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.

Better solution: blast weapons automatically hit, up to the number of models in the unit. So your huge area-effect explosion is large enough that even a mediocre gunner can't miss entirely, but being within the blast radius is a binary yes or no question. You either get hit or don't get hit, no stacking up multiple hits on single-model units and making blast weapons better than dedicated anti-tank weapons.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

 Absolute_Maniac wrote:
Wouldn't a simpler and more elegant solution be a +1 to hit for blast weapons for every 10 models in a target unit? You'd get better returns vs hordes and not have as many extra rules as previous posts. And yes I realise this will interact weirdly with plasma and Tesla like abilities but frankly that should be unmodified rolls.

That's a very good idea, it makes it more likely to cause damage to bigger groups without making the explosions get bigger and bigger for more models.

it is a nice and elegant solution.

The weird thing there is that this benefits different armies disproportionately. An ork shooting a blast weapon with BS5+ (hits with 2 of the 6 sides of the die) that gets a +1 to hit (hits on 3 of the 6 sides of the dice) just increased his hits-per-shot by 50%. An army with BS 3+ (4 of the 6 sides) that gets a +1 to hit (5 of the 6 sides) only gets an extra 25% hits-per-shot. And if you consider that many armies that hit on 3+ to begin with tend to build around to-hit rerolls or other buffs, they're actually not even getting 25% better because they would have been hitting more often in the first place.

Just giving blasts more shots based on the enemy unit size means that your hits-per-shot doesn't change, but the raw multiplier (the number of shots) does. So, and feel free to correct me here, getting extra shots based on enemy unit size scales more evenly between various units/armies than to-hit modifiers do.

Yet, orks are one of the few armies to be able to to field units of not just 10+, but 20+ etc.... So whilst they may be more potent with blast weapons, they are one of the armies that will also take more losses because of it. It's not a complete solution, as I think you should get more hits for larger squads also, but it does work.

Well, ork blasts are traditionally found on vehicle and artillery platforms, so the units taking advantage of blasts wouldn't really be impacted by this rule. Also, it's generally a bad idea to balance a thing around the idea that it can be beaten by the same thing. "Ynnari are balanced because everyone can just buy and play ynnari," doesn't have a pleasant ring to it, right?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think I'd change it to you get +1 hit per 5 models in a unit on top of their dice roll attempt, so for a flamer it would 2+ D6 wound rolls vs a 10 man unit etc. For a non auto hit weapon, they get the same but also the +1 to hit bonus that is above.

So a Basilisk would get 3 plus D6 (still rolling two and picking the highest) at +1 to hit against a unit of 15 boys or gaunts etc.

Not a fan of auto-hits,. personally. Fluff-wise, a mortar shell is perfectly capable of missing entirely. Especially if it's shooting at semi-invisible jetpackers moving at speed and taking evasive actions. Historically, blast weapons were never (to my knowledge) auto-hit weapons. They could be more reliable than non-blast weapons in the hands of models with poor BS, but they weren't guaranteed hits. In fact, some blasts had rules that specifically make them very inaccurate. Mechanically, it changes the role and function of blasts to be akin to long-ranged flamers, as in one of their greatest benefits is their ability to auto-hit normally very hard to hit units. Also, there's a not-inconsiderable difference between a battle cannon that is guaranteed to hit at least once or twice versus one that isn't.

I think it's fluffy and works well personally. In the case of an earth shaker, yes it does get more killy, but it is against chaff units, it probably wouldn't improve its points efficiency over choosing more heavily armored targets.

I mean, it would. You'd be generating extra hits against any target with at least 5 models (so almost every infantry unit in even "elite" armies like marines or eldar), so you're doing (Number of Bonus Hits) x (Normal chance of wounding and it getting through saves) extra wounds. And because elite armies typically pay more points-per-wound than non-elite armies, they tend to lose more points worth of models when they're removed (for the same reasons that straight up fire fights between equal points of guardsmen and bolter marines tend to favor the guardsmen.) And then if you factor in the fact that hordes tend not to have a lot of to-hit penalties (-1 to hit chapter tactics, powers, and stratagems are mostly a marine/eldar thing), those auto-hits are actually making the blast weapons even better against any elite armies that invested in to-hit penalties.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Better solution: blast weapons automatically hit, up to the number of models in the unit. So your huge area-effect explosion is large enough that even a mediocre gunner can't miss entirely, but being within the blast radius is a binary yes or no question. You either get hit or don't get hit, no stacking up multiple hits on single-model units and making blast weapons better than dedicated anti-tank weapons.

Eh. See above about my personal dislike of auto-hitting blast weapons. How many ork boyz should a mortar auto-hit? How about a tempest launcher? A vindicator? A rapid fire battle cannon? I'm not 100% against turning blasts into long-ranged flamers, but it radically changes their function on the battlefield and would probably require a hefty price increase to match.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Eh. See above about my personal dislike of auto-hitting blast weapons. How many ork boyz should a mortar auto-hit? How about a tempest launcher? A vindicator? A rapid fire battle cannon? I'm not 100% against turning blasts into long-ranged flamers, but it radically changes their function on the battlefield and would probably require a hefty price increase to match.

The mortar should probably go back to D3 hits (it was a small blast in previous editions, I have no idea why it became a D6 weapon unlike all of the other small blasts), a Vindicator would hit D6 of them, a RFBC would hit D6 of them twice (resolving it separately for each shot). And yes, it does change their battlefield role, by going back to having blast weapons have a distinct role as in previous editions instead of their current state as normal guns that are less reliable. Blast weapons exist to compensate for having a poor chance to hit (whether because of poor BS or to-hit penalties) by using an AoE weapon that can kill without needing a direct hit. Flamers have a similar role, just as they did in previous editions, but should probably regain their ability to ignore cover bonuses.

Templates will slow the game down so those are out. rolling D3's and D6's for shots slows the game so they need to be out.

Best way to replace random shots is to take the average, rounded down, and add hits based on the amount of models in the target unit.

D3's become 2+(1 for every 6 models(max of5)), D6's become 3+(1 for every 5 models(max of 9)).

This speeds up the game greatly, as now you just have some very simple math (which can be done before you pick a target) to determine what you get.

Make a blast profile do a high set number of shots, but reduced for small units. For example, a frag missile is 6 shots, but against a unit of 4 it only does 4 shots, a unit of 2 = 2 shots, a single model = 1 shot. Large blast weapons like demolisher cannons could be 10 shots or more

Same with flame weapons, but they auto hit. It would be a simple mechanic and work much the way template weapons did, but without using templates

Make it a new type of notation. Heavy 6*

n* means shots equal to n or the number of models in the target unit, whichever is smaller.

Maybe too complicated for GWs new target demographic.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Make it a new type of notation. Heavy 6*

n* means shots equal to n or the number of models in the target unit, whichever is smaller.

Maybe too complicated for GWs new target demographic.

The problem is too many rules like this could quickly turn the simple 8th edition back to 7th for complexity, but in this case I think it's definitely worth it. Blasts are pretty terrible now and too random

Introduce a new "no. of hits" mechanic - #X, where #=3 or 6.

When firing blast weapons, the number of hits equals the number of models in the target unit or the number indicated on its profile, whichever is less. Roll that many dice when rolling to hit.


Edit: BCB beat me to it.

I mean, we could always just make it a modifier called Blast or something. So Heavy Blast 6 would hit 6 or the number of models in the unit, whichever is lower, and also have the heavy weapon rules.

Assault Blast 3, etc.

What's wrong with roll number of to hit rolls = number of models in target unit?

As turning a guard artillery into auto hitting doesn't sound like a fun game.
Well atleast for non guard players.

Ice_can wrote:
What's wrong with roll number of to hit rolls = number of models in target unit?

As turning a guard artillery into auti hitting doesn't sound like a fun game.

Because Guard should not be getting an average of 15 hits at 120" range against Orks/Tyranids in any way, shape or form.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
What's wrong with roll number of to hit rolls = number of models in target unit?

As turning a guard artillery into auti hitting doesn't sound like a fun game.

Because Guard should not be getting an average of 15 hits at 120" range against Orks/Tyranids in any way, shape or form.

Indirect fire only hits on 6's. or guard artillery is priced appropriately.

Would adding and AOS style wound rule to a "Blast" weapon's wounds work? (Blast weapons that do multiple wounds carry those wounds to another model) If you have a 3 shot weapon that does 3 wounds per hit, it would still mess up infantry and hit a tank/monster hard. Just a thought.

I don't think a separated profile is a good idea; that's more complex than I would like to be resolving 12 times a turn.

I also think the current system is way better than the old system with the scatter dice. That was a mess.


The "requirements" for blast weapons are:
1: should be able to deal more damage to tightly packed models than dispersed models
2: should be able to strike multiple neabry units simultaneously

Additionally, many of these weapons are tank or artillery guns, which should be fairly terrifying to tanks and other large single-model units.



My "proposal" to bringing back blasts as area weapons would be:
Weapon Type: Heavy 1, Blast X.

For each shot this weapon would make, select a point on the field. If there is a model at this point, it's unit suffers X attacks at the weapon's profile, rounded up. Each unit suffers a number of hits equal to the number of models that are part of it and within X" of the blast. [Alternately read: the model under the point take X hits, each model within X takes 1 hit.] Characters with less than 9 wounds are not struck by this weapon unless they are closer to the firing model than any other enemy units.


This is effectively similar to the old system, except replacing the scatter roll with multiple to-hit rolls, and dealing multiple hits to single large models. I think is achieves approximately the level of performance I want from the blast, but it might still be too complex to resolve for each basilisk.


A Leman Russ Battle Cannon might be Blast 2.5, Heavy 1. The model struck by the blast would resolve 3 attacks at S8, AP2, D1d3 against it, and all models within 2.5" of the point would be assessed one attack at S8, AP2, D1d3. Then all the attacks would roll to hit.

A Battle Cannon should be above a Lascannon in terms of AT performance, but weaker than a Lascannon pair. 3 shots at D3 damage isn't quite enough to put it over, but I couldn't really think of a more elegant solution. Defining the X as the diameter would up the damage to tanks, but would require more complexity to the anti-infantry definition.



Currently, I feel that too many dice are rolled for a Leman Russ attack, or any other artillery attack. Roll shots, roll hits, roll wounds, roll saves, roll damage is far too much variance in performance. The hits-wounds-saves part isn't bad, but having both random shots and random damage is a little too much die rolls. The other problem is that now all the Leman Russ guns are basically the same, and inferior versions of each other. Re-introducing area blasts would again separate the many-shot variants [Punisher, Exterminator], the blast variants [Battle Cannon, Eradicator, Executioner, Demolisher, Conqueror], and the antitank variants [Vanquisher, Annihilator].

The Leman Russ cannons as a whole have a great many issues, and the current system strongly incentivizes medium-power many-shot weapons. This absolutely should not be the meta for antitank weapons. The current system cheats this but turning "one big hit" weapons into "many medium hit" weapons with the roll-for-shot-count system [Battle Cannon, Shadowsword], and largely just ignores the way things should work. There's not really a good way to fix this, though, it's endemic to a system that uses a HP-like mechanic for toughness.



I think it actually seems really hard to represent vehicle and antitank behavior well. Infantry can effectively be modeled by the hit-wound-kill system. A wound is a casualty, even if he wasn't slain you can assume that he's been rendered combat-ineffective by a leg wound or something. Tanks can too, but they're on a completely different scale than infantry, making it hard to model them simultaneously.

 Peregrine wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Eh. See above about my personal dislike of auto-hitting blast weapons. How many ork boyz should a mortar auto-hit? How about a tempest launcher? A vindicator? A rapid fire battle cannon? I'm not 100% against turning blasts into long-ranged flamers, but it radically changes their function on the battlefield and would probably require a hefty price increase to match.

The mortar should probably go back to D3 hits (it was a small blast in previous editions, I have no idea why it became a D6 weapon unlike all of the other small blasts), a Vindicator would hit D6 of them, a RFBC would hit D6 of them twice (resolving it separately for each shot). And yes, it does change their battlefield role, by going back to having blast weapons have a distinct role as in previous editions instead of their current state as normal guns that are less reliable. Blast weapons exist to compensate for having a poor chance to hit (whether because of poor BS or to-hit penalties) by using an AoE weapon that can kill without needing a direct hit. Flamers have a similar role, just as they did in previous editions, but should probably regain their ability to ignore cover bonuses.

I see where you're coming from, but I feel that auto-hitting with blasts changes too many core assumptions about the nature of blasts. Some like a frag launcher or a frag missile doesn't seem like it should be unhindered by a unit being hard to see or doing a barrel roll at speed. You still have to line up the shot, after all. I feel like what you're describing might make more sense on a subset of "blast" weapons rather than on all blast weapons. Or maybe it would make more sense to introduce more "barrage this whole area" stratagems that let certain "blast" weapons ignore to-hit penalties or what have you. Frag missiles, submunition railguns, and disintegrators (which were "blasts" until 8th edition iirc) should probably not ignore some of the most costly defensive investments in the game.

Rather than make all blast weapons auto-hit, I'd rather see them (along with flamers) fill the, "gets more effective versus hordes" niche (flamers can still auto-hit though). So a frag missile does X shots per 6 models in the enemy squad or whatever. That means that an individual shot works the same way any normal shot does, but you'll average more hits against larger units. It doesn't turn a vindicator into the ultimate sniper of camouflaged jinking airplane, but it does make it better at taking chunks out of ork boy mobs.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ice_can wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
What's wrong with roll number of to hit rolls = number of models in target unit?

As turning a guard artillery into auti hitting doesn't sound like a fun game.

Because Guard should not be getting an average of 15 hits at 120" range against Orks/Tyranids in any way, shape or form.

Indirect fire only hits on 6's. or guard artillery is priced appropriately.

So what I'm hearing is that you want my double aeldari missile launcher war walker to average 40 hits against a 30 man horde, turning those 40 hits into about 26 wounds against T3, and then killing about 22 of those models (assuming 5+ armor saves that get reduced to 6+). I feel like kiling ~100 points worth of guardsmen with a single salvo from a ~100 point model is probably a bit above the normal offensive points efficiency for 40k. Or heck, War Walkers are pricey. I could similar damage output from a single dark reaper exarch with a tempest launcher for about 40 points.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LesPaul wrote:
Would adding and AOS style wound rule to a "Blast" weapon's wounds work? (Blast weapons that do multiple wounds carry those wounds to another model) If you have a 3 shot weapon that does 3 wounds per hit, it would still mess up infantry and hit a tank/monster hard. Just a thought.

I think that's partially what we're trying to avoid. This would make multi-damage weapons good against both hordes and tanks, thus reducing the ways in which weapons could be made distinct from each other. Aside from dramatic price adjustments, there would no longer be a reason to take the anti-infantry blast when the anti-tank blast is already doing the same job while also being better against heavier targets.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


My "proposal" to bringing back blasts as area weapons would be:
Weapon Type: Heavy 1, Blast X.

For each shot this weapon would make, select a point on the field. If there is a model at this point, it's unit suffers X attacks at the weapon's profile, rounded up. Each unit suffers a number of hits equal to the number of models that are part of it and within X" of the blast. [Alternately read: the model under the point take X hits, each model within X takes 1 hit.] Characters with less than 9 wounds are not struck by this weapon unless they are closer to the firing model than any other enemy units.

There's a lot to like about that system, but it makes the pretty major assumption that grouping models/units together should be a punishable thing. Personally, I really, really don't want to go back to agonizing over how many fractions of an inch apart all of my models in a unit are, and having to keep units spaced apart isn't any more appealing. Especially in the "bubble" edition of 40k. We have lots of ork and 'nid players in my area. I don't want to feel like I'm penalizing for having the audacity to not waste 5 extra minutes of our lives each movement phase re-measuring the exact distance apart all their models are. And then when you consider that the melee rules kind of force you to clump your models together (and that Falling Back is a thing), it sounds like a recipe for lots of unhappy horde players.

If the end goal is to represent a shell landing at a specific point, then your system seems like a good way to do that. I'd argue that such a goal would not improve the overall game experience. I know I'm a broken record here, but to me, the niche of blasts should be to be good at clearing crowds. Giving blast weapons more hits based on target unit size accomplishes that while actually speeding the game up (no rolling for number of shots).

Wyldhunt wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


My "proposal" to bringing back blasts as area weapons would be:
Weapon Type: Heavy 1, Blast X.

For each shot this weapon would make, select a point on the field. If there is a model at this point, it's unit suffers X attacks at the weapon's profile, rounded up. Each unit suffers a number of hits equal to the number of models that are part of it and within X" of the blast. [Alternately read: the model under the point take X hits, each model within X takes 1 hit.] Characters with less than 9 wounds are not struck by this weapon unless they are closer to the firing model than any other enemy units.

There's a lot to like about that system, but it makes the pretty major assumption that grouping models/units together should be a punishable thing. Personally, I really, really don't want to go back to agonizing over how many fractions of an inch apart all of my models in a unit are, and having to keep units spaced apart isn't any more appealing. Especially in the "bubble" edition of 40k. We have lots of ork and 'nid players in my area. I don't want to feel like I'm penalizing for having the audacity to not waste 5 extra minutes of our lives each movement phase re-measuring the exact distance apart all their models are. And then when you consider that the melee rules kind of force you to clump your models together (and that Falling Back is a thing), it sounds like a recipe for lots of unhappy horde players.

If the end goal is to represent a shell landing at a specific point, then your system seems like a good way to do that. I'd argue that such a goal would not improve the overall game experience. I know I'm a broken record here, but to me, the niche of blasts should be to be good at clearing crowds. Giving blast weapons more hits based on target unit size accomplishes that while actually speeding the game up (no rolling for number of shots).

I don't think that the niche of blasts should be clearing crowds. That's what low-power many-shot weapons like the Punisher cannons, and also the rifles carried by your infantrymen, are for.

The majority of the guns that are blast weapons, or at least that I think if when you say blast weapons, are firing large caliber high-explosive shells, for smashing open tanks and pillboxes with brute force, and clearing out buildings. There are some like the Wyvern that are dedicated for sweeping infantry, but the majority I think of are like the Demolisher gun, the Battle Cannon, and the Earthshaker gun.



That said, they're balanced right now, but not very exciting and don't feel very good when fired. The idea of representing them as a large number of middle-damage hits isn't a bad one to compare them to the single-firing guns [though the fear of anything having more than 1D6 renders the railgun and vanquisher really useless, but that's another problem], but it intersects with the realm of the weapons that actually fire many shots for middling damage, like the Exterminator Autocannon or Hydra Flak Tank, which really shouldn't be a credible threat to tanks.

The idea, I think, is to create a mechanism for the blasts that maximizes verisimilitude in this case. I like the idea of assigning a hit per model within an area of the targeted point, because it really does achieve what the gun should do with regards to infantry. Infantry in the open can scatter to reduce it's effectiveness to only a few guys seriously overkilled, but units garrisoning structures can't really avoid being assessed a great many hits at a devastating profile. Assessing additional shots to the target under the center of the blast seems the most elegant way to both keep with the existing hitpoints-for-toughness mechanic for vehicles and realize effectiveness for heavy artillery in line with what should be expected.

Forcing infantry to spread out probably a good thing. That's what these guns do anyway to infantry in the open. While shots can be ricocheted off the ground to airburst over an infantry, they're mostly going to succeed in suppressing and scattering infantry so that friendly infantry can maneuver, engage, and destroy them.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


I don't think that the niche of blasts should be clearing crowds. That's what low-power many-shot weapons like the Punisher cannons, and also the rifles carried by your infantrymen, are for.

The majority of the guns that are blast weapons, or at least that I think if when you say blast weapons, are firing large caliber high-explosive shells, for smashing open tanks and pillboxes with brute force, and clearing out buildings. There are some like the Wyvern that are dedicated for sweeping infantry, but the majority I think of are like the Demolisher gun, the Battle Cannon, and the Earthshaker gun.

We may have to agree to disagree on this point. To my mind, I've always tended to think of blasts as the quantity-focused flip side to quality firepower with high-quality blasts typically being the "above and beyond" guns that are meant to feel really devastating. A krak missile smashes open tanks and pillboxees with brute force. A frag missile is crummy against tanks but has the potential to kill multiple infantry instead of just one. And then vindicators were (once upon a time) one of the nastiest guns you could fit on a tank so they got to be both a blast and a shot that was good at cracking open tanks.

Plus, night spinners, dispersed shot fire prisms, blast profile forgeworld reapers, whirlwinds, cluster spines, splinter salvos, old school shredders, anything with "frag" in its name, and basically any blast with a strength of 6 or less strikes me as more of an anti-infantry gun than an anti-tank one.

That said, they're balanced right now, but not very exciting and don't feel very good when fired. The idea of representing them as a large number of middle-damage hits isn't a bad one to compare them to the single-firing guns [though the fear of anything having more than 1D6 renders the railgun and vanquisher really useless, but that's another problem], but it intersects with the realm of the weapons that actually fire many shots for middling damage, like the Exterminator Autocannon or Hydra Flak Tank, which really shouldn't be a credible threat to tanks.

Wouldn't a quality firepower gun that gets extra shots against infantry help with that? A vindicator that fires a low number of shots against a tank but a higher number of shots against infantry could functionally be good against both. A gun that only ever has a single shot but with better AP or damage or what have you would beat the vindicator at anti-tank but be less flexible. A gun with lots of shots but lower strength, damage, and AP would be worse against vehicles but better against infantry. To my mind, a gun being good against vehicles and pill boxes is represented in its strength, AP, and damage. The blast rules reflect that gun also being good at picking up multiple small models at once.

The idea, I think, is to create a mechanism for the blasts that maximizes verisimilitude in this case. I like the idea of assigning a hit per model within an area of the targeted point, because it really does achieve what the gun should do with regards to infantry. Infantry in the open can scatter to reduce it's effectiveness to only a few guys seriously overkilled, but units garrisoning structures can't really avoid being assessed a great many hits at a devastating profile. Assessing additional shots to the target under the center of the blast seems the most elegant way to both keep with the existing hitpoints-for-toughness mechanic for vehicles and realize effectiveness for heavy artillery in line with what should be expected.

Forcing infantry to spread out probably a good thing. That's what these guns do anyway to infantry in the open. While shots can be ricocheted off the ground to airburst over an infantry, they're mostly going to succeed in suppressing and scattering infantry so that friendly infantry can maneuver, engage, and destroy them.

I worry that you'd be sacrificing gameplay for simulationism. I guarantee that I can spread out my infantry inside that structure to mitigate the number of hits you get, but you and I will both end up spending an extra ten minutes over the course of the game waiting for my butter fingers to position each model just right.

I propose that what you want is not actually to make models physically spread out. I mean, I could be wrong, but your end goal probably isn't to make every model on the table stand exactly 2" apart from his friends in the squad, right? What you seem to want is to represent artillery and the like to suppress and disrupt enemy coordination. So with that in mind, maybe handling that abstractly (through some sort of suppression or pinning mechanic) would better accomplish what you're trying to achieve without punishing players for not fiddling with their horde positioning enough? Again, I could be misunderstanding your intent.

Still come back to auto hitting = bad as it makes blast weapons best against supersonic flyers.

Multiple hits on units with x distance will be disproportionate effective against 3 and 5 man msu over 20-30 strong units.

I would suggest blasts should be 1 to hit roll for every x models in a unit so you bring 3 boys vrs a basilisk you get hit 1 per 5 models, but a wyvern is 1 per 2. It allows each weapon to be tuned to be effective against specific targets.

Also as to HE vrs armour yeah no that hasn't been true for many years, once people understood how to make proper armoured vehicles.

A battle cannon is a generalist weapon that is actually overly efficient for it's point's cost.
The issue isn't that anti armour doesn't work it's that it's not costed on remotely the same scale as generalist weapons that should attract a premium due to not having a inefficient matchup like a lascannon vrs infantry or a heavy bolter vrs a russ.
Being able to kill infantry and tanks efficently shouldn't be something a generalist weapon should do more than a specialist weapon.

Wyldhunt wrote:
We may have to agree to disagree on this point. To my mind, I've always tended to think of blasts as the quantity-focused flip side to quality firepower with high-quality blasts typically being the "above and beyond" guns that are meant to feel really devastating. A krak missile smashes open tanks and pillboxees with brute force. A frag missile is crummy against tanks but has the potential to kill multiple infantry instead of just one. And then vindicators were (once upon a time) one of the nastiest guns you could fit on a tank so they got to be both a blast and a shot that was good at cracking open tanks.

Plus, night spinners, dispersed shot fire prisms, blast profile forgeworld reapers, whirlwinds, cluster spines, splinter salvos, old school shredders, anything with "frag" in its name, and basically any blast with a strength of 6 or less strikes me as more of an anti-infantry gun than an anti-tank one.

Wouldn't a quality firepower gun that gets extra shots against infantry help with that? A vindicator that fires a low number of shots against a tank but a higher number of shots against infantry could functionally be good against both. A gun that only ever has a single shot but with better AP or damage or what have you would beat the vindicator at anti-tank but be less flexible. A gun with lots of shots but lower strength, damage, and AP would be worse against vehicles but better against infantry. To my mind, a gun being good against vehicles and pill boxes is represented in its strength, AP, and damage. The blast rules reflect that gun also being good at picking up multiple small models at once.

I worry that you'd be sacrificing gameplay for simulationism. I guarantee that I can spread out my infantry inside that structure to mitigate the number of hits you get, but you and I will both end up spending an extra ten minutes over the course of the game waiting for my butter fingers to position each model just right.

I propose that what you want is not actually to make models physically spread out. I mean, I could be wrong, but your end goal probably isn't to make every model on the table stand exactly 2" apart from his friends in the squad, right? What you seem to want is to represent artillery and the like to suppress and disrupt enemy coordination. So with that in mind, maybe handling that abstractly (through some sort of suppression or pinning mechanic) would better accomplish what you're trying to achieve without punishing players for not fiddling with their horde positioning enough? Again, I could be misunderstanding your intent.

While I personally don't have trouble achieving spacing with my Guardsmen, since I already do the whole 2" measuring thing. As a side note, 2" spacing should not mathematically deny a hit, since a 25mm base is smaller than 1", and it should be easy to eyeball the spread out of the guy after him in line. I do agree that anything re-instating blasts would slow the game down, though, and it's not necessary from a balance perspective. But a better blast mechanic would be fun, a lot of tanks feel very samey right now.

This game, and most wargames to be fair, have poor suppression mechanics. That's another area that could be addressed, but I don't know if people really want infantry being pinned more than killed. While it would be realistic, most people don't like that.


You did bring up a good point, though. The anti-infantry blasts, like frag missiles and wyverns, if changed to area strike weapons, would be largely ineffective period. Guys in cover tend to stack up for hits, and dislodging entrenched troops is a good use case for them, but that might make them too niche. OTOH, that might not be a bad thing, and the Whirlwind can be separately addressed.

Ice_can wrote:Still come back to auto hitting = bad as it makes blast weapons best against supersonic flyers.

Multiple hits on units with x distance will be disproportionate effective against 3 and 5 man msu over 20-30 strong units.

I would suggest blasts should be 1 to hit roll for every x models in a unit so you bring 3 boys vrs a basilisk you get hit 1 per 5 models, but a wyvern is 1 per 2. It allows each weapon to be tuned to be effective against specific targets.

Also as to HE vrs armour yeah no that hasn't been true for many years, once people understood how to make proper armoured vehicles.

A battle cannon is a generalist weapon that is actually overly efficient for it's point's cost.
The issue isn't that anti armour doesn't work it's that it's not costed on remotely the same scale as generalist weapons that should attract a premium due to not having a inefficient matchup like a lascannon vrs infantry or a heavy bolter vrs a russ.
Being able to kill infantry and tanks efficently shouldn't be something a generalist weapon should do more than a specialist weapon.

Uh huh. Artillery is still very effective at engaging armor. Light armored vehicles get shredded, and even main battle tanks sustain mission-ending damage from near misses. And a direct hit will wreck any tank, period, though to be fair a direct hit is unlikely. Imperial Artillery is guided by God!


Also, a Battle Cannon is a comparable weapon in class to 2 Lascannons. It should have anti-tank performance somewhat worse than 2 lascannons, but considerably better than 1 lascannon. And, it might surprise you, but a Leman Russ firing a Battle Cannon averages about 2.5 damage to heavy armored targets and about 4 to light armor, while a Leman Russ firing twin Lascannons averages about 8 to either. This seems pretty fine. The Vanquisher sucks when it should outperform a Lascannon pair, but that's another problem unrelated to the Battle Cannon.

Also, if you're just trying to develop a weapon that hurts Guardsmen more than Marines, you're not approaching the problem right. Also, that weapon should be automatic weapons, and rifle fire. The problem being discussed as I understand it is how to make blasts behave appreciably differently than automatic weapons, and improve the sense of verisimilitude. Honestly, I don't have a problem with the representation of blast effect balance wise, but it has the effect of making most of the tank weapons very samey and furthering the meta of using many-shot weapons to engage armor. The solution to making Guardsmen worse than Marines lies in re-evaluating the value of their base characteristics. Also, a area blast would be less effective against marine infantry than the current representation.

+ to hit mechanism based on model count doesn't make sense realistically or functionally. Firing an AoE weapon at mass doesn't all of a sudden make the weapon hit more accurately - it simply hits more targets.

+ to number of attacks based on model count makes sense realistically, but not functionally. Resulting damage from an AoE weapon is dependent upon the density of the unit, not its total model count. It disproportionally favors MSU and punishes hordes.

Random number of attacks on a roll of Xd6 functionally makes sense, but not realistically. Firing an AoE weapon at a single target doesn't give the shot a chance to blow up in more extravagant ways.

Blast weapons have a certain area of effect - meaning they have fixed amount of area it can harm. It doesn't matter how big a unit is - a blast can only deal damage to targets within its radius of effect; if the models are sufficiently spaced away from the point of explosion, they're not going to be hurt by the blast.

What this means - there is a cap/max effect a blast weapon can have and it does not increase based on the number of target (whether the crowd is small or large). Its effect is based on crowd density and not absolute crowd count. And finally, it can only affect those who are within it's area of influence which does not increase based on the size of the crowd.

The previous proposed suggestion of new notation for number of hits for blast weapons (X no. of hits or no. of models in the target unit, whichever is less):
1. provides a scaling damage potential with a cap (since if we relied on density, we'd revert back to prior editions).
2. provides niche for blast weapons as it's more favorable to target large unit to make the most of the weapon.
3. does not skew potential damage against single targets.
4. reduces randomness of blast weapons & removes 1 (unnecessary) dice roll.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
We may have to agree to disagree on this point. To my mind, I've always tended to think of blasts as the quantity-focused flip side to quality firepower with high-quality blasts typically being the "above and beyond" guns that are meant to feel really devastating. A krak missile smashes open tanks and pillboxees with brute force. A frag missile is crummy against tanks but has the potential to kill multiple infantry instead of just one. And then vindicators were (once upon a time) one of the nastiest guns you could fit on a tank so they got to be both a blast and a shot that was good at cracking open tanks.

Plus, night spinners, dispersed shot fire prisms, blast profile forgeworld reapers, whirlwinds, cluster spines, splinter salvos, old school shredders, anything with "frag" in its name, and basically any blast with a strength of 6 or less strikes me as more of an anti-infantry gun than an anti-tank one.

Wouldn't a quality firepower gun that gets extra shots against infantry help with that? A vindicator that fires a low number of shots against a tank but a higher number of shots against infantry could functionally be good against both. A gun that only ever has a single shot but with better AP or damage or what have you would beat the vindicator at anti-tank but be less flexible. A gun with lots of shots but lower strength, damage, and AP would be worse against vehicles but better against infantry. To my mind, a gun being good against vehicles and pill boxes is represented in its strength, AP, and damage. The blast rules reflect that gun also being good at picking up multiple small models at once.

I worry that you'd be sacrificing gameplay for simulationism. I guarantee that I can spread out my infantry inside that structure to mitigate the number of hits you get, but you and I will both end up spending an extra ten minutes over the course of the game waiting for my butter fingers to position each model just right.

I propose that what you want is not actually to make models physically spread out. I mean, I could be wrong, but your end goal probably isn't to make every model on the table stand exactly 2" apart from his friends in the squad, right? What you seem to want is to represent artillery and the like to suppress and disrupt enemy coordination. So with that in mind, maybe handling that abstractly (through some sort of suppression or pinning mechanic) would better accomplish what you're trying to achieve without punishing players for not fiddling with their horde positioning enough? Again, I could be misunderstanding your intent.

While I personally don't have trouble achieving spacing with my Guardsmen, since I already do the whole 2" measuring thing. As a side note, 2" spacing should not mathematically deny a hit, since a 25mm base is smaller than 1", and it should be easy to eyeball the spread out of the guy after him in line. I do agree that anything re-instating blasts would slow the game down, though, and it's not necessary from a balance perspective. But a better blast mechanic would be fun, a lot of tanks feel very samey right now.

This game, and most wargames to be fair, have poor suppression mechanics. That's another area that could be addressed, but I don't know if people really want infantry being pinned more than killed. While it would be realistic, most people don't like that.


You did bring up a good point, though. The anti-infantry blasts, like frag missiles and wyverns, if changed to area strike weapons, would be largely ineffective period. Guys in cover tend to stack up for hits, and dislodging entrenched troops is a good use case for them, but that might make them too niche. OTOH, that might not be a bad thing, and the Whirlwind can be separately addressed.

Ice_can wrote:Still come back to auto hitting = bad as it makes blast weapons best against supersonic flyers.

Multiple hits on units with x distance will be disproportionate effective against 3 and 5 man msu over 20-30 strong units.

I would suggest blasts should be 1 to hit roll for every x models in a unit so you bring 3 boys vrs a basilisk you get hit 1 per 5 models, but a wyvern is 1 per 2. It allows each weapon to be tuned to be effective against specific targets.

Also as to HE vrs armour yeah no that hasn't been true for many years, once people understood how to make proper armoured vehicles.

A battle cannon is a generalist weapon that is actually overly efficient for it's point's cost.
The issue isn't that anti armour doesn't work it's that it's not costed on remotely the same scale as generalist weapons that should attract a premium due to not having a inefficient matchup like a lascannon vrs infantry or a heavy bolter vrs a russ.
Being able to kill infantry and tanks efficently shouldn't be something a generalist weapon should do more than a specialist weapon.

Uh huh. Artillery is still very effective at engaging armor. Light armored vehicles get shredded, and even main battle tanks sustain mission-ending damage from near misses. And a direct hit will wreck any tank, period, though to be fair a direct hit is unlikely. Imperial Artillery is guided by God!

Spoiler:

Page 8 starts an article about tests of artillery vs tanks.
https://sill-www.army.mil/firesbulletin/archives/2002/NOV_DEC_2002/NOV_DEC_2002_FULL_EDITION.pdf

Also, a Battle Cannon is a comparable weapon in class to 2 Lascannons. It should have anti-tank performance somewhat worse than 2 lascannons, but considerably better than 1 lascannon. And, it might surprise you, but a Leman Russ firing a Battle Cannon averages about 2.5 damage to heavy armored targets and about 4 to light armor, while a Leman Russ firing twin Lascannons averages about 8 to either. This seems pretty fine. The Vanquisher sucks when it should outperform a Lascannon pair, but that's another problem unrelated to the Battle Cannon.

Also, if you're just trying to develop a weapon that hurts Guardsmen more than Marines, you're not approaching the problem right. Also, that weapon should be automatic weapons, and rifle fire. The problem being discussed as I understand it is how to make blasts behave appreciably differently than automatic weapons, and improve the sense of verisimilitude. Honestly, I don't have a problem with the representation of blast effect balance wise, but it has the effect of making most of the tank weapons very samey and furthering the meta of using many-shot weapons to engage armor. The solution to making Guardsmen worse than Marines lies in re-evaluating the value of their base characteristics. Also, a area blast would be less effective against marine infantry than the current representation.

That was an interesting article thanks for the link, kinda lines up with the feedback we had, which is it's great against slow moving or stationary targets but against actual modern combat armour eg challenegers and Abrams the problem is actually achieveing effective rounds on targets is almoat impossible, regardless of the accuracy, terminal guidance systems are required for repeatable mission success as they don't need to stop to be effective.

Also if a Battle cannon is supposed to be the same class of weapon as 2 lascannons why isn't it pointed like that? It's costed like a single BS4+ lascannon, even in BS 3+ tanks.

Ice_can wrote:
Also if a Battle cannon is supposed to be the same class of weapon as 2 lascannons why isn't it pointed like that? It's costed like a single BS4+ lascannon, even in BS 3+ tanks.

The same reason why infantry squads are 4ppm.

Ice_can wrote:

Spoiler:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
We may have to agree to disagree on this point. To my mind, I've always tended to think of blasts as the quantity-focused flip side to quality firepower with high-quality blasts typically being the "above and beyond" guns that are meant to feel really devastating. A krak missile smashes open tanks and pillboxees with brute force. A frag missile is crummy against tanks but has the potential to kill multiple infantry instead of just one. And then vindicators were (once upon a time) one of the nastiest guns you could fit on a tank so they got to be both a blast and a shot that was good at cracking open tanks.

Plus, night spinners, dispersed shot fire prisms, blast profile forgeworld reapers, whirlwinds, cluster spines, splinter salvos, old school shredders, anything with "frag" in its name, and basically any blast with a strength of 6 or less strikes me as more of an anti-infantry gun than an anti-tank one.

Wouldn't a quality firepower gun that gets extra shots against infantry help with that? A vindicator that fires a low number of shots against a tank but a higher number of shots against infantry could functionally be good against both. A gun that only ever has a single shot but with better AP or damage or what have you would beat the vindicator at anti-tank but be less flexible. A gun with lots of shots but lower strength, damage, and AP would be worse against vehicles but better against infantry. To my mind, a gun being good against vehicles and pill boxes is represented in its strength, AP, and damage. The blast rules reflect that gun also being good at picking up multiple small models at once.

I worry that you'd be sacrificing gameplay for simulationism. I guarantee that I can spread out my infantry inside that structure to mitigate the number of hits you get, but you and I will both end up spending an extra ten minutes over the course of the game waiting for my butter fingers to position each model just right.

I propose that what you want is not actually to make models physically spread out. I mean, I could be wrong, but your end goal probably isn't to make every model on the table stand exactly 2" apart from his friends in the squad, right? What you seem to want is to represent artillery and the like to suppress and disrupt enemy coordination. So with that in mind, maybe handling that abstractly (through some sort of suppression or pinning mechanic) would better accomplish what you're trying to achieve without punishing players for not fiddling with their horde positioning enough? Again, I could be misunderstanding your intent.

While I personally don't have trouble achieving spacing with my Guardsmen, since I already do the whole 2" measuring thing. As a side note, 2" spacing should not mathematically deny a hit, since a 25mm base is smaller than 1", and it should be easy to eyeball the spread out of the guy after him in line. I do agree that anything re-instating blasts would slow the game down, though, and it's not necessary from a balance perspective. But a better blast mechanic would be fun, a lot of tanks feel very samey right now.

This game, and most wargames to be fair, have poor suppression mechanics. That's another area that could be addressed, but I don't know if people really want infantry being pinned more than killed. While it would be realistic, most people don't like that.


You did bring up a good point, though. The anti-infantry blasts, like frag missiles and wyverns, if changed to area strike weapons, would be largely ineffective period. Guys in cover tend to stack up for hits, and dislodging entrenched troops is a good use case for them, but that might make them too niche. OTOH, that might not be a bad thing, and the Whirlwind can be separately addressed.

Ice_can wrote:Still come back to auto hitting = bad as it makes blast weapons best against supersonic flyers.

Multiple hits on units with x distance will be disproportionate effective against 3 and 5 man msu over 20-30 strong units.

I would suggest blasts should be 1 to hit roll for every x models in a unit so you bring 3 boys vrs a basilisk you get hit 1 per 5 models, but a wyvern is 1 per 2. It allows each weapon to be tuned to be effective against specific targets.

Also as to HE vrs armour yeah no that hasn't been true for many years, once people understood how to make proper armoured vehicles.

A battle cannon is a generalist weapon that is actually overly efficient for it's point's cost.
The issue isn't that anti armour doesn't work it's that it's not costed on remotely the same scale as generalist weapons that should attract a premium due to not having a inefficient matchup like a lascannon vrs infantry or a heavy bolter vrs a russ.
Being able to kill infantry and tanks efficently shouldn't be something a generalist weapon should do more than a specialist weapon.

Uh huh. Artillery is still very effective at engaging armor. Light armored vehicles get shredded, and even main battle tanks sustain mission-ending damage from near misses. And a direct hit will wreck any tank, period, though to be fair a direct hit is unlikely. Imperial Artillery is guided by God!

Page 8 starts an article about tests of artillery vs tanks.
https://sill-www.army.mil/firesbulletin/archives/2002/NOV_DEC_2002/NOV_DEC_2002_FULL_EDITION.pdf

Also, a Battle Cannon is a comparable weapon in class to 2 Lascannons. It should have anti-tank performance somewhat worse than 2 lascannons, but considerably better than 1 lascannon. And, it might surprise you, but a Leman Russ firing a Battle Cannon averages about 2.5 damage to heavy armored targets and about 4 to light armor, while a Leman Russ firing twin Lascannons averages about 8 to either. This seems pretty fine. The Vanquisher sucks when it should outperform a Lascannon pair, but that's another problem unrelated to the Battle Cannon.

Also, if you're just trying to develop a weapon that hurts Guardsmen more than Marines, you're not approaching the problem right. Also, that weapon should be automatic weapons, and rifle fire. The problem being discussed as I understand it is how to make blasts behave appreciably differently than automatic weapons, and improve the sense of verisimilitude. Honestly, I don't have a problem with the representation of blast effect balance wise, but it has the effect of making most of the tank weapons very samey and furthering the meta of using many-shot weapons to engage armor. The solution to making Guardsmen worse than Marines lies in re-evaluating the value of their base characteristics. Also, a area blast would be less effective against marine infantry than the current representation.

That was an interesting article thanks for the link, kinda lines up with the feedback we had, which is it's great against slow moving or stationary targets but against actual modern combat armour eg challenegers and Abrams the problem is actually achieveing effective rounds on targets is almoat impossible, regardless of the accuracy, terminal guidance systems are required for repeatable mission success as they don't need to stop to be effective.

Also if a Battle cannon is supposed to be the same class of weapon as 2 lascannons why isn't it pointed like that? It's costed like a single BS4+ lascannon, even in BS 3+ tanks.

Well, a couple of points there about the Battle Cannon: 1, the Leman Russ is BS4+. 2, the Battle Cannon's 22 point cost is based of it's single-firing profile [which is about as dangerous as a Lascannon]. It's fairly costed relative to the Lascannon, but the tank chassis is overcosted and having a Lascannon as your tank gun is pretty bad, so rather than fixing the problem, they made the Leman Russ shoot twice and stopped caring. There are a lot of problems with the Leman Russ, divorced from the issue of blast templates.

In addition, there's a variant of the Leman Russ that does carry Twin Lascannons as it's turret weapon, which informs the assertion that the Battle Cannon is supposed to be interpreted as a weapon in class as a pair of Lascannons. While it probably shouldn't exhibit exactly as good antitank capacity, because it's portrayed as being more along the lines of "good at everything", it still should be a 40 point weapon with a 40 point profile, rather than a 20 point weapon with a 20 point profile.

The Leman Russ tank chassis is overcosted, and as demonstrated when the edition dropped, firing the gun once doesn't get you anywhere. There's a right way to fix this and it's not what the current status of the tank is, but they've just sort of hotpatched it by firing twice. It still isn't a good tank, but it's not offensively terrible enough to loudly complain about either, and GW doesn't care. It's not like Leman Russes are breaking the meta, anyway. Tanks and antitank as a whole this edition need a re-work.



Back to artillery: yeah, artillery is pretty devastating if it hits you. Sniping a single moving tank isn't really something it's possible for a single gun to do with indirect fire unguided munitions, but group of guns firing at an area containing a group of tanks is bound to ruin somebody's day, or at least drive the tanks out of the area.

 skchsan wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Also if a Battle cannon is supposed to be the same class of weapon as 2 lascannons why isn't it pointed like that? It's costed like a single BS4+ lascannon, even in BS 3+ tanks.

The same reason why infantry squads are 4ppm.

Please, thank you, we got it, you're upset about Marines. It isn't particularly relevant to blast effect weapons, and nothing productive will ever come of it if you're just trying to change it to make Marines strong.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Some like a frag launcher or a frag missile doesn't seem like it should be unhindered by a unit being hard to see or doing a barrel roll at speed.

Being hard to see is accounted for by the cover bonus, the unit still gets the +1 save modifier. And it makes sense that hiding would be of limited effectiveness against an AoE weapon. As long as the unit is visible enough that you know where it is (and if it is completely out of LOS you can't shoot it at all) you just have to aim for the rough area that the unit occupies and let the blast do the work. You can still have a less effective shot, represented by a low roll on the die, if your placement isn't ideal but even a BS 5+ gunner is going to have enough skill fluff-wise to put a frag missile into the general vicinity of a target.

Also, it's not like speed is really accounted for most of the time anyway. A unit moving 0" and a unit moving 48" are hit at the same BS with non-blast weapons so why should blast weapons suffer an extra penalty? If a unit can dodge a frag missile then why should a flamer still work without any penalty? The few speed/evasion abilities that should be relevant can be modified to account for the new rules. For example, a jetbike unit with -1 to hit could also have -1 to the number of blast hits it receives (probably with a minimum of 1) and aircraft could be entirely immune to any weapon with the blast keyword*. Make the rule work with the majority of situations, then worry about if you need to add any special-case changes.

*Unrelatedly, aircraft should also go back to being hit on 6s unless they go into hover mode. A mere -1 to hit penalty is utterly insane.

Frag missiles, submunition railguns, and disintegrators (which were "blasts" until 8th edition iirc) should probably not ignore some of the most costly defensive investments in the game.

Why not? There are weapons that ignore LOS, there are weapons that ignore cover bonuses, there are weapons that ignore saves, there are even weapons that ignore invulnerable saves. Why shouldn't -1 to hit stacking have its own counter?

This has turned into a very interesting discussion!

I like the idea of making blast weapons score 1 hit (or shot) per model in the target unit, up to a maximum.

I think that this would combine really well with my "direct" hit mechanic - and as people have been discussing, a direct hit with artillery will cause serious problems for any tank.

my proposal remains the same in principle: the weapon has 2 profiles, representing the direct hit and the blast, as follows:

Battle cannon
Direct Hit: S8 AP-3 D6 damage Heavy 1
Blast: S6 AP-2 1 damage Heavy Blast 8

with the "Blast" rule being as people suggested, equal to the number of models as a target, to a max of 8.

this would give a lot more difference between the anti-infantry and anti-tank on each blast weapon, as there will be some with small, dense explosions for popping a tank and others with a fireball for roasting gribblies. This would basically reduce the damage output of blasts onto single models, but still leave a chance of a good hit causing decent damage.

 some bloke wrote:
This has turned into a very interesting discussion!

I like the idea of making blast weapons score 1 hit (or shot) per model in the target unit, up to a maximum.

I think that this would combine really well with my "direct" hit mechanic - and as people have been discussing, a direct hit with artillery will cause serious problems for any tank.

my proposal remains the same in principle: the weapon has 2 profiles, representing the direct hit and the blast, as follows:

Battle cannon
Direct Hit: S8 AP-3 D6 damage Heavy 1
Blast: S6 AP-2 1 damage Heavy Blast 8

with the "Blast" rule being as people suggested, equal to the number of models as a target, to a max of 8.

this would give a lot more difference between the anti-infantry and anti-tank on each blast weapon, as there will be some with small, dense explosions for popping a tank and others with a fireball for roasting gribblies. This would basically reduce the damage output of blasts onto single models, but still leave a chance of a good hit causing decent damage.

The maximum hits that a large blast caused in prior editions at best case scenario* is 7 on a direct hit roll, so I think the max hits should be 7.

*best case scenario for the purpose of this calculation is a set up where models are spaced exactly 2" apart in a hexagon with a model in the center of them, with the large blast centered on the central model.

As far as the proposal for the dual profile (like plasma) goes, what is your suggestion for determining which weapons get them? Do all previous large blast template weapons get this treatment? One thing to think about is some of the "barrage" type weapons also used to have large blasts. What do you think a proper implementation for them are? Should they stay as it is or should they get a variant of a "direct hit"/"targetted" rules for them?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Also if a Battle cannon is supposed to be the same class of weapon as 2 lascannons why isn't it pointed like that? It's costed like a single BS4+ lascannon, even in BS 3+ tanks.

The same reason why infantry squads are 4ppm.

Please, thank you, we got it, you're upset about Marines. It isn't particularly relevant to blast effect weapons, and nothing productive will ever come of it if you're just trying to change it to make Marines strong.

This isn't even about marines and you know it. Other base BS4+ armies don't get weapon discounts. IG gets discounts because they're IG.

 skchsan wrote:
This isn't even about marines and you know it. Other base BS4+ armies don't get weapon discounts. IG gets discounts because they're IG.

Uh Huh. A venom cannon is Assault 1d3, R36", S8, Ap2, D1d3, and is 12 points on BS4+ models, which is pretty much on par with the 15 points IG BS4+ model pay to get Heavy 1, R48", S8, AP2, D1d6. Or Assault 3, R24", S5, AP1, D1 for 5 points vs. Heavy 3, R36", S5, AP1, D1 for 8 points.

I think that's like, it [I'm not going to go through every similar option, but the general cost ranges are similar]. Guard and Tyranids. Tau Infantry are 4+; but for the most part don't have a wide special weapon option set. Pathfinders, though get Plasma at 4 points vs IG 7 [though thy have weak AP, so the cost is about right].

Also, IG 3+ models do pay 3+ prices for Plasmaguns and Meltaguns. The only unit that really gets away with anything is the Tank Commander, which is a 20 point upgrade over a standard tank for BS3+ and re-roll 1's. That said, it's not also without precedent [well, antecedent], Carnifexes can buy BS3+ for 10 points.

Anyway, that's off topic.


Mostly, if blasts hit heavy infantry harder than dispersed light infantry, that makes fair sense to me. I don't think the idea of "blasts should punish hordes" is a valid one, or at least in the sense of 1 hit per model. They do, but it's a suppressive effect where the unit must disperse [reducing mission effectiveness] or suffer elevated casualties. And the scrambling for "what will, then?" doesn't get anywhere for theoretical versimiltude-improving blast operation [also, to answer that question, an appropriate evaluation of the worth of armor and wounds would, not trying to mutate weapons to swat Orks, Tyranids, Ncrons, and Guardsmen. It's not like MSU isn't incentivised enough already]
An area strike blast wouldn't be bad anyway, to stick back at MSU which would otherwise mitigate damage through virtue of being small units.




Also, a 5" strike template "worst case" scenario is 2: hit 1 at the end of a line 12.5mm base + 2" gap is less than 2.5", resulting in striking the next model in the line. Worst-by-gunner's-choice is 3, since you should target a guy between two guys [getting his two neighbors] rather than the end of the line. A 5" template "best case" is upwards of like 30+, you can do the geometry yourself, you can tag a lot of guys with the blast if they're B2B. 4-6 is a pretty "average use case" number of hits on most units.



Also, more stream of consciousness, the area strike's suppressive effect on light infantry units is probably a really good thing; it opens up space between models to consolidate through during the melee phase, allowing skirmishers to reach deeper into the enemy ranks and be even more disruptive. I'm actually liking the idea of returning area strikes as as serious ides the more I think about it.

Yes, a large blast has the potential to hit up to maximum of 37 models under a set of very specific conditions. It also has a chance to hit 0 models under that same circumstances depending on the scatter & firer's BS. Bunching up your models had both advantages and disadvantages, but under realistic conditions (the 'best case scenario' I set up), 7 hits were the maximum hits you can make. This number is further reduced if you take into consideration the base size change (25mm to 32mm) in 7th ed.

So maybe 6 hits should be the large blast and 3 hits for small blast?

 skchsan wrote:
Yes, a large blast has the potential to hit up to maximum of 37 models under a set of very specific conditions. It also has a chance to hit 0 models under that same circumstances depending on the scatter & firer's BS. Bunching up your models had both advantages and disadvantages, but under realistic conditions (the 'best case scenario' I set up), 7 hits were the maximum hits you can make. This number is further reduced if you take into consideration the base size change (25mm to 32mm) in 7th ed.

So maybe 6 hits should be the large blast and 3 hits for small blast?

I've done it before; though. I think just incorporating the area strike effect is what would be best as an alternate blast resolution scheme, Anything else isn't really actually improving it, and is just messing around with the existing X shots system without meaningfully presenting an improvement.

That said, I would say that average use case would be like 6 and 1! Getting much of anything out of the 3" blast was always a challenge, such that it really was just limited to targeting guys who arrived from DS all clustered up. Getting more than 6 out of a large blast would be pretty realistic, though, between units sheltering on the upper floors of ruins and blobs of troops that didn't care enough to be bothered, it was generally pretty easy to find places to get lots of hits. That said, I generally fired against tanks more than infantry, and the blasts' value was more along the lines of preventing me from missing the target, and most of them were Ordnance.



The "problem" with the current system is that, as far as I can see it, it's indistinguishable from a weapon like an Autocannon. And most of the weapons don't really have adequate performance, either, but that's another problem.

 some bloke wrote:

my proposal remains the same in principle: the weapon has 2 profiles, representing the direct hit and the blast, as follows:

Battle cannon
Direct Hit: S8 AP-3 D6 damage Heavy 1
Blast: S6 AP-2 1 damage Heavy Blast 8

with the "Blast" rule being as people suggested, equal to the number of models as a target, to a max of 8.

For what its worth I like this proposal. This format for blast weapons is also better for fine tuning. You could have frag grenades at Blast 3 and frag missile at Blast 4 as a (purely hypothetical) example.

Just my 0.02 $heep