After Forgeworld released updated Imperial Armour 3 rules for certain units, and managed to include Heavy Gun Drones without actually updating them, I figured I would have a go, and here it is (Word doc).
It merges Heavy Gun Drones and Sniper Drone Teams, to hopefully provide a worthwhile use of a precious FOC slot. Let me know what you think.
Oh, and here is a guide to making your own.
5 Responses to “Heavy Gun Drones – Alternative Rules”
Comments (5)
I like it! I was somewhat disappointed when the update didn’t include changes to heavy gun drones – I love the models and as it turns out they’re some of the best painting I’ve done, but I’ve never actually used them! For photo and display purposes a pair of them look amazing as a commander’s personal drones
I like it, probably because it’s not unlike what I want to see done with the XV15 teams. Really, they seem like SDTs done right; they can move and fire their rail rifles, they aren’t stuck with the ‘one hit kill’ problem of a Fire Warrior with a drone controller, and they’re twin-linked, which I always found made my Gun Drones shoot more reliably than SDTs. The ‘interlocked networking’ is a particularly interesting idea, and one that really makes them competitive in the HS slot; markerlight tokens give the best return against high-model-count units, and if you could spread a single token’s effect over as many as 18 models its value would be through the roof.
Interesting take on it.
I like the idea of making drones networked and making multiple units available as a single FOC choice. I don’t think it actually should be limited to just this unit. I’d love there to be a 0-1 Drone Network option in Troops (Sensor Towers) Fast Attack (Heavy Gun Drones) and Heavy Support (Sentry Towers, give them the same turret options as the updated Hammerhead list). Each of these choices then allows you to deploy multiple sub-units and they have some special ability to interface with other drone units of the same or different type.
Then standard Gun Drones, Shield Drones, Marker Drones and Sniper Drones get purchased as unit add-ons for other units.
I think that would be a really cool army concept to play with.
I would love a drone-themed army for Tau, and I think I did a post on that a long time ago. I also started work on a Drone-heavy Tau fandex, but like most fandex it was just for fun, and I don’t think I ever finished it. However, it did allow options like you suggest, with drones of various kinds being spread throughout the army. Would look very cool, if nothing else!
I like it. Gives the Tau some more options and a bit more variety in their heavy support section other than ‘broadsides – check, hammerheads – check, moving on!’.
I can see the most common uses of these being either deep striking melta for rear armour of vehicles or long range missile pods with stealth fields, maybe even mid range plasma rifles occasinally for rapid firing goodness.
Good work! Also, if you still have it, I for one would love to see your drone fan dex.