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I want to run 1 or 2 thunderfires in my SM.

I wish to know whether or not a thunderfire cannon is even viable.


And if so, how would one use it to maximum effectiveness.

Thank you for your time.

Thunderfire cannons are good, but it just takes a couple big guns and they are blown up. If you can keep it in cover and make sure they don't die, than they are pretty good imo.
They are a HUGE pain in the but to put together though.

Well I was planning on using the techmarine's bolster defense rule anyway. Also I really wouldn't care if they died or not seeing as how it means less guns firing at my Assault Termies in their LR!

TFCs are GOLD at low point games (1500 and less)

really cheap Heavy support.

4 small blast templates can wreak house.

Don't expect them to kill tanks, they won't.

they are very annoying for orks and nids. making them move as if in difficult terrain is killer as it can buy you 1 or maybe even 2 additional turns of shooting at them, and when fighting horde every turn shooting at them means less of them when CC happens.

These things bring the pain & they bring it heavy. However it is a glass cannon in every sense of the word. My friend takes one & if he gets first turn (Or it survives) it almost always makes back its points plus some. However a good player knows how deadly they are & will knock it out of commission ASAP. (As a Tau player I dumped 4 Marker Lights & 2 Broadside shots into it but was prepared to throw my crisis suits at it to) So I guess you could say it did good distracting my broadsides but that's why i run more than one team .

Point being, they are amazing, providing you can keep them alive. Also as previously stated they are NOT an anti-tank weapon. Sure they might break light vehicles but have your Lascannons or w/e break the vehicle then let the thunderfire pound the embarked unit.

I plan on getting 2 and deployment permitting, put them in different corners of the map, in cover.

That way, they'd have defilade over the board and can kind of sorta cover each other. Definitely putting the HW part of my tac squads with them.

I've only ever seen one in game and it killed itself walking on the board during DoW

If you've got some other guns that can bust transports and expose the enemy's infantry, go for it. Just remember to deploy them carefully, and use other units, because once enemies get close that thing is going up in smoke. Use the 60" range for all its worth.

I've used them to just mow down orks the one time my friend tried to run a horde orks list against my as opposed to his trucks which usually beat me. (We proxy nearly everything from a mixed bag of stuff and we have a chronic shortage of transports which makes trukk boyz harder to beat.)

I've also considered using them in a marine shooting list along side 2x AC dreads. (That list was tailored to face an enemy though and I knew that he'd need to focus on the dreads before the cannons.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:If you've got some other guns that can bust transports and expose the enemy's infantry, go for it. Just remember to deploy them carefully, and use other units, because once enemies get close that thing is going up in smoke. Use the 60" range for all its worth.

That makes me wonder if, for some lists, attaching a MotF with conversion beamer to a TF cannon as a wound soak and an extra blast might not be a terrible idea. I know that at maximum range the beamer is anti-tank, but as they move up towards you the two roles kind of merge.

Strategy aside, the TFC is both my favorite and most hated model. I love the way it looks, but it was also hands-down the most difficult model I have yet assembled. You will require files, a lot of pins, greenstuff, and a lot of patience to make it look good, but you're really going to want a dremel tool, a respirator, and even more patience to assemble one - even with the dremel, filing down the center collet took a long time, and it gets hot.

Thunderfires are Very good.

they are effective against land raiders actually...

Subterranean blast, Land Raider is now in difficult terrain.... next turn you have a 16% chance to immobilze it.

Yes, you aren't killing land raiders, but a 16% chance to make redeemers and crusaders worthless bawkses is amazing. A lascannon only has a 6% chance to immobilize or better vs a land raider.

Now, if you have an infantry target, by all means shoot them, but if you have nothing better to shoot, difficult terrain is the bane of land raiders.

Agreed with the above, thunderfires are very good, bordering awesome at times. They do require experience to get the most out of them, but when you hit that point, they will reliably take out hordes of the enemy. If you want to see it in action, I used two in a tournament: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/286959.page

I made a base for the model since it looked like it would not hold together well without alot of pins and even then looked iffy.

Being able to fortify was helpful, kept the cannon near the vindicator since the gun usually gets shot up, then you have a tech to do repairs on the vehicle (unless the overkill to destroy the gun gets him too).

I agree that creating difficult terrain is it's greatest use and then the occasional shots that ignore cover. Played a few games with it and managed to pay for itself every time (not by a huge margin but reasonable).

Glass Cannon and too static for my tastes.
A shame as I really want to try it, but never fits into my lists.

i don't understand why everyone says the TFC was tough to put together.

mine went together fine!



and having a 16% chance immobilize a LR.

thats only IF it moves.

if its a Vanilla LR then it probably won't need to move and LRRs and LRCs will probably just move up.

Thunderfire Cannon is one of the best units in the codex, IMHO.

You are not just buying it for the gun, but also the bolster defenses that you can boast a piece of terrain with.

What pushes it over the top for me is the "no cover" shot. Sure most things will get their saves from it, but against certain targets, you make them take saves on their "standard" armor save which is much less then what they would get with cover. It is a perfect tool against IG, Tyranids, and Deamons for that reason.

A properly built list around the Thunderfire Cannon can capitalize on the boast to cover, and put a hammer unit out front to draw fire away from it. I had one in my list when I placed 23rd in the Adepticon Championships, and it was a key part of my strategy.

Mahu wrote:

What pushes it over the top for me is the "no cover" shot. Sure most things will get their saves from it, but against certain targets, you make them take saves on their "standard" armor save which is much less then what they would get with cover. It is a perfect tool against IG, Tyranids, and Deamons for that reason.

And orks! No save at all, just 3+ you're dead. It is insane in action against orks

Esp. if you can tank shock and bunch them up just a bit more .

and having a 16% chance immobilize a LR.

thats only IF it moves.

if its a Vanilla LR then it probably won't need to move and LRRs and LRCs will probably just move up.

Thats why I specified redeemers and crusaders but left out godhammers when I made the statement. LRRs and LRCs moving up is the point, if they move they have a 16% chance of becoming immobilized and thus turn into static metal bawkses, if they dont move in order to avoid the roll then either you are playing against a newb, an idiot, or some sort of tactical genious.........

KKKKHHHAAAAAANNNN!!!!!
Oh wait...wrong guy...

I played a game against SparkeyG, where he was able to explode a battlewagon with boyz in it. Most of them survived, and normally, no big deal, they're in a crater.

Thunderfire cannon killed every single one in one volley.

Grey Templar wrote:i don't understand why everyone says the TFC was tough to put together.

mine went together fine!

There was a thread recently of the worst models that GWS currently has out. Judging by the dozens of posts in that thread alone, and by the 8 or 9 mentions of the assembly for it sucking in the 2 sentence summaries of the first page alone of a search for "thunderfire"... I'm gonna go out out a limb here and say your results were not typical.

I'll second, or third, the folks who say the TFC is a glass cannon. I played against one at Adepticon. It utterly smashed two squads of my Space Wolves who'd been knocked out of their transports. 'Course it helps when not ONE of the template shots scatters. 8 straight "hits". Ugh...

But when I finally got a shot at it, a single Stormbolter took it out.

Too late, too little, though...

So, yeah. it's a glass cannon, but it's darned effective when it can get its shots in.

Valete,

JohnS

AWESOME unit!! Great way to thin down hordes or attack those pesky units hidden in cover. And while folks say it's too fragile, when people start shooting at it they aren't shooty at you other pie plate delivering weapons.

@acastonguay:

The problem is, those high powered weapons are still shooting at the 'other pie plate delivering weapons'. It doesn't take a really powerful weapon to have a decent chance to do something to the TFC/TM.

Random hvy bolter fire is what I've seen down them most of the time... IMO it's quite comical.

The killing power of a thunderfire is unimpressive, but the unit is well worth it's points if used right.
It's just not a brute force unit. Even against squishy targets it's raw damage output is less than that of say a land speeder with a heavy flamer.
The unit does have great possibilities.

It can ignore cover saves which will devastate most sniper units such as eldar pathfinders or ratlings.

Ground Burst is underutilized. It drives me nuts to see space marine players fail to jump on the opportunity to hit a unit of bikes or jump packs with a ground burst. In both cases difficult terrain turns into dangerous terrain which will kill 1/6th on the enemy's next turn. The ability to put a unit in difficult terrain give a huge tactical advantage. It allows units such as sterngaurd to rapid fire at an ugly CC unit that is about 11 to 12" away, and remain relatively safe from being assaulted. To assault a unit 11" away a groundbursted unit will need a 5 and a 6 on 2 separate difficult terrain tests failing to reach the sternguard an average of 7 out of 9 times.

Scouts with camo cloaks are a T4 scoring unit with a 2+ cover save when placed in the reinforced building. BS3 sniper rifles make scouts a tragic unit, but in an objective based game keeping a T4 unit with a 2+ cover save on top of an objective is what wins the game. The synergism between a thunderfire and scouts is really good, I just don't see why so many SM players refuse to take a single squad of 5 scouts to go with their thunderfire cannon.

A specific mention on bikes, not only is it 2 Dangerous Terrain checks to move with bikers, but they can't turbo-boost as well.

It's a great toolbox unit to fight biker lists.... like Nob Bikers, Seer Councils, SM biker lists.

schadenfreude wrote:The killing power of a thunderfire is unimpressive, but the unit is well worth it's points if used right.
It's just not a brute force unit. Even against squishy targets it's raw damage output is less than that of say a land speeder with a heavy flamer.

What? When have you ever seen a heavy flamer remove 20+ orks in one round? And then follow it up with another 20+ the next? The killingpower of the thunderfire is insane for it's cost. The fragility and static nature of artillery is the only downside to these monsters.

All the firing modes have their uses. Ground burst might be underused, but it is the most specialized of the shots. If those guys trying to charge you are GEQ, the airburst is better, as it will simply wipe them. If they are MEQ, they will be seriously decimated by normal rounds (of course somewhat dependent on spacing). If they are bikers/jump packers or a vehicle without dozer, the ground detonation is the way to go.

Yup. It does a pile of damage to bunched-up enemies, and the Diff/Dang terrain shot and the Denies Cover shot are phenomenally useful. This thing can clean units Going to Ground in terrain off objectives in a way no other shooting unit can. Scouts with cloaks going to ground for 2+? Pathfinders in cover for 2+? Thunderfire magic eraser works wonders that can normally only be achieved by assaulting the buggers. A heavy flamer is almost comparable in damage, but still falls short compared to a clumped-up horde unit like Orks or Gaunts, and has a much smaller threat radius. Use range & cover (and your own vehicles) to keep it safe, and it’s the goods.

everyone seems to love this unit, but i've never been affected by it. i usually take one round of shooting lose some guys then i kill it no problem.
How are you "supposed " to use a thunderfire cannon?
If my local player is using it right, i'm of the opinion its a glass cannon, but if he's lowering its survivability by doing it wrong i may be inclined to change my opinon...