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This is anecdotal but I was playing with chronus in an auto las pred vs Admech. He had a unit of 3 Robots that were laying down serious hurt on me. I first attempted to take them out with 2 vindicators. I got 4 hits and 3 wounds on them - then he made 2 4+ saves and I did 3 damage with the shot that got through. My auto las pred shot next. I got 5 shots with the auto cannon all hit and all wounded and he failed 3 saves. this did 9 wounds finishing off 2 robots. The las cannons were saved. After that I was pretty sold on the auto cannon. It has the same to wound roll and the save against ended up being the same because of the invulnerable. Essentailly vs targets like that the auto cannon is equal to 3.5 las cannons.

I prefer the Lascannon Sponsons with Autocannon in this current edition. Solid shots, does enough damage towards bigger targets.

Agreed with auto cannon / laz sides from above. 2d3 str 7 3d shows is nothing to scoff at, it will tear lighter vehicles apart as well is bigger things if it has too. It's a flexible option that kicks butt. And side laz still gets you a serious punch factor.

I played a game where an opponent had three predators and could thus use the Killshot stratagem. He had all dakka preds, but the use of Killshot made them absolutely amazing.

Killshot would benefit Lascannons too, but not as much, as their volume of fire is lower.

I vote for auto/las, too. Quad las isn't a bad setup by any means, and if you know you'll only be fighting meaty stuff, especially T8 stuff, it's probably better. However, there are enough cases where the autocannon is potentially better, and few enough cases where it's massively worse, that I generally prefer the autolas configuration.

However, I will definitely second everyone who says that heavy bolter sponsons are crap. Heavy bolters, if you want them, are better taken on Razorbacks or even Devastator squads.

jade_angel wrote:
I vote for auto/las, too. Quad las isn't a bad setup by any means, and if you know you'll only be fighting meaty stuff, especially T8 stuff, it's probably better. However, there are enough cases where the autocannon is potentially better, and few enough cases where it's massively worse, that I generally prefer the autolas configuration.

However, I will definitely second everyone who says that heavy bolter sponsons are crap. Heavy bolters, if you want them, are better taken on Razorbacks or even Devastator squads.

Bolter sponsons are fine. They're OK for their price, and I wouldn't want them on a razorback ever. It's a more expensive platform to mount them on, and it suffers from wanting to move. TAC soften that by being heavy 12, and the cost as a total is only slightly more. Yes, they're better on a dev squad, but it's still a good option if you don't have points left to upgrade to lascannons. Just don't run your pred without any sponsons, that's the only thing you could do wrong.

Hb are in a bad spot, but not because they are bad. On a pred we prefer Lazer Cannons. On a razorback I prefer assault cannons. On a land speeder it's dual heavy flamers (I use them very aggressively). On an attack bike I don't know what I would pick, I don't use attack bikes, but it would probably be heavy bolters I suppose. Finally on devs or tacticals I prefer missile launchers for the added versatility. To be fair I do have a pred with hb's that I use with 2 others with laz canons. As a group of 3, the quad laz always gets killed first, then the auto laz, and the auto hb dies last. So yeah lol.

Compare vanilla Preds with Baal Predators.
As a BA player, my favorite loadout is the twin assault cannon with two heavy bolter sponons which makes 16 shots, 12 at S6 and 6 at S5.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Compare vanilla Preds with Baal Predators.
As a BA player, my favorite loadout is the twin assault cannon with two heavy bolter sponons which makes 16 shots, 12 at S6 and 6 at S5.

*cough*18 shots*cough*

 wuestenfux wrote:
Compare vanilla Preds with Baal Predators.
As a BA player, my favorite loadout is the twin assault cannon with two heavy bolter sponons which makes 16 shots, 12 at S6 and 6 at S5.

That makes 18 shots total though

The TAC has a clear and major range disadvantage compared to the predator ac. By having to move to get in range you're loosing 25% of your firepower, and S7 makes a difference versus most vehicles, too.
I don't think that makes the vanilla better, it's just that the Baal is a better anti infantry tank and therefore isn't as good versus other targets.

 Fifty wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Compare vanilla Preds with Baal Predators.
As a BA player, my favorite loadout is the twin assault cannon with two heavy bolter sponons which makes 16 shots, 12 at S6 and 6 at S5.

*cough*18 shots*cough*

Sorry my math is off.

nekooni wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Compare vanilla Preds with Baal Predators.
As a BA player, my favorite loadout is the twin assault cannon with two heavy bolter sponons which makes 16 shots, 12 at S6 and 6 at S5.

That makes 18 shots total though

The TAC has a clear and major range disadvantage compared to the predator ac. By having to move to get in range you're loosing 25% of your firepower, and S7 makes a difference versus most vehicles, too.
I don't think that makes the vanilla better, it's just that the Baal is a better anti infantry tank and therefore isn't as good versus other targets.

Indeed, the Baal is more anti-infantry.
It can be seen between the vanilla Pred and the Razorback with twin assault cannons.

Assault cannon and heavy bolters, obviously.