Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've read on a couple of threads that cannons are overpowered cos they can just snipe characters. But doesnt the character getting shot at have a 2+ look out sir?

It is better when the character is alone ie. riding a Monster mount. But, it does work against those in a unit as well. The character does get the 2+ look out, but a 1-6 chance to knock out a character is not that bad.

I've had it happen a lot. I makes big deal to how I play my VC, since I've had my general sniped a few times.

The LOS goes a fairly decent way to protecting them, but with 2 cannons a turn doing this that's a 1 in 3 chance to fail.

The main reason most people dislike it is that it's far too easy to pick up points this way. There's absolutely no skill involved in it.

Its mostly that characters outside of units are dead meat. I have had a few lucky failures but mostly its just a nice something extra that might happen.

I use cannons to kill monsters and warmachines, and pick off remnant units late game. Or snipe characters out of small units that are trying to preserve their points in the last couple turns that no longer have their LoS.

It more a case of certain armies can be pretty much instantly boned on turn 1 due to cannons character sniping...

For example, no Undead player, (VC's mainly), is thrilled when facing a pair of cannons that will aim to murder their likely 400+ pts General who's death not only likely deprives them of their most powerful caster and/or fighter, but then also forces the army to begin crumbling back into piles of bones!

By the same token, A Daemon or Lizardman player who likely is forced to invest 400-520+ pts into said general, who is also their only way of getting a Lv4 caster is going to be very unhappy when a cannon ball takes their General+Lv4's head off... (Lizardmen at least get a Look out Sir! roll AND a kick@$$ ward save, Daemons can only just sit back and pray!)

It's the simple fact that a early renaissance cannon-equivlalent can be sniper accurate and hit a single infantry target with near 100% accuracty. Even modern sniper rifles are not THAT accurate.

Well, I don't know about you, but most leaders in the renaissance were not making big targets of themselves by riding around on giant dragons or chariots.

And the main difference between 1400s and 1700-1800s artillery was mostly mathematics. I think the Dwarves have developed sophisticated math to help with cannon accuracy, something the Empire has adopted. Ogres compensate by putting lots of cannonballs in their cannons. And daemons are daemons.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, I don't know about you, but most leaders in the renaissance were not making big targets of themselves by riding around on giant dragons or chariots.

And the main difference between 1400s and 1700-1800s artillery was mostly mathematics. I think the Dwarves have developed sophisticated math to help with cannon accuracy, something the Empire has adopted. Ogres compensate by putting lots of cannonballs in their cannons. And daemons are daemons.

I think you kind of are missing the point and general complaint. Shooting a dragon or chariot is not the kind of sniping that people mostly hate. Sniping an infantry character or even a cavalry character is what really seems wrong to most people. It is very easy in the current rules to have a good chance at picking out a character in a big unit and forcing a los roll. This is just far to accurate of a way to use cannons and doesnt make any sense in a medieval/fantasy setting.

On the topic of shooting dragons, cannons strongly inhibit people from taking them because you can 1 shot them with several armies.

I would like to see cannonballs only able to do d3 damage to anything that has the large target rule but I would keep the d6 damage to anything that does not have the large target rule.

I agree about the large target thing and its something I've advocated for a while.

The 2+ LoS represents the difficulty of picking a character out of the unit quite nicely. Although that's not the way GW words it.

The mechanics are abstracted to make a playable game. And I have not yet found a decent way of reducing cannon accuracy without totally destroying their utility.

The first thought that came to mind was to have to reload them for a turn before firing but that would literally cut their usefulness in half, so maybe take a leadership test to make a "swift reform" to load the cannon faster?

A skill check of some kind wouldn't be out of the question. It shouldn't be Ld based though, that would allow for the General and BSB to be used.

Nearly every character is going to have a ward save. Even with 2 cannons shooting, you still have the chance of misfire, bad bounce, then have to beat ward, then have to beat wounds. As soon as they are in CC, you can't use it. If they are blocked by terrain or monstrous units, you can't use it (well).

Characters have a ton of protection as it is. LoS is a 2+ ward save and the only unit that can use it is usually >100pts and has a chance to blow itself up. And if it shoots at the char it's not shooting at something else. Like a monster, which it has a vastly better chance of taking out.

Like if your VC army has a terrorgheist and a vampire with a 4+ ward stuck in infantry and the enemy has 2 cannons, I can almost guarantee he's going to shoot at the terrorgheist. The vamp shot is way too likely to fail and simply take out some rank and file infantry. Then next round you got some stupid screaming monster in your face doing a bazillion wounds a round.

Whilst that's certainly true, not every army has access to high impact monsters to distract firepower- for example, it's not uncommon for Wood Elves or Beastmen to run without monsters, and other armies just don't even have them in their book.

It's also not true that nearly every character is going to have a ward save, not even close. Taking ward saves on mages or BSBs that are designed to never see combat through a combination of deployment and good game mechanics (ie, actual legitimate gameplay) is a waste of points and not a justification for being able to cannon snipe. In competitive lists, if you have the points free for ward saves you're more likely to see magic resistance.

The point isn't that cannon sniping is a guaranteed way to kill characters, and nor is the argument in favour of it the odds against it happening. The point is that cannon sniping is an extremely abusable mechanic that works against the purpose and design of cannons (a single shot designed to kill monsters etc) which has far too much reward hinging on absolutely no skill.

That alone is enough to make it categorically bad for the game.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I agree about the large target thing and its something I've advocated for a while.

The 2+ LoS represents the difficulty of picking a character out of the unit quite nicely. Although that's not the way GW words it.

The mechanics are abstracted to make a playable game. And I have not yet found a decent way of reducing cannon accuracy without totally destroying their utility.

Give them a rule where if they are aiming at a single non-monsterous target (as opposed to a unit or a monster), they have to make a BS to-hit roll. They're still perfectly viable monster-killers and unit-wreckers, but can no longer snipe characters even semi-reliably.

That wouldn't work as the targets of cannons are not models but points on the table. They attack a physical location and not the enemy models directly.

And the BS roll is to see if they hit that point accurately enough to actually hit the individual model. If they miss, they miss that model - but then normal rules for hitting units apply (if the model is in a unit).

You could add a rule to characters saying that if they are not in a unit and are hit by a template weapon they may ignore the hit on a 5+ to represent the difficulty in hitting a single target. Regular BS based shooting suffers an additional -1 to hit lone characters.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Regular BS based shooting suffers an additional -1 to hit lone characters.

*cough* 7th

I forgot it existed in 7th. I played like 4 games and decided to wait till 8th edition.

 tmarichards wrote:
Whilst that's certainly true, not every army has access to high impact monsters to distract firepower- for example, it's not uncommon for Wood Elves or Beastmen to run without monsters, and other armies just don't even have them in their book.

It's also not true that nearly every character is going to have a ward save, not even close. Taking ward saves on mages or BSBs that are designed to never see combat through a combination of deployment and good game mechanics (ie, actual legitimate gameplay) is a waste of points and not a justification for being able to cannon snipe. In competitive lists, if you have the points free for ward saves you're more likely to see magic resistance.

The point is anyone you're really worried about can have regen or a ward. That goes for TK/VC who really suffer without their chars. And they also have monsters they can use. If you don't want to ward your heroes, then don't complain they die. You could just as easily be BS or spell sniped without that protection.

LoS is a 2nd ward save. The best ward save in the game. I can't see logically making it any better.

I wouldn't say that cannons are a good way to snipe enemy characters - to begin with, the chance to misfire is as high as hitting the actual character. Secondly, you gotta roll right to hit the unit with the cannon shot and thirdly, as Duke already pointed out, the enemy has an additional "2++" on top of any sort of saving throw the model already has. And in the end, how many cannons will you, realistically, field? 2?

Sure, if you already aim at the unit, hit the character, but I'd rather use it to take care of those heavily armored targets or enemy war machines.

They can do, but if you're having to take ward saves or regen on characters purely for protection against cannon sniping that indicates that cannon sniping is a severely over-centralising force.

With regards to getting sniped by Death magic, I specifically mentioned magic resistance as a way around this and protecting against other magic in general- another alternative is to use your movement and deployment to stay out of range which isn't an option against cannons (barring terrain, which helps against both).

It's also not accurate to argue that a character without a ward can just as easily be sniped by Ballistic Skill shooting. First of all you have to shoot the unit down to less than 5 rank and file, and then have enough shots to carry over onto the character, and then enough shots to wound them enough times to kill them without having them just dive into another unit to renew their meatshield. That's compared to a cannonball which has a 1 in 6 chance to hit and can take off a character in a single shot (I've already mentioned above in previous posts that the odds are definitely against this working, but that's largely irrelevant as it's far too much reward for absolutely no skill investment on the off-chance that it pays off. Remember also that whilst you may only play 6 turns against cannons in a tournament, the player with the cannons may be firing them 36 times each over the course of a 6 game event at which point the numbers start to work in their favour).

Comparing the efficiency of BS shooting to the accuracy of cannons is also a little misleading, as it's overlooking standard deployment practice which is to have squishy mage bunkers hidden behind, and therefore getting hard cover from, tankier units.

The argument essentially boils down to the potential reward against the lack of skill involved to simply play the odds and look for the cannon snipe when there's nothing else on, compared to how hard it can be to stop- with other aspects that have been brought into the argument (magic, BS shooting) you have more options- you can take magic resistance, you can shield your units with terrain or other units even if it doesn't completely block line of sight or you can forgo the effectiveness of parts of your own army and stay well out of range- all of these are made redundant to an extent by cannons.

If you take cannons out of the equation (or war machines in general in this regard, but specifically cannons due to them being the topic and their accuracy), it's not necessary to have a ward save on a character that you don't intend to see combat because you can instead keep them safe through good play. As soon as cannon sniping is brought in, all that good play is thrown out of the window, and not because cannons are a tricky piece of kit that requires a good bit of skill to use, it's because they have an abusable mechanic.

In the end, it comes down to whether someone considers this acceptable or not, and I personally don't.

Takes very little "skill" to do anything in this game other than pick up some dice without falling down and breaking your ankle. Takes even less to buy a 4+ ward to go with your 2+ LoS ward.

Cannons aren't free. The cheapest are still going to be about 200pts for 2 with the new mega ones being more like 300pts. Which is probably about the cost of the hero you're trying to get rid of. If they fail to do so, which is statistically very likely, they have failed to make their points. Because they're just going to kill a handful of guys and then combat will be closed and any WM hunters will walk over and take them out.

Plus: the "...but there's a small chance this might work!" arugment is pretty weak to begin with; there also is a chance that a Night Goblin Gargboss manages to kill a Lord yet I don't pack those to kill Lords.

Someone brought up the in accuracy of cannons in real life and while they are right that they were not accurate there was a small chance they would hit the main guy. The 2++ repersents this. And actually cannons were pretty accurate they fired straight but the distance wasn't accurate

And as for the people complaining that the >400 point lord gets blown to bits and that it's not fair well it is pretty fair IMO. If that lord (eg blender vampire) gets into combat well then I'm completly boned with no hope of survival

One could also argue that you run a risk when you put all your eggs into one basket.

I'm much more concerned with the reported impact upon people taking dragons and whatnot. And this seems best dealt with by changing how cannons affect large ridden monsters; perhaps by saying that it hits either the mount or the rider, not both automatically.

The other day, I was playing my VC (wherein I bring a very expensive Vamp Lord) against my buddy's Skaven. He hit my Black Knight unit, which my Lord was in, with a Warp Lightning Cannon. This list of mine was a variant list that I was trying out, and my Vamp Lord did not have a ward save.

I failed my LOS with a 1. My opponent wounded. When I revealed that I had no ward save, he then rolled his d6 wounds... and rolled a 1.

So, it worked out for me, but I'll never take the Vamp Lord without a ward save again. I know, I know - I should have a ward save on a Vampire Lord, anyway. But the point is that I considered it feasible that I could run WITHOUT a ward save even against an army with cannons and was essentially proven wrong, as the 2+ LOS failed me in the first turn.

@Sigvatr - You might take a Gargboss if it was otherwise worth taking, and I think a point to be made is that cannons are already worth taking, PLUS they can character snipe. So you take one to hit monsters and can, if the opportunity arises, also shoot characters out of units.

And so, I generally agree more with tmarichards, though I see the point being made by Duke. Still, this game at least tries to PRETEND that it's a skillgame in many respects.

Jayo'r wrote:
Someone brought up the in accuracy of cannons in real life and while they are right that they were not accurate there was a small chance they would hit the main guy. The 2++ repersents this. And actually cannons were pretty accurate they fired straight but the distance wasn't accurate

They're trying to hit One Guy, with a cannon. At range. Inside a swirling group of other guys. It's stated you can't even attempt that with a bow/crossbow. Can't be done. Doing that back with a blackpowder cannon that still had a chance to blow up would take probably 30 dice all rolling a 1 with the ball being kissed in midair by Sigmar.

I did say it was very unlikely to hit the one guy but it could happen

All depends on the quantity of cannons.
Against empire and stunties, its not uncommon to see 3 cannons, so an average of 2 turns for a dead character and a blown up cannon in the process.
Really nasty against tomb kings or counts since they rely heavily on the general.

Saying that though, its still not the most common thing to see in a game.
Unless of course someone has a large beast to ride or walks around on their own all the time, in which case, its going to happen.

Dragons are the best show of this.
The dragon will soak 2 cannon rounds on average before it dies, but the character usually gets pasted by it pretty quickly.

Gryph's, phoenix, manticores etc all suffer from this, but its the price to pay for taking a big creature.