What is this nonsense people keep speaking about Blasts missing? In all my years playing 40K I can think of about four games where a Large Blast managed to miss anything, and all of those involved small, clumped units and big FUBAR's with the Scatter Dice.
And to this "compotent opponent with all his models 2" away from each other" nonsense - I LOVED those opponents because they pretty much made it impossible for me to miss with my big guns. All those models scattered all over meant that a significant portion of the board was covered as opposed to the guys whom stuck all their models within 1-1.5" of each other.
master of ordinance wrote: What is this nonsense people keep speaking about Blasts missing? In all my years playing 40K I can think of about four games where a Large Blast managed to miss anything, and all of those involved small, clumped units and big FUBAR's with the Scatter Dice.
And to this "compotent opponent with all his models 2" away from each other" nonsense - I LOVED those opponents because they pretty much made it impossible for me to miss with my big guns. All those models scattered all over meant that a significant portion of the board was covered as opposed to the guys whom stuck all their models within 1-1.5" of each other.
I've seen them miss entirely quite often. You are either the luckiest IG player ever or viewing this with rose colored glasses.
master of ordinance wrote: What is this nonsense people keep speaking about Blasts missing? In all my years playing 40K I can think of about four games where a Large Blast managed to miss anything, and all of those involved small, clumped units and big FUBAR's with the Scatter Dice.
And to this "compotent opponent with all his models 2" away from each other" nonsense - I LOVED those opponents because they pretty much made it impossible for me to miss with my big guns. All those models scattered all over meant that a significant portion of the board was covered as opposed to the guys whom stuck all their models within 1-1.5" of each other.
I'll bite.
My eradicators were shelved about half way through 7th outside of apoc because they simply never hit when it mattered, and the much more reliable Wyvern fit in the same problem space, frequently with an order of magnitude greater effectiveness since you have much more control over the blast profile.
As for maximum spacing; do you play on planet bowling ball typically? Maximum spacing seriously pays off when there's limited lines of sight to be shot at in the first place, and you don't have to pull it off all the time.
Going back to the competent opponent crack; even if you manage to wipe out 3 with one shot, you can't do it *again* because the distance between models will have dramatically increased after the center part of the line (which a competent opponent will fill with scrubs and push to the front) has evaporated.
The modern battle cannon is more reliable and has a better result from weight of fire than the old yin at the expense of potential variance. It also no longer suffers from diminished effectiveness of successive fire on the 44~% of the times it will have hit with properly calibrated dice. Finally, it can now be used more flexibly instead of having to wait for an opportune time to use.
TL;DR, it's an improvement in reliability at the expense of flair and the facilitation of tabletop miracles.
Vaktathi wrote: The Russ Battlecannon was always a big explosive shell, more akin to something like a KV2 or perhaps more of an IS2 (able to hurt tanks through concussive force and explosive power, but not necessarily through armor penetration), even back in the days of 2E. It has a huge monstrous bore and fires a huge shell. It's never been presented in the same way as something like a typical tank cannon from a modern MBT.
Not quite always. In 2nd Edition the battlcannon had the same blast radius as a frag missile (4" diameter). In 3rd one got shafted by losing an inch of diameter from its AoE (frag) and one got boosted by an inch (battlecannon).
This seems to be swinging the battlcannon back closer to its 2nd Edition incarnation when it had a modest blast radius and dealt multiple wounds.
Edit:
Actually looking further, it looks like the frag grenade and battlecannon finally have AoE parity again. It was a 4" diameter blast in 2nd as well. I wonder if GW are fiddling with the blast numbers based on the higher blast variation found in 2nd Edition?
Wonderful, the LRBTs were invulnerable to all but the most powerful weapons, now they are threatened by grots, and their main gun went from 3-4 hits a shot to 1.75. Oh, I only have 4.... I'm still very eager to play the new version, but things seem pretty bad for the LRBT Blasts just need to auto hit, as the flamers,and all would be fine.
And more to the point; LRs probably won't be targetted by small arms much anyway, since split fire is everywhere and for everything. Back to the isotropic competent player; why waste bolter shots on a Russ when you're more likely to kill its guardsman body guards.
My regular opponent plays tyranids. His carnifex all have twin linked devourer. Strenght 6, 12 shots. Nice, but totally useless here. Now, 24 shots, hurting on what, 5+ ? I'm not talking about bolter, but mid s weapons. When I bought LRBT, I knew what I bought: AV14 13 10, the opponents had to bring big guns (tank hunter lazcannons from my Iron Warriors opponent from example) or fight it hand to hand or flank him, etc. Now just shoot at it with this missile launcher in your Tac squad, or that scatterlaser you don't know what to do with, and it beggins to fall.
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Martel732 wrote: "were invulnerable to all but the most powerful weapons"
Not really true with all the ways to ignore AV in 7th.
I never faced a single graviton gun in my whole life, in fact. But I acknowledge that is my personnal meta
Haywire. D weapons. Self immobilization. Grav. Melta. All very real, and add on the terrible ordnance rule. Russes are not good in 7th. Even the lowly ba snicker a bit.
I never said they are good^^ But D weapons aren't even in each game, so it is not a problem, really. Haywire on the other hand were more often seen, to me, but usually had short ranges. Just right now, at least for my games, they seem more bad. The whole army of my opponent will be able to hurt them, they will hit less than 2 tyranids, may or may not instant death a venom/zoan/etc... when currently they always do it, Poor little thing, just give him auto hit already, lessen its cost a bit and get ride of ordnance (indeed a crappy rule)
I think Land Raiders will have some more shooting, don't they ? And I do hope they will have something like a better save / toughness, I really want to play one soon
I'm sorry if I'm a bit naysayer, but it hurts me that my poor little things are getting nerfed, especially the battlecanon that isn't good right now. To answer the thread, yes, it strikes me as underwhelming Hoewever, the 8th ed seems pretty neat for the others things
I don't think it's really a nerf at this point. It will speed things up a lot with respect to people optimizing their spacing as well. S8 AP 3 is only cutting it vs crappy lists anyway.
It may seem like a nerf if you are comparing the new stats with the memory of your Russ blasting 12 guys clumped up due to bad spacing. Once your Nubattlecannon, in an equally lucky situation, puts 16 wounds on some Riptide it might not seem so nerfed. I don't intend to reduce anyone's arguments to a case of rose colored glasses but the nucannon has just as much potential to be devastating as the old one, except it is more reliable, more versatile and it's effectiveness is not dependant on your opponents spacing. I know the people I play regularly would never let me get more than 2-3 his with a large blast.
Blasts are way more powerful in this edition, unless you were playing terrible players before.
Well that's excepting that one time where I targeted a Tyranid Pod, scattered 11 inches in exactly the direction I wanted, clipped a flying flyrant, and then proceeded to roll a 6. Bubye flyrant.
Blasts are way more powerful in this edition, unless you were playing terrible players before.
Well that's excepting that one time where I targeted a Tyranid Pod, scattered 11 inches in exactly the direction I wanted, clipped a flying flyrant, and then proceeded to roll a 6. Bubye flyrant.
But then that was a bit unlikely too...
Aside from Squadrons, I don't think that they will be much different for me. I don't roll enough 6s to make that big of a difference. One reason I don't play as much Risk as I used to.
Blasts are way more powerful in this edition, unless you were playing terrible players before.
Well that's excepting that one time where I targeted a Tyranid Pod, scattered 11 inches in exactly the direction I wanted, clipped a flying flyrant, and then proceeded to roll a 6. Bubye flyrant.
But then that was a bit unlikely too...
Aside from Squadrons, I don't think that they will be much different for me. I don't roll enough 6s to make that big of a difference. One reason I don't play as much Risk as I used to.
Large Blasts Before: single target: one hit
25mm base unit : two hits
Large Blasts Now: Single target: 3.5 hits
25mm base unit: 3.5 hits
In late, so it's possible this has been mentioned before, but...
I play Sisters of Battle. I use Exorcists, because they're our only tank that... Well, I was gonna say 'That is decent', but it's really our only tank.
Randomized number of shots SUCKS.
If we look at the mathhammer, it's already pretty obvious that the damage output isn't phenomenal, but that's not really the point. See, it doesn't matter what the potential damage output is - As a tactically-thinking player, I have to assume I'm going to whiff my roll, get one shot, and cause minimal damage.
It's not like firing a squad of infantry or a multi-shot voey from a regular gun, where miserable rolling is possible, but generally happens on a bell curve. If I'm firing ten Boltguns at rapid fire range, the average is about thirteen hits, but I'm also almost certain to never get less than 8-9, and I know I won't get more than 15-16 hits. Results can be expected to happen within a certain range, which makes those results reliable, and lets me plan for them.
This applies to current Blasts, too, with more risk/reward. With BS4 being my standard as a Sisters/Marine player, I'm able to decide target priority accurately. Clumped, small units provide high risk/high reward, spread out larger units are garunteed to hit but will cause fewer wounds.
With that all in mind... Exorcists are too unreliable to be used effectively. If I fire at a tank or a MC or a squad of multiwound T4 models, I might roll a 6 and utterly devestate my target, or I might roll a 1 and glance off with minimal damage, and I have *no way of predicting results until I roll the dice*. I can't mitigate risk. I can't take a safer, more reliable option. I can't even use psychic powers or other buffs to make my shooting more reliable, since it's not my BS that needs buffing.
I have won games all thanks to a lucky '6' roll letting me kill a crucial target. I have lost many games by rolling 1s and 2s on turn one, letting my opponent take his starting turn relatively unscathed.
It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.
I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.
It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.
I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.
One or two hits maximum? Unless everyone at your LGS is putting models in conga lines on 30mm bases... How?
Also, remember that Deep Strikers, blown up/destroyed transports, ramming, and many other things in-game can force units to clump together. You just assaulted one of my tanks? Great, now all your models are stuck in B2B.
I should mention for context that I usually play in the 1750-2k range, where there are enough targets that finding a good one is never impossible unless my opponent goes out of his way to deny any opportunity, in which case I'm handicapping his movement with my army choices by controlling how he places things. (There's enough terrain at my LGS that anyone spreading out their squads maximally will certainly be moving through terrain.)
I'm not gonna argue that blasts are *great* -trading a fairly reliable 3 hits with a 4-5 on the high curve and a minimum of 1-2 on the low end (unless you whiff entirely, which happens less than 10% of the time in my experience), but that's still not the point.
I'd even rather take your proposed 1-2 reliable hits over a D6 roll. If I could give my Exorcists Heavy 3, I would do it in a heartbeat.
And, maybe it's just my opponents, but my exorcists usually get ignored for more threatening things. I usually bring two (I don't own a third,) and usually one of them survives the battle - Half the time it doesn't do anything more than chip hull points. It CAN do something scary - Say, put 4 HPS ona Knight in one volley - But that can't be relied on or planned for.
Compared to, say, 5 melta Dominions in an Immolator, (Who admittedly cost 45pts more,) where you're getting 6 melta shots garunteed, with very reliable ignores-cover once per game. It's shorter range and a bit more fragile, sure, but with an effective 36" threat radius from deployment (Scout 12", move 6", get out 6", shoot 12",) you get firepower that is double the average of an Exorcist, infinutely more reliable, and that also provides bonus target saturation. I'd take two of these over three Exorcists, any day.
Small blast frag grenade has d6 shots, Large blast Leman Russ has d6 shots. Confirmation that each blast weapon will not have a 'set' number based on its size from 7th.
Makes sense since a frag grenade fragments and a battle cannon is designed for pure kinetic damage with very little blast. So we may see totally different amounts of shots compared to old blast size now.
Blasts are way more powerful in this edition, unless you were playing terrible players before.
Well that's excepting that one time where I targeted a Tyranid Pod, scattered 11 inches in exactly the direction I wanted, clipped a flying flyrant, and then proceeded to roll a 6. Bubye flyrant.
But then that was a bit unlikely too...
Aside from Squadrons, I don't think that they will be much different for me. I don't roll enough 6s to make that big of a difference. One reason I don't play as much Risk as I used to.
Large Blasts Before: single target: one hit
25mm base unit : two hits
Large Blasts Now: Single target: 3.5 hits
25mm base unit: 3.5 hits
It's not about sixes, it's just way way better.
3.5 hits? Check the rules.
And what you gain with attacks you lose in wounds they gained. dreadnoughts for example aren't that much more survivable if at all. Just more swingy to take them out.
It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.
I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.
One or two hits maximum? Unless everyone at your LGS is putting models in conga lines on 30mm bases... How?
I'm not talking LGS, I'm talking tournaments, and I never had even the opportunity to hit more than 3 targets with a blast unless I was playing rather bad opponents.
Blasts are way more powerful in this edition, unless you were playing terrible players before.
Well that's excepting that one time where I targeted a Tyranid Pod, scattered 11 inches in exactly the direction I wanted, clipped a flying flyrant, and then proceeded to roll a 6. Bubye flyrant.
But then that was a bit unlikely too...
Aside from Squadrons, I don't think that they will be much different for me. I don't roll enough 6s to make that big of a difference. One reason I don't play as much Risk as I used to.
Large Blasts Before: single target: one hit
25mm base unit : two hits
Large Blasts Now: Single target: 3.5 hits
25mm base unit: 3.5 hits
It's not about sixes, it's just way way better.
3.5 hits? Check the rules.
And what you gain with attacks you lose in wounds they gained. dreadnoughts for example aren't that much more survivable if at all. Just more swingy to take them out.
Right, those are not hits but shots, it's still fairly the same things, most scattering blasts did not do much though, you could change the numbers somewhat, slightly in favor of Blasts because they didn't miss as hard usually.
What you're saying about wounds is that the targets now have more HP. that's true, but now you deal D3 or D6 wounds with any weapon that was meant to hunt anything big.
Blasts got a lot better overall, and a lot simpler.
Large Blasts Before: single target: one hit
25mm base unit : two hits
Large Blasts Now: Single target: 3.5 hits
25mm base unit: 3.5 hits
It's not about sixes, it's just way way better.
you get 3.5 shots that also need to roll to-hit. So, it's 1.75 for a leman russ. Those 1.75 will than deal d6 wounds each. It's not too bad depending on how much it costs. I assume it would be something like current 30-35 pts. Seems fair for such a multi-purpose weapon that's around average at any job. However, you can now shoot your weapons at different targets. So, i'm afraid it will only see play in small formats where you can't bring more specialised weapons for every job and have to settle in for a generalist weapon.
It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.
I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.
One or two hits maximum? Unless everyone at your LGS is putting models in conga lines on 30mm bases... How?
I'm not talking LGS, I'm talking tournaments, and I never had even the opportunity to hit more than 3 targets with a blast unless I was playing rather bad opponents.
Blasts are way more powerful in this edition, unless you were playing terrible players before.
Well that's excepting that one time where I targeted a Tyranid Pod, scattered 11 inches in exactly the direction I wanted, clipped a flying flyrant, and then proceeded to roll a 6. Bubye flyrant.
But then that was a bit unlikely too...
Aside from Squadrons, I don't think that they will be much different for me. I don't roll enough 6s to make that big of a difference. One reason I don't play as much Risk as I used to.
Large Blasts Before: single target: one hit
25mm base unit : two hits
Large Blasts Now: Single target: 3.5 hits
25mm base unit: 3.5 hits
It's not about sixes, it's just way way better.
3.5 hits? Check the rules.
And what you gain with attacks you lose in wounds they gained. dreadnoughts for example aren't that much more survivable if at all. Just more swingy to take them out.
Right, those are not hits but shots, it's still fairly the same things, most scattering blasts did not do much though, you could change the numbers somewhat, slightly in favor of Blasts because they didn't miss as hard usually.
And you gained wounds too so no that doesn't make any sense.
Blasts got a lot better overall, and a lot simpler.
Where has this fallacy that scattering large blasts didn't do much come from? It's total tripe! If you targetted the centre of a unit, basically any direction it scattered (even with bs2 Renegades) meant you got multiple models, unless you were targeting MSU units - even then you had a 180ish degree window that was good for the scatter. Scattering from a vehicle meant that you had the 2.5" of the blast + ~3" from the edge of the vehicle + BS. Even with Renegades at BS2 you needed to roll 9 (or 8 if you were unlucky with the width of the vehicle) to miss the vehicle!
As to a d6 'blast' now, you get 3.5 *shots* which translates to 1.75 hits on average with BS3. That is miles worse than before.
Then again - we arent sure all large blasts are d6 shots. Could be more for some.
Right, those are not hits but shots, it's still fairly the same things, most scattering blasts did not do much though, you could change the numbers somewhat, slightly in favor of Blasts because they didn't miss as hard usually.
What you're saying about wounds is that the targets now have more HP. that's true, but now you deal D3 or D6 wounds with any weapon that was meant to hunt anything big.
Blasts got a lot better overall, and a lot simpler.
Blasts got simpler and worse vs infantry, stayed about the same vs vehicles and are now better vs monstrous creatures.
They are certainly not "better", and by no means "a lot better".
Especially vs units which just consolidated after cc in tight terrain blasts where devastating. Killing four to six models was pretty common. Now the chance to kill four models is extremely low, especially with the glorious BS of 4+.
I still hope that Leman Russ tanks have some ability to boost their main gun
It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.
I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.
One or two hits maximum? Unless everyone at your LGS is putting models in conga lines on 30mm bases... How?
I'm not talking LGS, I'm talking tournaments, and I never had even the opportunity to hit more than 3 targets with a blast unless I was playing rather bad opponents.
First off, which is it: 3 hits, or 1-2 hits maximum? You've said both. Getting a potential three hits, averaging 2, and rarely missing entirely, is better than what a D6 roll on a 4+ to hit will average you. (And you're still ignoring the aforementioned ways of forcing units to cluster. Haven't you ever blown up a transport, then taken advantage of the clustered units who had to huddle out?)
And to clarify, when I said 'LGS' I was referring both to casual games and local tournaments - 99% of players can't or don't make it to the big tournament events. It's local tournaments or bust. While big events should of course be considered (top level play is always worth thinking of,) building the game with no other playstyles in mind is incredibly dumb.
Even if that's the goal, though, it's dumb - If we're being generous, top level players are getting an average of .5 more hits, 1 hit if we're stretching credebility, but at a massive reliability cost that completely undercuts any gains experienced. If your argument is 'This fix makes the weapon more appealing to tournament players', it's a bad argument.
It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.
I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.
One or two hits maximum? Unless everyone at your LGS is putting models in conga lines on 30mm bases... How?
I'm not talking LGS, I'm talking tournaments, and I never had even the opportunity to hit more than 3 targets with a blast unless I was playing rather bad opponents.
First off, which is it: 3 hits, or 1-2 hits maximum? You've said both. Getting a potential three hits, averaging 2, and rarely missing entirely, is better than what a D6 roll on a 4+ to hit will average you.
It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.
It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.
So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.
Blasts have lost their ability to pick up models hiding out of los behind transports. And you can safely cluster up your dudes. On the other hand, properly spacing an ork horde took an extra hour away from the game.
I am not sure how anybody thinks you could ever get less then two models on a direct hit with a large blast.
Regardless of base size unit coherency is 2in and a large blast has a radius of 2.5in. The only restriction that I am aware of is the center of the blast must be over a model or the base of a model in the target unit. So just place the large blast on the edge of the base and you cannot get less than 2 hits.
NL_Cirrus wrote: I am not sure how anybody thinks you could ever get less then two models on a direct hit with a large blast.
Regardless of base size unit coherency is 2in and a large blast has a radius of 2.5in. The only restriction that I am aware of is the center of the blast must be over a model or the base of a model in the target unit. So just place the large blast on the edge of the base and you cannot get less than 2 hits.
Did anyone say less than two hits on a unit composed of multiple models?
It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.
It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.
So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.
'Vastly better' is one extra hit, at the cost of any semblance of reliability? I don't track.
Also, even with perfect spacing, a 25mm base is less than 1" wide, so a 5" blast should always get three hits on a direct shot unless someone is cheating.
And, most importantly, you keep ignoring the biggest point of my argument: Unless you play on a barren, empty board with no terrain, don't use Deep Strikers, and don't ever see transports or vehicles on the board, there are always many ways to get units to cluster together. Ramming units to force them to group up into a clump, hitting Deep Strikers while they're vulnerable, popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle; There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you? Well, they're gonna be stacked on each other unless they rolled really well for consolidation, so it's the perfect time to strike back.
Jeez, these tournaments you go to sure sound like they lack any sort of nuance. That, or you're stretching the reality of the situation into pretzels so your opinion will look less noticeably contrived.
It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.
It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.
So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.
'Vastly better' is one extra hit, at the cost of any semblance of reliability? I don't track.
Also, even with perfect spacing, a 25mm base is less than 1" wide, so a 5" blast should always get three hits on a direct shot unless someone is cheating.
And, most importantly, you keep ignoring the biggest point of my argument: Unless you play on a barren, empty board with no terrain, don't use Deep Strikers, and don't ever see transports or vehicles on the board, there are always many ways to get units to cluster together. Ramming units to force them to group up into a clump, hitting Deep Strikers while they're vulnerable, popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle; There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you? Well, they're gonna be stacked on each other unless they rolled really well for consolidation, so it's the perfect time to strike back.
Jeez, these tournaments you go to sure sound like they lack any sort of nuance. That, or you're stretching the reality of the situation into pretzels so your opinion will look less noticeably contrived.
I see what you mean, but I honestly don't think those corner cases where the old blast was better compensate all those where the new blast is better.
Your point on these 25mm bases is interesting, I've always assimilated them to 1" erroneously and I guess I must not have been the only one.
That gives us an average of 2 hits vs 2.4 for the new blasts, not bad.
Overall we're still stuck with the following:
Single targets: new blast is 3.5x better
multiple targets, spaced properly, any base size except 25mm, 1.5x better
multiple targets, spaced properly, 25mm bases, 1.1x better
multiple targets clumped together, 1.5x worse or something (because missing a juicy clump costs a ton of efficiency)
It may be just my experience, but whenever I have a lot of blasts, it seems to be impossible to find clumped targets.
I personally find the new blasts more reliable and more powerful as well as more flexible (abilty to deal with heavy targets).
1. Assumes you survive the contents shooting you, which given deepstrikers of any significance are SM, generally with either grav or melta, is highly optimistic. That the LRBT costs on par with 2 tac squads with free drop pods and meltas in a gladius is not to be discounted easily either.
popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle;
1. Is not something the Isotropic Competent player will allow to happen, since an explodes result for a chimera (for example) gives him an approximately 19" oval to spread his troops around
2. assumes you even have line of sight if he hides behind a wreck
There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you?
1. In the case of a tank, assumes you survived; and didn't get one of the 5/6 results that prevent you from firing a blast weapon and/or moving away far enough not to get hit by a template weapon from your own side.
2. in the case of a sweep, then yes, that's actually true.
Now it can be done, and scoring a perfect result from a wyvern after bunching up something is a joy to behold... but the amount of investment to make it happen, often at the expense of other opportunities, and the shear number of things that can go *wrong* hints the greater regularity afforded by the non-template approach is more valuable.
It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.
It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.
So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.
'Vastly better' is one extra hit, at the cost of any semblance of reliability? I don't track.
Also, even with perfect spacing, a 25mm base is less than 1" wide, so a 5" blast should always get three hits on a direct shot unless someone is cheating.
And, most importantly, you keep ignoring the biggest point of my argument: Unless you play on a barren, empty board with no terrain, don't use Deep Strikers, and don't ever see transports or vehicles on the board, there are always many ways to get units to cluster together. Ramming units to force them to group up into a clump, hitting Deep Strikers while they're vulnerable, popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle; There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you? Well, they're gonna be stacked on each other unless they rolled really well for consolidation, so it's the perfect time to strike back.
Jeez, these tournaments you go to sure sound like they lack any sort of nuance. That, or you're stretching the reality of the situation into pretzels so your opinion will look less noticeably contrived.
Yeah, and if you did force your opponent to put their troops in to thinly spread lines to avoid getting blasted you've actually done quite well because a unit is much less mobile, harder to control LoS and more likely to have part of the unit out of range when spread out like that, especially a large unit.
Admittedly I haven't played a lot of games in recent years, but my observation was people only bothered to thinly spread their most elite units, you could usually find a squad of something with a 3+ or 4+ save that wasn't spread in a line to try and get a handful of battle cannon hits on.
To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.
Waaaghpower wrote: To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.
You are right, they are not good. They are even worse than they where as an average of 4 hits on well spaced infantry has gone down to an average of one and a quarter.
It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.
I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.
One or two hits maximum? Unless everyone at your LGS is putting models in conga lines on 30mm bases... How?
I'm not talking LGS, I'm talking tournaments, and I never had even the opportunity to hit more than 3 targets with a blast unless I was playing rather bad opponents.
First off, which is it: 3 hits, or 1-2 hits maximum? You've said both. Getting a potential three hits, averaging 2, and rarely missing entirely, is better than what a D6 roll on a 4+ to hit will average you.
It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.
It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.
So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.
If you were smart, or just used common sense tbf, you would place it on a model with a model either side of it (unless of course you are talking about 2 model units?), then IF the opponent was playing a conga line up the board, you would hit at the absolute bare minimum 3 models with a hit. If the opponent wasn't playing conga line but was still placing models ALL at 2" coherency you would still hit 4-5 models if it was a central model in the unit. This is because you have a 2.5" radius and the coherency rules are 2" away. That's pure and simple maths.
Unless you always targetted an 'edge' model for some reason? That would explain what you are saying.
Waaaghpower wrote: To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.
You are right, they are not good. They are even worse than they where as an average of 4 hits on well spaced infantry has gone down to an average of one and a quarter.
I have yet to see legitimate evidence of numbers that low, unless your opponent it outright cheating, or has so few models that blasts wouldn't threaten them anyways.
And even still, those numbers don't justify the new rules, because the new 'blast' rules are just as crappy and even more unreliable.
How so? Even the crappiest of marksmen could hit a single model on a 25mm base half the time with a Large Blast, if they're on their own. Make the base bigger or put them in a squad, and it's almost impossible to miss. It wasn't powerful, but it WAS reliable.
Now, you could get 6 shots and pretty much wipe out any big target or quite a few models, or you could get 1 shot and bounce off your target. Even if the average number of hits put out is higher (which it isn't,) it's less predictable when deciding who to target and, thus, less reliable.
How so? Even the crappiest of marksmen could hit a single model on a 25mm base half the time with a Large Blast, if they're on their own. Make the base bigger or put them in a squad, and it's almost impossible to miss. It wasn't powerful, but it WAS reliable.
Now, you could get 6 shots and pretty much wipe out any big target or quite a few models, or you could get 1 shot and bounce off your target. Even if the average number of hits put out is higher (which it isn't,) it's less predictable when deciding who to target and, thus, less reliable.
Hrm, with a template sporting a 2.5" radius, and BS scatter subtraction, with a 33% default hit rate, a BS3 model would net an average of 0.61 hits per shot against a single 28mm basic infantry model. Drop that to BS2 and you're looking at 0.52 hits.
Compared to straight BS3 or BS2 at 0.5 and 0.33 hits per shot respectively, doesnt sound delusional at all.
This also doesn't account for the removal of templates, which didn't even have scatter to account for. Torrent weapons in particular had no issue getting a good hit floor versus massed models, which was one of the major reasons Heldrakes were such a thing for Chaos throughout 6th.
Man, if the naysayers had a good time painstakingly spacing their infantry models every time they moved, then knock yourselves out.
If you had fun squinting at that blast template, going back and forth with your opponent over what's underneath and what's partial and what's got cover from the centre hole, more power to you.
If you enjoyed taking the pains to roll that scatter die close to the target without knocking anything over, agonising over the precise angle of the tiny arrow, and picking your way through spiky terrain pieces and giant fragile finecast demons to fit that ruler in so you could figure out if the small blast is going to hit or not, baby you do you.
After almost two solid decades of wading through that mire myself, personally I'll take a die roll...
The concerns of some here regarding how the new blast rules affect certain weapons is valid - for what it's worth, they left in the opportunity for some tweaking down the line, which may assuage a few. But ultimately, not having templates is just better for the game.
I'm surprised nobody has brought this up yet, but the battle cannon isn't the only blast weapon we have a preview of now. The NuMarine preview had a profile for frag grenades.
6" Grenade d6 S3 AP- D1
So frag grenades, formerly a small blast, have the same d6 shots as a battle cannon, formerly a large blast. Now, with only two data points we can't say for sure whether this is going to apply generally or if this is just frags getting a stealth buff into the "large blast" category, but the implications are potentially interesting.
Does this mean that Executioners will be spitting out 3d6/5d6 plasma shots? 3d6 on mortar teams? Will the Wyvern's 4x TL small blast, when combined with the change to Twin Linked, translate into 8d6?
Well I suppose there's a few possibilities right now.
1: Frags are getting stealth-buffed to "large blast", small blast will be d3.
2: The battle cannon is getting stealth-nerfed to "small blast", large blasts will be 2d6 or something like that.
3: Large and small blasts are being merged into a single type, all blast weapons will be d6 regardless of their former size (with an exception for Apocalyptic blasts, I would hope!)
4: Each blast weapon will have its own shot rate tailored to balance it, the fact that battle cannons and frags both happen to be d6 is a coincidence.
Considering the emphasis on simplification in 8th I suspect #3 is most likely. Which can alternately be viewed as bad news for single-shot large blast weapons, or great news for spammy small blasts.
Also if you'd read my whole post, bruh, you would have seen that I was talking about 40k from the perspective of many editions worth of template woes. It's been a problem for a long time.
I'm surprised nobody has brought this up yet, but the battle cannon isn't the only blast weapon we have a preview of now. The NuMarine preview had a profile for frag grenades.
6" Grenade d6 S3 AP- D1
So frag grenades, formerly a small blast, have the same d6 shots as a battle cannon, formerly a large blast. Now, with only two data points we can't say for sure whether this is going to apply generally or if this is just frags getting a stealth buff into the "large blast" category, but the implications are potentially interesting.
Does this mean that Executioners will be spitting out 3d6/5d6 plasma shots? 3d6 on mortar teams? Will the Wyvern's 4x TL small blast, when combined with the change to Twin Linked, translate into 8d6?
Well I suppose there's a few possibilities right now.
1: Frags are getting stealth-buffed to "large blast", small blast will be d3.
2: The battle cannon is getting stealth-nerfed to "small blast", large blasts will be 2d6 or something like that.
3: Large and small blasts are being merged into a single type, all blast weapons will be d6 regardless of their former size (with an exception for Apocalyptic blasts, I would hope!)
4: Each blast weapon will have its own shot rate tailored to balance it, the fact that battle cannons and frags both happen to be d6 is a coincidence.
Considering the emphasis on simplification in 8th I suspect #3 is most likely. Which can alternately be viewed as bad news for single-shot large blast weapons, or great news for spammy small blasts.
Thoughts/speculation/wild mass guessing?
This is all speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if many blast weapons have their own special rules and are no longer as uniform as they once were. We might see many formerly large blast weapons getting bonus attacks and/or bonuses to hit for every X models in a unit. Many artillery pieces get a bonus for every 10 models in a unit. Smaller blast weapons might not get any bonuses against larger units.
It seems like in 40k horde units tend to be 10-30 models while in AoS that is more of a normal sized unit and horde units are more commonly 20-60. I could definitely be wrong about that, as I tend to prefer horde armies so that is mostly what I've read about in AoS. If unit sizes are smaller in 40k than AoS I could see them doling out bonuses to blasts and leadership based on every five models rather than every ten, but that is wild speculation on my part.
ross-128 wrote: I'm surprised nobody has brought this up yet, but the battle cannon isn't the only blast weapon we have a preview of now. The NuMarine preview had a profile for frag grenades.
6" Grenade d6 S3 AP- D1
So frag grenades, formerly a small blast, have the same d6 shots as a battle cannon, formerly a large blast. Now, with only two data points we can't say for sure whether this is going to apply generally or if this is just frags getting a stealth buff into the "large blast" category, but the implications are potentially interesting.
Does this mean that Executioners will be spitting out 3d6/5d6 plasma shots? 3d6 on mortar teams? Will the Wyvern's 4x TL small blast, when combined with the change to Twin Linked, translate into 8d6?
Well I suppose there's a few possibilities right now.
1: Frags are getting stealth-buffed to "large blast", small blast will be d3.
2: The battle cannon is getting stealth-nerfed to "small blast", large blasts will be 2d6 or something like that.
3: Large and small blasts are being merged into a single type, all blast weapons will be d6 regardless of their former size (with an exception for Apocalyptic blasts, I would hope!)
4: Each blast weapon will have its own shot rate tailored to balance it, the fact that battle cannons and frags both happen to be d6 is a coincidence.
Considering the emphasis on simplification in 8th I suspect #3 is most likely. Which can alternately be viewed as bad news for single-shot large blast weapons, or great news for spammy small blasts.
Small blasts were getting irrelevant anyway. I agree on the case of large blasts but yeah small blast sucked unless we'd be able to shoot into close combat but that's mostly not allowed. In the grim darkness of the far future there is no idea of acceptable friendly fire unless it's by accident (which is idiotic).
Waaaghpower wrote: To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.
Complexity=/=good.
Blasts were so arse to deal with that guard and renegades could win games just by pulling a gak ton of artillery out of a bag and making their opponent 'nope' their way out. In fact bringing lots of blasts was so aggressively unpleasant to play against you might as well of just just gut-stab your opponent. Same sensation just doesn't take 15 hours to do.
