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how does all artillery, or virtually all artillery cope with fast attack, airborne and drop assault stuff?

need to freeze frame the GMG review and have a look but I think artillery needs infantry screens and some additional close in defence stuff


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok had a look at the Medusa and Basilisk

Medusa, this needs a fair bit of terrain to work, or its going to be killed by marine missile launchers before it gets into range, will be able to hurt if it does get close though.

Basilisk, curious, really needs somewhere out of sight to deploy, but somewhere it can be co-located with something to keep enemy fast movers away from it, or be deployed somewhere essentially to occupy those fast movers as a disposable unit.

both are single dice weapons, ok 4+ to hit is good and they are both good guns for their role, both have the "that has to die or it will cause problems" traits, single turn output is not amazing per barrel, in quantity they can put the hurt on

suspect best use for a basilisk is killing titans, knights and enemy heavy armour firing indirect

both are vulnerable up close as neither has any close in secondary weapons and neither will live long in close assault - this feels right, it also means they need infantry screens or to be kept small and cheap enough to not really care if some enemy troops drop in to say hello.

I can see both being useful, the baslisk more so, the medusa I suspect will hardly ever get to actually fire, but will divert enemy anti tank fire for a while.

the artillery company is good for avoiding the -1 to hit and for a 10 point commander if you want 8 tubes is an obvious pick. the bastion detachments being open here makes for easy addition of tarantula and rapier batteries for defence though the cost will very quickly rack up, especially if your opponent either decides to ignore them or has artillery of their own.

overall good, not broken good, the primary threat is against a player who has the "sit back and wait for you" tactic, which is generally a way to lose anyway as now you can plink away at key units.

I can see a small basilisk battery in the form of 2x4 in an artillery company, they may gain some flak tarantula but that will probably be it, reasonably cheap to sit in a corner somewhere and be an annoyance thats hopefully not quite worth the resources to kill them


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Follow up, had a look at a few more

a superheavy tank company finally, so now you can put all your overpriced eggs in one small, very easy to break, formation!

*tumbleweed*

the Dracosan however looks interesting, a way for SA infantry to survive outside buildings, can see the axe lunatics loving these, not assault (thankfully), expensive but useful in that is brings some anti-armour capability that can then support the infantry who get out. debatable how much the cost uplift is worth it but can see if I run two infantry formations making one of them an armoured one.

essentially turns them into a Soviet style "motor rifle" formation, the lack of armoured slots to go with them is a weakness as they would seriously benefit from a few Churchill Crocodile, sorry Maclador Infernus, going with them as they look nice. curiously not "ignores cover" but still moderately useful for dealing with larger formations in buildings

overall the SA don't gain a huge number of things but do gain some welcomed options though nothing that looks cheap enough to be an auto include or game breaking, well any more game breaking than the Vanquishers of Doom already are which I suspect will remain the backbone of the force.

notable they lack something with a good rate of fire and reasonable armour (ala Sicaran) to act as a Shilka flak unit to escort stuff and counter speeders etc from the marine side. This has to be intentional

stratigo wrote:
Look, as peer modern conflicts are showing us, they really are dominated by heavy artillery

Yeah but holy cow is it bad design to make a formation where the buy in is like a commander model AND THEN gift magically taking away the -1 for shooting barrage at target out of los. Especailly in the context of one of the 4 bombers, the pathfinder, its entire existence is to basically do that, and now you don't even need one. Which i guess is saving all of us money as we can't even buy them anyway, nor is there any reason to save for some now lol

Marine toys

can see the sky hunter formation being golden, outflanking and with some decently fast moving stuff thats fragile - coming on from T2 but in effect swapping a turns movement to do it, without the ability to be shot at. perfect for getting behind armour moving up the board or for a threat that slows down enemy armour moving up the board

plus all the units are dirt cheap, none will likely live long but they seem designed to drop in, say hello, kill something gloriously as they die. for sure adding some speeders and jet bikes here, the ground bikes maybe useful attached to foot and mechanised infantry

drop assault stuff is actually surprisingly cheap to do, seriously so, need to think more on how to do that as it looks a half decent way to bring stuff in onto an enemy objective ore unguarded flank - drop front and centre is probably suicidal

the Spartan... ohh the Spartan.. so in firepower terms its essentially a predator with re-rolls on both dice not just one, and the ability to trade a bit of range for AP-2 over AP-1, can see that actually being useful. 2+ save and 2 wounds.

I think GW have played a bit of a curveball here, the firepower is less than I was expecting (3 or 4 dice) and was maybe thinking 1+ save but as a result its not an unreasonable profile. not cheap, but not eye wateringly expensive, probably not going to spam them though

the you have the land raider, which is actually different enough to be an interesting choice, especially since both are "transport" and not armour, so you are not running formations of either. Forward deployment could be good, nothing says you have to put anyone inside them but if terrain suits you certainly could


Overall of the two armies I think marines gain a lot more utility from this, SA fill a few gaps but marines gain a lot more functionality while SA don't really gain any counters to it

just a pity actually getting hold of the damned book is near impossible

however if you don't want the titan v titian stuff and only want the profiles I think waiting for on line army builders to update with the new profiles is probably a better bet anyway

 Crablezworth wrote:

stratigo wrote:
Look, as peer modern conflicts are showing us, they really are dominated by heavy artillery

Yeah but holy cow is it bad design to make a formation where the buy in is like a commander model AND THEN gift magically taking away the -1 for shooting barrage at target out of los. Especailly in the context of one of the 4 bombers, the pathfinder, its entire existence is to basically do that, and now you don't even need one. Which i guess is saving all of us money as we can't even buy them anyway, nor is there any reason to save for some now lol

I will say, between drop pods and outflanking fast elements, I don't think artillery is going to be as unmolested as some people think it will be.

stratigo wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:

stratigo wrote:
Look, as peer modern conflicts are showing us, they really are dominated by heavy artillery

Yeah but holy cow is it bad design to make a formation where the buy in is like a commander model AND THEN gift magically taking away the -1 for shooting barrage at target out of los. Especailly in the context of one of the 4 bombers, the pathfinder, its entire existence is to basically do that, and now you don't even need one. Which i guess is saving all of us money as we can't even buy them anyway, nor is there any reason to save for some now lol

I will say, between drop pods and outflanking fast elements, I don't think artillery is going to be as unmolested as some people think it will be.

^^^ this, I suspect the way to protect artillery from such is to make it never "that needs to die, and die now" as a target, similar to the Katyusha in Flames, fragile, powerful but fragile. you protect it by making it never quite worth the effort to kill compared to other stuff.

I also think the flanking units will be gainfully employed getting rear shots into vanquishers and enveloping infantry

Artillery sounds like it’s going to need some form of infantry support, if only to get in the way of enemy charges. Also interested in how effective those speedy units will be without Artillery to go pick on.

Cheap as they are, I’m not terribly fond of just giving my opponent VPs with nothing on the table for me.

SA Basilisk/Medusa at only 1 shot each won't get far at anything. Dracosan at only 1 wound (when Spartan has 2 ¿?¿????) will have no usefulness. Malcador's template I think ignores cover (otherwise... ).

SM on the other hand get way better and more useful reinforcements. Outflank is supercool on those grav units.

stratigo wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:

stratigo wrote:
Look, as peer modern conflicts are showing us, they really are dominated by heavy artillery

Yeah but holy cow is it bad design to make a formation where the buy in is like a commander model AND THEN gift magically taking away the -1 for shooting barrage at target out of los. Especailly in the context of one of the 4 bombers, the pathfinder, its entire existence is to basically do that, and now you don't even need one. Which i guess is saving all of us money as we can't even buy them anyway, nor is there any reason to save for some now lol

I will say, between drop pods and outflanking fast elements, I don't think artillery is going to be as unmolested as some people think it will be.

It doesn't change the fact that for all the crunchiness they're not even using it. Example, I expected the basilisks weapon to have siege weapon special rule, which essentially doubles a weapons range if the detachment doesn't move. That would have made perfect sense, make it 8-45 inches with siege weapon. You'd have a clear reason to not move and shoot, which a lot of stuff is lacking honestly with advance being the super order that it is. But also, this taking away of -1, it's literally the only downside of barrage, the only distinction of whether you want to shoot a unit directly or barrage is that 1 integer point. Like they couldn't have though of anything better for the formation than that? I'm really glad I didn't get a marauder pathfinder. It's already feeling like AT, like a different team or author took over mid stream.

My concern is, everyone at the scarcity end can't even conceive yet that the game has few to no limits on army construction because they're too busy trying every flgs and site trying to get their hands on, well, anything. At the things going brrr end, we good, we also realizng lists are getting dumber and dumber as the point level goes up both in activation fatigue and in just how much "only good stuff" either side can field when you're not in scarcity mode running every kheres contemptor you have just to make a thousand points. The vanquisher russ was already a big enough boogie man and for most it hasn't materialized out of the closet for scarcity reasons as mentioned, in my case I could have 50 by weeks end... Basilisk is the same problem now, very little contains its wide use other than supply and they're basically a target anything you want weapon system with very little downside much like russes IMO. I feel like goonhammer gets a lot of shoot the messenger comments with the reviews they posted, their assessment of solaur aux seemed pretty dead on, right down to medusas being like a bad joke next to basilisks.



On a side note, does anyone find it weird that all of the new units, every last one, there are zero point differences between minimum and maximum detachment sizes?

guessing the point difference is an attempt at removing the incentive to have fewer, larger units and move to more, smaller ones.

I also think is incredibly lazy and prefer the approach of there is a "cost" for the activation itself so extras get a discount and MSU gets more expensive.

leopard wrote:
guessing the point difference is an attempt at removing the incentive to have fewer, larger units and move to more, smaller ones.

I also think is incredibly lazy and prefer the approach of there is a "cost" for the activation itself so extras get a discount and MSU gets more expensive.

It just seems really odd to abandon that methodology mid stream. Feels like someone else or some other team took over and didn't really have a lot of time.


Something else I noticed is the cyclops is the first detachment I've seen where they explicitly say it has to all be armed the same way, I believe its because there's no visual distinction/wysiwyg between payloads, but it's weird.



Also, do you think pods not having orbital assault was a mistake or do you think its something only the dradclaw/karybdis will have?

suspect "Orbital Assault", or the lack of it on a normal pod is intentional, given a normal pods weapons load out is hardly worth picking up the dice for never mind out of sequence

slightly surprised its not on the deathwind, assuming its not on the deathwind - only had blurred GMG review text to consider

I do expect it on the dreadclaw which actually has some weapons so the only way you get to stop it is overwatch before it fires

that said given how cheap the basic pods are denying them that "fire as they drop" makes sense

and yes I do think whoever did the points either didn't get a memo or was someone different as pretty much all Heresy games have made it cheaper to upgrade a unit than to add another unit. guessing this was done by one of the 40k team who doesn't realise "no split fire" is a thing

leopard wrote:
suspect "Orbital Assault", or the lack of it on a normal pod is intentional, given a normal pods weapons load out is hardly worth picking up the dice for never mind out of sequence

slightly surprised its not on the deathwind, assuming its not on the deathwind - only had blurred GMG review text to consider

I do expect it on the dreadclaw which actually has some weapons so the only way you get to stop it is overwatch before it fires

that said given how cheap the basic pods are denying them that "fire as they drop" makes sense

and yes I do think whoever did the points either didn't get a memo or was someone different as pretty much all Heresy games have made it cheaper to upgrade a unit than to add another unit. guessing this was done by one of the 40k team who doesn't realise "no split fire" is a thing

Yeah it's really not there for dearthstorm pods, which is why I'm starting to think it was a mistake.

a mistake? in a GW book? in the otherwise excellently read and perfectly proof read Legions Imperialis?

please tell me such a thing isn't possible

leopard wrote:
a mistake? in a GW book? in the otherwise excellently read and perfectly proof read Legions Imperialis?

please tell me such a thing isn't possible

It's extra funny because deathstorm drop pods target everything, friend or foe in range, so it seems double odd for something so indiscriminate it just shoots an entire circle around itself to then for some reason give everyone a giant head start to move away from it lol

"Warning, warning, get to minimum safe distance, I'm about for fire everything, but I don't wanna hurt nobody"

that's health & safety for you