[ccmatty]

Hello. I am new to this forum and new to the Tau. Hopefully you will forgive me for asking what seems to be an ovviously dumb question. I am trying to find out in the codex exactly how the shield drones are used and their effect. I know they give a 4+ invulnerable save. Does the player controlling the shield drone have the option of allocating a hit/wound to the shield drone instead of the model/unit to which the drone belongs? I cannot seem to find the direct answer in the codex. Thank you for being patient with the answer...

[fattyboy5]

Under 5th ed rules, shooting must be allocated around the unit as equally as possibile. Shield drones help because they allow you to soak up more shots before having to allocate wounds to your suits. For example, if one crisis suit has two shield drones, and gets hit by 3 bolter shots, then you put one on each shield drone, and one on the suit.

But the direct answer to the question is no, you cant allocate all of the wounds to the shield drone instead, as said before, you must allocate to each model in the unit. What you can do however is choose to put more powerful shots on drones. For example, allocate the lascannon shot to a drone, and the weaker shots onto the suits, which helps keeping your suits alive.

Hope this helps, and welcome to the forums

[Watchdog]

The Shield Drones can be invaluable. Another example would be a Suit with two Shield Drones hit (and wounded) by 4 Lascannon shots and 1 Bolter shot. It looks like the Suit is as good as dead, right? Not quite.

You allocate one wound to each member of the unit - Both Shield Drones take a Lascannon hit and the Suit takes the Bolter hit. Each member of the unit now has a wound allocated so you start another round with the two remaining Lascannon hits, allocating them, surprisingly, to the Shield Drones again.

Now, you roll for saves. The Suit only has to save a Bolter hit, while the Shield Drones use their Invulnerable saves to save all 4 hits from the Lascannon. Since they are identical, you roll the 4 saves together and any one failed means a Drone dies. However, even if you fail all four saves, only the Drones die, the Suit still only has to deal with the Bolter hit, although, the Drones count to 25% of losses suffered, so any failed save on the Drones will force you to take a Morale check.

Oh, and welcome to TO.

[Watchdog]

Wargamer, I do not think the rules forbid that for a Monat Crisis (2 Wounds) with Shield Drones (1 Wound each). A different situation would be for a 2-3 member Crisis team. Can you quote from the BRB, please?

The only thing I can think of is page 24, but that is about single wound models that have no Invulnerable save. The multi-wound models rule does not apply here, since Shield Drones only have 1 Wound. This is a complex unit and the rules do not say anything about that, do they?

The unit gets hit and wounded 5 times. That means 5 wounds need to be allocated. How you do it is up to the owning player in this case.

[Wargamer]

I've only got a minidex, and even that's walked off now, but I'll try and find it later. I am sure, however, that the proposed distribution was not legal.

[Watchdog]

Originally Posted by Wargamer

I've only got a minidex, and even that's walked off now, but I'll try and find it later. I am sure, however, that the proposed distribution was not legal.

I would like to confirm this myself, so I look forward to you finding the information.

Remember, it is about a Monat Crisis and two Shield Drones, not two or more Crisis Suits, or a unit of 1 Wound models without an Invulnerable save.

[Boneguard]

I think it is legal because you have a mix unit.

So you can put all the attack of the same type on 1 unit (so 2 lascannon per drones) and the other type must be placed on another unit.

But I'm not 100% sure on that one, so I will need to check my rulebook, but that was my understanding of mix unit.

[Wargamer]

Possibly the Mixed Unit thing lets it fly. I know you can't in a non-mixed environment.

Urgh, I'm starting to think this is a sign to go back to Warhammer... and 6th Edition Warhammer at that! I found out last night pistols can't be fired in hand to hand anymore.

[Boneguard]

Originally Posted by Wargamer

Possibly the Mixed Unit thing lets it fly. I know you can't in a non-mixed environment.

Indeed, in a non mix unit then you have to respect the wound allocation rules and spread it evenly.

[Knight Actual]

I'm with watchdog on this one.

The no-removing-dude-with-1-wound-left-from-instagib-wounds (*need a better name for this) rule on page 24 to me seems to apply only after saves have been made, which is after the wound allocation. So as watch dog says, nothing prevents one from allocating 2 lascnn wounds to the drones, 1 bolt round to the suit and then 2 las cnn wounds to the drones again. Since they are different, the allocation must be made.

However, I don't see this coming up very often as usually i dedicate 2 drones to the defense of a unit only if they are pretty hefty. so usually that would be 3 suits and 2 drones, the above hits would be 2lascnn wounds to drones, 2 to suits and 1 to another suit.

Hopfully the devastator squad got lucky and wound with 3 bolter shots in that scenario