1 shot a turn. That won't bother most enemies.
In all honesty though you should drop the railgun and get an Ion cannon. You sacrifice some range and power for more shots and a sweet overcharge, that you don't have to pay for, that's great against MEQ and FX unlike the submunitions from Railgun. Yeah, you've got Gets Hot!, but it's really worth it here. That template can wipe the floor with MEQ squads without breaking a sweat. Honestly the Ion Cannon and the TL SMS are the reasons why you would take a Hammerhead.
They have nice front armor and a cannon that's nice and high up on the model so you can get LOS easier. They can move and shoot proving that someone at Tau HQ did think that might be useful. If you're spending the points on this guy I'd get Longstrike on one. He's the only upgrade worth taking even though like the other Tank characters he's over-costed and not that good. If you frequently face-off against MEQ armies I'd take this over Broadsides actually. Well, maybe I would. The Ion Cannon is really good but things can scatter and ruin your day. These guys are actually pretty reliant on things not scattering to go well.
The Hammerhead is slightly better from before in cost and options as the Ion Cannon is a bit better now but in my mind it still looks like Broadsides all the way because Hammerheads can't do anything to stop Flyers.
Skyray Gunship
It's got a bunch of neat little missiles and a networked markerlight so it's purely for trying to shoot down Aircraft. Too bad it has to be much closer than other units to get its shots off. Also it has 6 1-shot missiles and 2 gun drones. When it's missiles are out (and some of them will have missed) it cannot transport units and is effectively a free kill point for your enemy. What a bunch of malarkey.
That's exactly why I'll never take one. A Broadside can shoot for the whole game and costs half as much for roughly the same effectiveness. The skyray is a really simple review for me: Turn 3/4 you can no longer do anything. I'm not taking it.
Sniper Drone Team
Wayyyy too dependent on dice. Sniper does that. It's an okay unit, it'd be nice if the sniper drones just had a missile pod though. Otherwise they're kinda crap. The long-range pulse rifle is nice but 50/50 to cause a wound makes me sad. And having Rending be the only way to can injure a vehicle (and even then only when you roll hella well) makes this unit crap to have in Heavy Support slot.
This unit is so weirdly out of place and bad that I feel like I'm missing something. Their weapon is SX AP5 sniper so 50/50 chance of wound and MEQ still gets a save. The shot is pinning though so they might fail that? Rending against vehicles on a 6 which makes them have a 1/18 chance of glancing AV12. AV11 is 1/9 so not much better. I just don't get it. What is the purpose of this unit? They do have Stealth so putting them in an Aegis or ruins will give you a nice 3+ cover but what's the point? To pin from afar? Not worth it.
Conclusions
The units in Heavy support are lacking a bit and Broadsides got unfairly nerfed for no good reason (it's not like everyone and their mother was fielding Broadsides before and that sure won't happen now) and have hurt Tau's ability to be taken as an ally and their ability to deal with super dangerous units with T5 and more than 1 wound and their ability to harm bigger tanks like Land Raiders (or even Leman Russ's side armor). You'll also have to spend out the ass to make them effectively worth taking so I'm very disappointed there. Especially when every army can take a Quad-Gun that effectively replaces the broadsides. Against AV 11 the Broadsides get 1.5 glances average while the Quad-Gun at BS4 gets 1.77 glances average. Quad-gun and Aegis are cheaper too: 100 vs. 255. Oddly you should take your Broadsides with Missiles over the Railrifle for that very reason. Even though you'll now be unable to hurt AV14 you had to roll 6's before so it hardly matters anyways. You get 3 times as many glances per turn (4.5) and are more effective versus tanks and infantry than if you had the Railrifle.
So in the end, what're you gonna do? As Tau Primary you're going to need to take 1-2 units of Broadsides, mandatory, and have them each with a Velocity Tracker and High-Yield Missile Pods. You can then take an Ion Cannon Hammerhead with Longstrike to effectively deal with MEQ units and you've only set yourself back 680 points. A paltry sum right? Even without the anti-MEQ ion cannon you've set yourself back 510 points for the two units of Broadsides, effectively 1/3 of your army's points (or 1/4 if it's a 1999+1 game). It's not cool what they did to Broadsides and it's going to haunt the Tau well into next edition.
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