Hello fellow Battle Brothers,

I have a little problem to understand the sense of the Talent Dual Shot (p. 116) for the Tau Commander (p. 366).

I understand the Talent for itself but since the Tau Commander does not wear any pistols, so what? I can only guess...

The two weapons are mounted , where I must confess that I do not find any explanation for that keyword. I think they mean the arm weapon mounting on page 156.

So can we suppose the two weapons to count as pistols? So the Tau commander could make use of them both making a shot from the plasma rifle and the missile pod at one target.

Furthermore I wonder about the auto-stabilised trait. It says that you can make a burst- or full-attack as a half action. But I think it still does not allow you to take the same half-action twice? Otherwise the Tau Commander could take two half-actions to make a burst-attack with the missile pod and the pulse rifle each.

On the other hand what is truly allowed with that trait should be to move via the half-action and fire a burst-attack not using the +10 bonus and than move back behind cover.

Although the Tau Commander has an impressive BS I wonder if there is not integrated any targeting systems or other things like in the power armour? I mean one could argue that it integrated in the stats but on the other hand if you read under "ejection system" their is not mentioned any descreasing in characteristics other than strength and toughness.

Cheers,

TechVoid.

Those are good questions. I hadn't even gone over Tau as I really don't want to run games with them in it really. However those are interesting issues and I shall look over my book in detail and shed some light if I can. That is if someone else does not do so before I do. Although you can always email the rule guys from ffg.

Terminus_Est said:

Uh, how? Do you think they respond to such a triviality?

Cheers,

TechVoid.

I am sure they do. They should have a frequenly asked question page that shows how to contact htem, ill go and edit this post if i find it for you.

The Rules Questions link is at the bottom of this page. And yes they reply to questions like this... usually takes only a couple of days.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Ah, thanks.

Message is sent!

Cheers,

TechVoid.

The description for "mounted" weapons is in the first paragraph of p141. They're "super-heavy" weapons that can only be mounted on vehicles or certain powered armour.

And you can indeed only take a single type of action once per round. So unless you want to houserule it, the Commander gets to choose one weapon to fire per turn.

Decessor said:

Thanks for the clarification.

Forgive me my heretic words, but a missile pod is a super-heavy weapon? Doing only one point more damage than an Astartes Bolter (Godwyn)? And not being able to fire at full-auto?I thought the Tau Technology is so advanced?

Cheers,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

See my "Adjusting DW weapon stats more to the 40K Tabletop stats" recommendations in the House Rules sub-forum.

Alex

ak-73 said:

I'll have a look at it.

Cheers,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

The Tau mounted weapons are considered to not run out of ammo and not need to reload during an encounter. So yeah, they are more advanced than human tech. Combined with auto-stabilized and independent targeting I would have both weapons fired at two different targets simultaneously each round on semi auto. Also, don't forget that Tau are going to work together, for the greater good, so don't forget the Fire Warriors setting back at long or extreme range supporting their commander.

ItsUncertainWho said:

This is exactly my question.

I also would like to see the Tau Commander fire both weapons simultaneously on semi auto due to auto-stabilized. But since the core rules forbid to take the same action twice ( two times semi-burst in this case) in a round that is by RAW not possible.

I mean Dual Shot allows you to make a single attack with each weapon and both together for greater effect since you take into account the toughness bonus only once. One could extand that talent in combination with auto-stabilized that you can make a burst-attack instead of a single attack.

Cheers,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

According to Two-Weapon Fighting rules on page 246 when firing a ranged weapon with each hand, the character may fire each weapon on a different mode, for example, one on full automatic and one on semi-automatic. Therefore the Tau commander could fire one weapon semi-auto and one weapon as a single shot. It's not as good as two semi-auto attacks, but it's better than nothing. Just give the Tau commander's Missile Pod auto-stabilised as per Arm Weapon Mounting (i.e. it's shoulder-mounted as Arm Weapon Mounting allows youto do), Two-Weapon Wielder Talent, and it's fine.

EDIT: and almost forgot to add, both Plasma Rifle and Missile Pod are Basic weapons and thus can be fired one-handed with a -20 penalty, unless you house-rule that the Tau Battlesuit acts just like Astartes Power Armour which negates this penalty.

Razorboy said:

To be honest, I wonder if the description may fire each weapon on a different mode excludes to fire them both in the same mode?

The last sentence talks about firing both weapons in full-auto which allows you to only "lay down one area of Suppressive Fire". So in principle it is allowed to fire both weapons in full-auto?

Cheers,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

That's a solid line of reasoning. I think it could be interpreted that way (that each weapon might fire in full-auto mode), especially since technically a person with two melee weapons is duplicating the same action when attacking with each weapon. I don't see why this exception to "only one of the same action per round" cannot be extended to ranged weapons, but this should be a question for FFG.