# Sky ray missile gunship worth it?



## khuffy (Feb 27, 2009)

Is the skyray gunship reakky worth buying for tau?


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## Huffy (Nov 25, 2008)

wrong thread kevin, go to tactics or general


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## Siege (Jan 18, 2008)

Yes, yes it is.


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

Huffy, if you see someone posting in the wrong forum JUST REPORT IT

Telling someone their thread is in the wrong place does absolutely nothing useful. They cannot move it themselves, so you telling them it's in the wrong place only serves to publicly embarrass the poor guy. It doesn't answer his question and it doesn't make him feel welcome here. It just gives him a bad first impression of the site.

That said, I've moved this to tactics in the hopes that it;ll get some better, more fleshed out answers.

My opinion is that the skyray is mainly useful in urban environment, cityfights where there's a lot of LOS-blocking terrain about.

In any other setting, however, you're probably better off getting a Hammerhead. If you;re not having to constantly shoot around terrain, the heavy hitting punch of a railgun or ion cannon is going to be a lit more useful, IMO.


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## Siege (Jan 18, 2008)

Galahad said:


> My opinion is that the skyray is mainly useful in urban environment, cityfights where there's a lot of LOS-blocking terrain about.


Obviously this is true. In those kinds of environments, a Sky Ray really excels. In an open battlefield the Hammerhead would be a better option, but I think any Tau player should have access to at least one Sky Ray, even if you don't include it in all your lists, in a Cities Of Death type scenario they are fucking ace.


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## Fugital357 (Jan 19, 2009)

Galahad just about nailed it. I don't play Tau, but that's what our local Tau play does. 

Although, wither or not they'd be good in a tourny list, where you'll be playing against lots of armies on lots of different maps is a question I'd like to ask.


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## Siege (Jan 18, 2008)

Fugital357 said:


> Although, wither or not they'd be good in a tourny list, where you'll be playing against lots of armies on lots of different maps is a question I'd like to ask.


I don't play tourneys but if I did I probably wouldn't take a Sky Ray in my list. It's equipped with two markerlights, six seeker missiles and I usually use SMS as my secondary weapons. Now that's still a pretty healthy dose of death but a Hammerhead is (I think) 35 pts cheaper and will usually be more effective in the variety of situations that you would likely come across in a tournament. I wouldn't say a Sky Ray would be a complete dud choice in a tourney list but it's not something I would use personally. 

I'd love to hear other peoples opinions on this though.

I still think at least one Sky Ray is an essential buy for the average Tau player.


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## Someguy (Nov 19, 2007)

For me, every heavy support slot must have a railgun in it. The Tau codex really polarises your anti tank capabilities to your heavy support section, at least for ways to kill the big stuff. You can do good stuff with missile pods against transports and weaker-armoured targets, but railguns also work against them. At 1500 points I use 4 railguns in my standard all-comers list and I'd happily take more.

The HH railgun with its submunitions rounds is a highly versatile weapon. It's better against any target than the smart missiles. You aren't limiting yourself by taking them in the way that, for example, a marine player might be limiting himself by taking predator annihilators, because you have submunitions as well. The Railhead sets the standard for Tau tanks and anything else is just a poor man's version of it.

To be honest I don't particularly buy into skyrays in cityfight either. If the skyray can't see the target, who is markerlighting it? Markerlights are a heavy 1 weapon usually carried by infantry, and not very easy to use at all in such situations. It's not like having a barrage weapon that you can fire without seeing the target.

The skyray is at least better than the ion cannon. The Ion is little more than a glorified autocannon in my opinion. It does nothing that you can't do with suits, so it's a pretty major waste of a heavy support choice. It's meant to be for killing MEQs but its cost and the amount of cover in 5th ed make it do very little real harm.


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## bishop5 (Jan 28, 2008)

I've just started playing Tau and having mixed feelings about the Skyray - as someguy said above, the Railhead is a better choice in almost any situation.

I like the two networked markerlights, but that then means you need to place the skyray in a position where it can see what you're shooting at - which I think makes the ability to fire the seeker missiles without LOS a bit moot.


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## Siege (Jan 18, 2008)

Someguy said:


> To be honest I don't particularly buy into skyrays in cityfight either. If the skyray can't see the target, who is markerlighting it? Markerlights are a heavy 1 weapon usually carried by infantry, and not very easy to use at all in such situations. It's not like having a barrage weapon that you can fire without seeing the target.


I usually take markerlights with my stealth teams and/or Fire Warriors. I don't see why marking a target should be in any way difficult. 

I agree about submunitions shots, they are fucking awesome. 

And ion does suck. I assembled one of my Hammerheads with an ion cannon, used it once or twice and sold it to my friend who is going to convert it for his Orks in some way.


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