Hammerhead Gunship
The Tau's analogue to a Tank. Has a distinctly piscine name and can mount railguns
It can be considered the Tau's "main battle tank", being a general purpose combat vehicle, though its mounted railgun means that it really shines against enemy armor. It has one point less armor in the front than a Leman Russ Battle Tank, but is otherwise similarly fortified. Unlike the Leman Russ, the Hammerhead is not intended to smash its way into enemy lines, instead hanging back and exploiting the 72" range of its primary weapon to put holes in the Tau's enemies while taunting them to try and rush it. It can be equipped with a disruption module that gives it a 5+ cover save that can help it remain more survivable than its armor would suggest, and a multi-tracker allows it to fire as if it were a fast vehicle, letting it reposition itself to keep line of sight on its targets without interrupting its fire, or to drag out the time it takes foes to close with it.
It competes with Broadside battlesuits squads for anti-vehicle heavy support slots in the Tau's force deployment. Both mount railguns, but the broadsides arguably are better at anti-vehicle work, having six railguns to a squadron (all three models have a twin-linked pair each) while the Hammerhead only has one. However, the broadsides are limited by anti-vehicle work being the only thing they are good at, while the Hammerhead can also use its railgun to fire a shell which causes a large blast template of S6 AP4 anti-infantry submunitions over its target, making it a more flexible weapons platform. It is also much more nimble than broadside battlesuits, as even with advanced stabilization systems they can only move D6 inches per turn while firing.
It can take an ion canon in place of its railgun for a lower point value which will do some hefty damage to heavy infantry, but it is of questionable value for the point cost of the rest of the tank and the occupation of a valuable heavy support slot, especially since Tau have other options for doing so. Forge World makes some additional primary weapon options, but they are mostly long-barreled, twin-linked versions of other weapons, which makes them of questionable value and of dubious tournament legality. Secondarily it is equipped with either a pair of independently targeting burst canons, or a single smart missile system. The burst canons have a shorter range but can theoretically do more damage than the smart missile system, but the smart missile system can hit from a slightly greater distance and ignores line of sight, for a slightly higher point cost. Most of the time though this is moot unless in an emergency, since the Hammerhead will usually try to stay outside the range of these weapons anyway.
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