Looking at the Tau list, I find myself wondering what the point of Ionheads is..... The Tau have great AP firepower anyway, I really can't see why anyone would choose them over Railheads....is anything being considered to make them fit a niche or are they the howling banshees of the tau list? ie. A casualty of the epic rules system?

My suggestions are to shorten the range and give them 2 shots, or give them the AA shot back

I've been warned that this may be opening up a can of vipers, but thought I would ask.....

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If we were to make the list again then I'd say drop them. I don't think they are different enough to warrant representation as a 3rd weapon option at epic-scale. They are rather pointless now. I have never taken them. The problem is of course that the list is established and some might have done their minis with ionheads, so I'd just let them be if I were the list developer.

Cheers

Agreed. Are the Ionheads balanced internally within the list? If the answer is yes, then let it go. There is a model for them and a scenario or game may come up which requires a lot of AP. Or perhaps a player has limited access to certain models and that particular person doesn't have a lot of AP save for the Ionheads.

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

On the other hand, they are one of the better represented units as far as capturing the feel of the vehicle in 40K goes...

New Tau codex is apparently out in a couple of months (April/May-ish depending on whether you count pre-orders) so I think the best bet is to wait and see if it gets up'ed to 4 shots and rending, at which point we can sit back and say it's close enough to the Railhead as far as Epic is concerned.

That said, I've had a couple of games against Orks with very few vehicles and actually been quite grateful for the long ranged AP, though I do think it was more along the lines of a happy accident rather than a recommended tactic.

This.

When you have to deal with horde armies they're very handy.

They are excellent at reducing infantry at range - something the Tau Railheads don't always do well (5+ to hit inf less if you have to move fast) and their infantry have too short a range of AP. They are excellent to add to a Mech Infantry formation when they're tasked with dealing with enemy infantry/tanks.

Did all the Ionheards come with SMS and the Hammerheads with Burstcannons? Mine did. If they need a small internal bump the stat lines could be separated to account for that.

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Not sure I'd say reducing infantry at range, they're far too expensive a platform to use to actually kill infantry - however they're exceptionally good at adding another BM or two to any formation across a wide area. Lets you play that little bit riskier because you know that if your main formation falls just short of breaking a formation, the hammerheads can just nudge them over the line.

Again, with orks, it's particularly useful as they're able to shed BM like nobody's business so up close it's often a case of all or nothing - if the unit's not broken they can take you out in assault.