One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Firesupport!

I previously mentioned an interesting tactic revolving around using my Devilfish APCs as mobile cover. This will, no doubt, infuriate your opponent no end and as such is usually not recommended for friendly play due to the relative cheese level.

Ok, so we don't necessarily want to go that route. What else can we use the 'fish for besides transport, then?

Mobile fire support. For 10pts I can swap the gun drones out for twin-linked smart missiles. Gun drones carry twin-linked Pulse Carbines. Lemme show you a comparison:

Gun Drones (2): 18", S5, AP5, Assault 2, Pinning
Smart Missile: 30", S5, AP5, Heavy 4, Homing, Ignores Cover

Going from assault to heavy makes it a little harder to use, but not by much. Essentially the same number of shots fired (2x2 vs 1x4). Range is an extra foot, which helps compensate for the heavy. Homing is a special rule that means I don't need LoS to target these babies. Ignores Cover means just that - no cover save for you! On the other hand, the drones can detach from the 'fish; the missiles can't.

Still, for 10 points, that's pretty good in my opinion.

On top of that, for an additional 16 points you can mount two Seeker missiles. These babies are fun:

Seeker Missle: 72", S8, AP 3, Heavy 1, One Use Only

Ok, Heavy 1 and One Use Only are painful, but 72" range is nice - you've basically got range on the whole board with a 'fish who should be up with your troops. However, that generally isn't how you'll use this. One of the uses for Target Acquired (yay markerlights!) to fire off a free Seeker Missile. Shot in this way, the missile doesn't count against the max number of weapons that can be fired at full BS, and resolves at BS 5. Oh, and Ignores Cover.

If you decide to go this route, you want to make sure you have plenty of Markerlight support. In fact, that's a general thing to do anyway in my opinion. In this case we want markerlights in our infantry so our Fire Teams will need to upgrade to a Shas'ui with Markerlight and Target Lock. This gives the team a marker light that can fire independent of the squad. You might consider taking Markerlight drones, but keep in mind that the Transport capacity of the 'fish is only 12.


[EDIT: I was an idiot and was swapping the pulse cannon instead of the gun drones. This has been fixed]