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The Leman Russ costs more and has less firepower.

Best Artillery if your playing normal 1750+ games is the Manticore D3 Strength 10 AP4 large blasts for the win. Good versus infantry and land raiders.

Gryphons are actually decent for small games like 500 pts because they are so cheap.

Terminus wrote:The Leman Russ costs more and has less firepower.

Well, yeah. You have to have some tradeoffs. I'd pay 15 points for an enclosed compartment and then another 15 points for 14/13/11 Armor. If by less firepower, you mean that it has 24" range, then you're correct there as well. There aren't many good times to take either though. Popping vehicles? Manticore does as good; really in a lot of ways, better. Terminators? Maybe. I'd rather have a bunch of plasma. Land Raiders? Awfully specific a target, but again, I'd rather use a drive by melta squad. Another good thing about the LRD: The LRD can't be wrecked by bolters.

daedalus wrote:

Terminus wrote:The Leman Russ costs more and has less firepower.

Another good thing about the LRD: The LRD can't be wrecked by bolters.

Or Multilasers, or Autocannons, or Missile Launchers, and Lascannons aren't terribly effective. Having more armor is a really good thing. You'd be surprised how often AV14 protects one from even a Mult-Melta (it is like having a 5++).

I need to be clear, if I had to choose between taking a Leman Russ or a Basalisk, I'd take the Russ. I like both, so I didn't want to choose. Artillery are very vulnerable; you have to invest in defending them somehow. However a Leman Russ is hardy enough to brave the wilds and continue shooting. In half a dozen games with my IA list I haven't lost a battle tank yet, but the artillery often don't survive the game. Take from that what you will, but the battle tanks make their points back better because they are fighting every turn of the game, while the artillery is dead or weaponless on turn 3/4.

That isn't to say artillery aren't viable or that you shouldn't take them, but rather that you should understand what you're taking. Open-topped artillery aren't much more durable than a squad of heavy weapons teams. Don't expose them or under-estimate any incoming shooting (even bolters). Place your shots carefully, as each one could be your last (for the game).

Man I wish we had Conquerors. I'd spam the hell out of those little bastards.

Leman Russes have only ever been good to me firepower-wise when tricked out (i.e. 5-plasma Executioner, or a las/plas Battle Tank), at which point they do become quite fun. I'm not a fan of the Demolisher due to its short range, which exposes it to meltas and close combat where the extra armor matters the least. All too often it will whiff (and BS3 ordnance templates do have a roughly 50% chance of landing on target) for little or no damage, and then swiftly get blown up. The battle tank can stay nice and distant from those threats, but then its blast is even more anemic, as it's easier to get cover saves against it and it's weaker against vehicles. In this case the extra armor is useless since it's a low priority target except for stuff that outflanks/deep strikes into combat, at which point it drops as fast as a 55-point chimera.

So when I take them, I try to make them as big and dangerous as possible, so you have to pay attention to them.

Why? I think 20 points for another inch on your blast template is worth it; it turns 1 hit into 3.

EDIT: Nevermind, it has a co-axial weapon. That's really sexy.

And they're dirt cheap. Squadrons of those would be my main units of choice for Spearhead games.

daedalus wrote:

Terminus wrote:The Leman Russ costs more and has less firepower.

Well, yeah. You have to have some tradeoffs.

Exactly. If you want to pay less for a weapon that often ignores cover (or in the case of the colossus, always does), and gets side shots on vehicles, take artillery. If you want to do less damage, and spend more points doing it, but want to throw down AV14 instead of cardboard, take a russ. Really, russes and artillery have two different roles, despite being sort of similarly armed.

Ailaros wrote:

daedalus wrote:

Terminus wrote:The Leman Russ costs more and has less firepower.

Well, yeah. You have to have some tradeoffs.

Exactly. If you want to pay less for a weapon that often ignores cover (or in the case of the colossus, always does), and gets side shots on vehicles, take artillery. If you want to do less damage, and spend more points doing it, but want to throw down AV14 instead of cardboard, take a russ. Really, russes and artillery have two different roles, despite being sort of similarly armed.

I play 3 Basilisks, and two Russ's in 1500+ lists.
3 S9 Ap3 pie plates, and two S8 Ap3 pie plates per turn...is pretty nasty. Add onto that, the 5 meltas per platoon. It's a lot of anti-vehicle, and great for MEQ.

Ig artillery, as has been mentioned, are support units. They fill a gap, they build a strength, or they are a hard counter to an enemy. Rarely are the big guns alone going to win games, but they'll help a lot.

What you need to determine is what role you need, because the Medusa and the Griffon have completely opposite roles!

If you're looking for an all rounder, the Manticore is the safest bet. it's good against vehicles, hordes, things in cover. It only gets four shots, but that's rarely a big factor. It's a high powered unit.

The basilisk trades some S for AP, and I think comes off worse for the exchange. Most units worth shooting are in cover, and the AP3 is thus only a small improvement, while the loss of S10 really hurts against vehicles. It is cheap, and can fit neatly into nearly any game plan.

The colossus is the most useful of the specialists. It removes infantry from cover, specifically MEQs. It's good at what it tries to do, and if you play against a lot of marines (or other non-terminator, non-horde armies), it's money in the bank.

After that, things get more complicated. I adore my Medusa with Bastion Breachers. It's a powerful anti-tank gun, nothing more. It's the only gun in my 1850 list that can scratch AV14 from range, and you only need to pop a landraider once an RTT to be grateful you brought it. It's a very specialized choice, however.

Finally the griffon is dirt cheap, but really doesn't do anything the IG needs.

There is a lot of talk about barrage ignoring cover, and that's true, but only for intervening cover. It's been my experience that the best cover, and the things you're shooting artillery at, are in cover, not behind it. YMMV.

I've had a couple of thougths reading through this thread:

1. A big part of the choice is what kind of list you are running and what best complements it. I myself am turning towards a mech list, so it didn't make sense to invest in artillery that needed to stay put in order to fire indirectly.

2. Another part of this would be the local meta-game. the 3 or 4 people I usually play against normally play either SW or BA with a lot of drop-podding, deep striking, and outflanking units. When they aren't playing those armies, they switch to Tyranids! So, I've found my artillery tends to be very vulnerable against those kinds of armies I routinely face.

That being said, I have been happy with the performane of both my Manticore and my Basilisk. They are both capable of causing a lot of damage. I have to give the edge to the basilisk against MEQ armies, as the AP 3 is a big help and I tend to roll poorly for the D3 templates of the manticore!

Imagine taking 3 manticores in a spearhead against a green tide...*joygasm*

I think this is actually a part of the problem with artillery.

The psychological impact of artillery is that you guile your opponent into thinking how much damage they could do, and then they spend inordinate effort and focus on trying to destroy it.

But really, people, you can't let it effect you too. This is part of the advantage of artillery - that their bark is louder than their bite. Don't get duped by your own propoganda and find yourself being suckered in to the same psych war you're trying to use on your opponent.

Yes, in perfect circumstances, artillery can do terrible damage. The reason guard artillery is so cheap is because those perfect circumstances never really happen, and so a vast majority of the time, they just plink away at a few targets and die.

Let the fooling be towards the enemy, not ourselves...

Yeah except when they roll "hit". Guard have the sickest cheapest coolest artillery in the game. That's why they rocked in epic scale and sucked in 40k for so long. More room to use them for a while before they are assaulted into wreckage.

33% of the time artillery will hit exactly where you want it to.

If you have LOS to the target and don't roll a hit, 17% of the time it will deviate not at all, or at most 1".

Combine the two, and you have almost a 50% chance of artillery landing where you aimed it.

So yeah, they don't have the accuracy of Veteran meltagunners with BiD orders, but they do alright.