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 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
People keep saying they can hide their TFC easier, but last I checked Artillery can't move, so the only way to hide it is to deploy out of LOS. And sure, it has Barrage now, but 66% percent chance of full scatter with the all shots hinging on the first one hitting; you want to be firing directly instead.

I thought artillery can move as long as its crew is still alive.

 generalchaos34 wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
People keep saying they can hide their TFC easier, but last I checked Artillery can't move, so the only way to hide it is to deploy out of LOS. And sure, it has Barrage now, but 66% percent chance of full scatter with the all shots hinging on the first one hitting; you want to be firing directly instead.

I thought artillery can move as long as its crew is still alive.

I haven't seen artillery on the table in quite some time, so I may be thinking of the old rules. I should check up on these things some time.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
People keep saying they can hide their TFC easier, but last I checked Artillery can't move, so the only way to hide it is to deploy out of LOS. And sure, it has Barrage now, but 66% percent chance of full scatter with the all shots hinging on the first one hitting; you want to be firing directly instead.

Firstly, nobody is saying you should always deploy out of LoS. It is a powerful option, though. Also, not all LoS blocking terrain is built alike. If I can block off LoS to my TFC from half the board, that can be of huge value, especially when deploying second.

Also, if both the Whirlwind is deployed in the open, it is obviously going to be easy for most armies to pop it early in the game. What I'm getting at is that the Whirlwind wants to hide in many instances, and that this is not always possible. Whether or not the TFC wants to hide, it usually CAN (or at least get a 3+ cover save) and that a hidden Whirlwind is every bit as inaccurate as a TFC.

generalchaos34 wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
People keep saying they can hide their TFC easier, but last I checked Artillery can't move, so the only way to hide it is to deploy out of LOS. And sure, it has Barrage now, but 66% percent chance of full scatter with the all shots hinging on the first one hitting; you want to be firing directly instead.

I thought artillery can move as long as its crew is still alive.

Im an ork player, i field 1-2 full Kannon Batteries in almost every list (would do 3 but dont have the models built yet lol). I know the artillery rules well since theyre a bit funky.

Artillery in general can move, but cannot fire. Period. Even weapons that are not blasts thus normally able to fire snapshots still cannot fire. Basically unless you absolutely MUST move it, dont move that thing or you lose a turn of dakka. There must be 1 crew per gun in order to move the gun, otherwise the gun is gone. The gun also goes with them if they fall back as long as the crew per gun requirement is there, though with a single cannon/crew i doubt that would ever happen.
Looking at the Thunderfire Cannon in the new dex, i see nothing allowing it to move and shoot despite the BRB rules. Or any other funky changes for that matter. Techmarine is considered T7 since he is crew as long as the gun is alive too, gotta remember that as thats the sole reason Kannon Batteries are any good lol.

 schadenfreude wrote:

The ugly: When I said terribly inaccurate I meant terribly inaccurate. If I were to say it's pretty much shooting at ork BS it's an insult to ork BS because ammo runts make orks more accurate with big lobbas than marines are with a TFC. Prescience is hardly an option because an allied SW/BA/DA psyker that costs 65 to 100 points shouldn't be buffing a 100 point unit, and even less so for the C:SM level 3 psyker with divination. 66% of the time it's going to miss by an average of 3" which means it's going to be very common to see all 4 pies whiff.

It's not quite as dire as you make it out. Sure, 66% of the time it'll drift an average of 3 or 7 inches (depending on LoS,) but if you're placing your template in the center of a unit (which is what you usually want to do unless you're trying to do stupid barrage wound allocation shenanigans) a three inch drift is still going to be on top of some of the models most of the time. A seven inch drift is going to be pure luck on getting something, regardless of the size of the template.

Hm. I may have just convinced myself that TFC is the way to go, which is disappointing since I *have* the Whirlwinds (or at least suitable proxies.)

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
I haven't seen artillery on the table in quite some time, so I may be thinking of the old rules. I should check up on these things some time.

Artillery has always been able to move, so long as there are crewmen to move it.

Can't the TFC still fire directly if it wanted to and indirectly(barrage) if it wanted to? Only the IG Collossus HAS to fire barrage each turn right?

Barrage is not optional in 6th edition.

I like them both, but I think I'm partial to Whirlwinds for IH synergy. I do like the bolster defenses, but I want my techmarines mobile and repairing things, and so long as the TFC lives he can't go anywhere. So while it could be said we're paying only 25 pts for the gun, we can't use the other 75 outside of the bolster defenses rule.

I think if you go Iron Hands, the Whirlwind ends up being better, getting IWND. If it's in cover you'll get a lot of mileage out of it. I also like taking a few other vehicles that hang out on the back line and a techmarine. IH techmarine with a servo harness fixes a HP on a 3+, so if your things are somewhat covered, they become really hard to kill.

If you're not going Iron Hands, it's probably just your preference then as to which is better.

 Lansirill wrote:

 schadenfreude wrote:

The ugly: When I said terribly inaccurate I meant terribly inaccurate. If I were to say it's pretty much shooting at ork BS it's an insult to ork BS because ammo runts make orks more accurate with big lobbas than marines are with a TFC. Prescience is hardly an option because an allied SW/BA/DA psyker that costs 65 to 100 points shouldn't be buffing a 100 point unit, and even less so for the C:SM level 3 psyker with divination. 66% of the time it's going to miss by an average of 3" which means it's going to be very common to see all 4 pies whiff.

It's not quite as dire as you make it out. Sure, 66% of the time it'll drift an average of 3 or 7 inches (depending on LoS,) but if you're placing your template in the center of a unit (which is what you usually want to do unless you're trying to do stupid barrage wound allocation shenanigans) a three inch drift is still going to be on top of some of the models most of the time. A seven inch drift is going to be pure luck on getting something, regardless of the size of the template.

Hm. I may have just convinced myself that TFC is the way to go, which is disappointing since I *have* the Whirlwinds (or at least suitable proxies.)

Depends on the unit.

Giant horde=scatters should land hit 3 on a hit and only hit 1 or 2 on a scatter if they are propperly dispersed. If there is a small cluster in a large group say 4 or 5 that can be hit with a small pie odds are you'll miss the small cluster with the initial shot.

Against an aegis the targets tend to all be in a straight line. Odds are a scatter will go off the line and whiff entirely.

Against a bastion or ruin top floor if the center scatters 1mm of the top floor the round hit the next floor down

Against tightly clustered units exiting a single hatch vehicle on a wreck the area of deployment is only 3". Aim for the middle with a 3" pie and a3" scatter will only clip 1 model at best, while a 4 or 5" is a complete whiff. Lifewise the small area of a wrecked rhino or chimera is easy to entirely miss.

This is all from the view of an IG player with manticores that throw out large pies. I gave them up in 6th ed and moved to griffons.

another good comparison to the tfc is vaul's support platforms. 12 wounds and 3s7 psuedo rending small pies for 10 points less in an army where a 100 point psyker can give reroll to hit for 2 seperate units.

TFC got beat with the nerf bat and marine players don't even realize it yet.

 schadenfreude wrote:

Spoiler:

 Lansirill wrote:

 schadenfreude wrote:

The ugly: When I said terribly inaccurate I meant terribly inaccurate. If I were to say it's pretty much shooting at ork BS it's an insult to ork BS because ammo runts make orks more accurate with big lobbas than marines are with a TFC. Prescience is hardly an option because an allied SW/BA/DA psyker that costs 65 to 100 points shouldn't be buffing a 100 point unit, and even less so for the C:SM level 3 psyker with divination. 66% of the time it's going to miss by an average of 3" which means it's going to be very common to see all 4 pies whiff.

It's not quite as dire as you make it out. Sure, 66% of the time it'll drift an average of 3 or 7 inches (depending on LoS,) but if you're placing your template in the center of a unit (which is what you usually want to do unless you're trying to do stupid barrage wound allocation shenanigans) a three inch drift is still going to be on top of some of the models most of the time. A seven inch drift is going to be pure luck on getting something, regardless of the size of the template.

Hm. I may have just convinced myself that TFC is the way to go, which is disappointing since I *have* the Whirlwinds (or at least suitable proxies.)

Depends on the unit.

Giant horde=scatters should land hit 3 on a hit and only hit 1 or 2 on a scatter if they are propperly dispersed. If there is a small cluster in a large group say 4 or 5 that can be hit with a small pie odds are you'll miss the small cluster with the initial shot.

Against an aegis the targets tend to all be in a straight line. Odds are a scatter will go off the line and whiff entirely.

Against a bastion or ruin top floor if the center scatters 1mm of the top floor the round hit the next floor down

Against tightly clustered units exiting a single hatch vehicle on a wreck the area of deployment is only 3". Aim for the middle with a 3" pie and a3" scatter will only clip 1 model at best, while a 4 or 5" is a complete whiff. Lifewise the small area of a wrecked rhino or chimera is easy to entirely miss.

This is all from the view of an IG player with manticores that throw out large pies. I gave them up in 6th ed and moved to griffons.

another good comparison to the tfc is vaul's support platforms. 12 wounds and 3s7 psuedo rending small pies for 10 points less in an army where a 100 point psyker can give reroll to hit for 2 seperate units.

TFC got beat with the nerf bat and marine players don't even realize it yet.

So I'm going to disagree more for the sake of discussion than anything else.

I'll concede on the first item since I don't spend enough time lobbing blast templates around to really have a feel for how a 3" would do in practice than a 5". It's way too situational for me to try and argue, so I won't.

If things are in a line, yeah, a 3" blast is probably going to miss everything on a non-trivial scatter, but a 5" blast would probably only hit one model anyways, maybe two if you're lucky. The Thunder fire would get 1 if you got lucky. Either way I don't want to be firing a blast on a fully dispersed line because you're going to get pretty mediocre returns.

A 5" blast is going to scatter off the top of things just as easily as a 3", since it's just the center that matters. Even a 12" blast would do the same darn thing.

I don't know the size of a Rhino or Chimera wreck off the top of my head, but this does seem like a situation where the bigger template could be advantageous. If this topic is still tossing around over the weekend I might do a little measuring and try to calculate some probabilities. It's just a bit of a hassle because you need to take area into consideration instead of just multiplying a bunch of fractions. Stupid math.

All that said, I still think I like Vindicators the best. A 5" S10AP2 blast is the answer to an awful lot of questions. Unfortunately it doesn't really answer Thunderfire or Whirlwind.

The TFC is Barrage 4 though, correct? And if I remember the barrage rules correctly, after the first, any subsequent role of a hit means that you can place that small blast template wherever you wish, so long as it's within contact with the initial hit. If that's the case, doesn't that mean that so long as one of the subsequent three blasts hits after the first one, you could position it right at the edge of the first blast wherever you want, helping it's accuracy somewhat?

Dundas wrote:

The TFC is Barrage 4 though, correct? And if I remember the barrage rules correctly, after the first, any subsequent role of a hit means that you can place that small blast template wherever you wish, so long as it's within contact with the initial hit. If that's the case, doesn't that mean that so long as one of the subsequent three blasts hits after the first one, you could position it right at the edge of the first blast wherever you want, helping it's accuracy somewhat?

Yes.

A lot of people call this "walking it back". The first blast may not hit anything, but hits on subsequent rolls can still cause damage. It's one benefit of TFCS over whirlwinds.

Barrage sniping is so very strong because of this. If you bring tigurius or an allied psyker with prescience, it's possible to stack 4+ wounds on a special/heavy weapon carrier or even on a banner. Imagine taking out the one melta gunner in a full squad so you can advance your land raider. I've taken out an inquisitor warlord with str6 barrages, All they need to do is fail a single LoS!

I'd go with TFC's every day of the week over whirlwinds. 100pts is a bargain for 3 t7 wounds with 3+, multiple barrage, super long range, and bolster defenses.

I seem to have made a terrible mistake. I thought the whirlwinds were TL like griffons, which they don't appear to be. My revised decision point is for point the TFC now sucks just as much as the whirlwind at killing stuff, and the IG griffon rocks. Rerolls to hit are more important with scatter dice than with BS4 regular shooting.

As far as utility goes the TFC can be worth while if the space marine player can make damn good use of the techmarine. If 1 techmarine is good 2 isn't 100% better, it's probably 5 to 25% better. Diminishing returns is a bitch. I don't see the need for 2 techmarines in a list.

 schadenfreude wrote:
I seem to have made a terrible mistake. I thought the whirlwinds were TL like griffons, which they don't appear to be. My revised decision point is for point the TFC now sucks just as much as the whirlwind at killing stuff, and the IG griffon rocks. Rerolls to hit are more important with scatter dice than with BS4 regular shooting.

As far as utility goes the TFC can be worth while if the space marine player can make damn good use of the techmarine. If 1 techmarine is good 2 isn't 100% better, it's probably 5 to 25% better. Diminishing returns is a bitch. I don't see the need for 2 techmarines in a list.

Yep no question the Griffon is a better unit. Whirlwind is only 10 cheaper and has ingnores cover, but the grifs twin link is awesome and is str 6 so can threaten light armor too.

I dunno. I cant help but feel the TFC has been nerfed. Has anyone used one in battle since the new codex?

I think it comes down to; The TFC can threaten more units and do more damage. The whirlwind is too comparable to the bread & butter of bolters & flamers.

I can't speak for TFCs because I don't own one, but I can say that I appreciate a Whirlwind precisely because they help with ADLs and they are only 65 pts, making them a nice point filler that always helps. Not that Space Marines will every be lacking with juicy units to cram into heavy slots ever again.