Holy Mother of Enfilade

So in browsing through the Codex (which is all I have at the moment - sad Tau), I noticed our friends the Broadside suits. Back when I played Tau (4th ed, iirc, been a while), these suckers were premier anti-armor. Those twin-linked rail guns hit at S10 AP1 just like the Hammerhead's cannon. Now ... not so much - the rail gun they mount is toned down to S8 AP1. Still capable of popping vehicles, but with the new vehicle rules they're less useful. Twin linked means that even without markerlight support they'll be hitting most of the time. The problem is in the damaging. Against AV 14 they need to roll a 6 on a d6 ... about a 17% chance. That's just to glance. They can't penetrate. Against more normal values of AV12 and AV13, they need 5+ or 4+, 33% chance and 50% chance, respectively. To glance. Most vehicles will have between 2 or 3 hull points and so will need 2-3 glancing hits. That means that a full team of Broadsides will most often not take out an enemy vehicle in one salvo.

Ok, so they're no longer our premier anti-armor option. What are they good for then?

Funny you should ask. You can swap that TL rail gun for TL high yield missile pods (S7, AP4, Heavy 4). This swap is free. That's four S7 shots headed to the target, per suit. Not enough for you? Each suit can take two missile drones that have the same weapon profile but are Assault 2. Keeping track? That's eight S7 shots (re-rolling misses thanks to twin-linked) headed down range. Oh, and if you want to add insult to injury, the default Smart Missile System (SMS) tosses another four missiles out at a range of 6" shorter than the previous weapons, but also Homing (no LoS needed) and ignoring cover. They're only S5 AP5, but extra shots are extra shots.

Let's do the math: 12 shots per suit, times 3 suits in a full squad, equals 36 ... lemme spell that out - thirty-freaking-six shots going down range at 30". For 267 points. This squad has the potential to wipe out terminator squads purely on volume of fire forcing failed saves.

Keep in mind that a full 24 of those shots are S7. They can't touch AV14, but anything less ... hoo boy. Without markerlight support statistically half will hit. That's twelve hits. Of those, statistically 1/6 of those will glance AV13. That's two hull points.

With markerlight support? Greater Good forfend. 5/6 of the shots will hit (statistically), meaning a total of twenty (20) hits from the S7 weapons. Statistically 3 will glance AV13, possibly wrecking the vehicle unless it happens to have a full 4 HP.

What about a squad of marines? 24 S7 shots and 12 S5 shots is a lot of saves to make on a ten-man squad. No markerlight: 12 hits, 10 wounds, 6 casualties from the S7 shots. 6 hits, 3 wounds, 50/50 chance of a casualty from the S5.
With markerlight: 20 hits, 16 wounds, 6 casualties from the S7 shots. 10 hits, 6 wounds, 2 casualties.

Deadly without markerlight, but abject lethality with it.


For just over 10% of your 2k budget, I'd say this squad is a "must-have".

[edit: Added paragraphs about using missiles as anti-armor]
[edit: My math sucked - I was counting saves as casualties in analysis; fixed]