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I personally think shotguns should be a little more...useful. I know its S4 and AP-, which to some is good, but only one kind of shell bothers me. I was thinkin, maybe different kinds of things could be loaded into shotguns, like inceniaries, frags, slugs, and most importantly rock salt. I'm not sure what the stats on the shotgun shells would be (atleast for SM) and still have a balance.

brandon noble wrote:I personally think shotguns should be a little more...useful. I know its S4 and AP-

Be glad you actually have S4. Guard has S3.

Which brings another q...other than the assault 2 part whats the benefit (sorry not a guard player) of a shotgun?

I think around half of the rules in this forum are for shotguns and sniper rifles. FPS have a lot to answer for.


Anyway, shotguns are assault 2, so you can fire off 2 shots before assaulting. You will sometimes see squads geared up with shotguns and flamers, most notably IG veterans and SM scouts.

It is a minor, specialised role, dependant on getting the guns into specific circumstances. I think this is alright, because in the real world shotguns are a minor weapon for use in specific circumstances.

Shoot twice and get an assault afterwards. It's basically like getting two CC attacks in first (BS3 with an S4 weapon, versus WS3 and S4 in close combat, amounts to basically the same). It's useful against any enemy with I4 or better. Against any enemy that's I3 or worse, bolt pistol and combat blade is better (due to cover saves).

Well, an IG vet with a shotgun can still assault and costs the same as a lasgun (free). It's a lasgun with shorter range and assault 2.
IG Shotgun- Range 12" Str 3 AP- Assualt 2
sorry Melissia, not correcting you, took ages to get codex to check the shotgun stats...

Yeah, the difference between lasgun and shotgun is obvious, as is the reason you'd take one or the other. For Scouts, it's not so obvious (Because they have bolt pistols as standard equipment).

In my experience with playing with and against Scouts, is that the more versatile the Scouts are equipped, the better suited the list becomes.

I'll admit at first, I wasn't a fan of Scouts. But that I think was also due to my lack of experience playing the game, as well as exposure to the rules in general. Now, I've come to understand how useful and powerful Scouts can be, when used correctly in the right list.

That all being said, Shotguns aren't as bad as they seem. They're effectively Stormbolters without an AP, and depending on the style of play you prefer with your Scouts, they're very comparable to them having a CCW and Bolt Pistol instead.

Would it be nice if they had an AP value? Absolutely. Would it make or break the game if they got one? Probably not so much. But should giving it an AP value increase the point cost for them? Yes. So with that being said, to keep Scouts on a relatively cheaper and versatile playing field compared to Tactical Marines, I think Shotguns are fine just the way they are.

I'm leaning towards Benshin's opinion on this, but I also think that since the OP wants to talk about some ideas for different types of shells it wouldn't hurt to oblige him/her.

Frag Shells: Space Marine Scouts are often used as a supporting element for the rest of the forces of the Marines in the role of reconaisance or infiltration. However, once the rest of the forces arrive, the Scouts perform a different role. Using their powerful fragmentation ammunition to pin down enemy forces in cover, they help support the advance of Terminators and deliver fire wherever it is needed.

Frag Shells Profile
Range-18 S-3 Ap-6 Type-Assault 1, Grenade

Grenade: This type of round is used to compensate for the inability of Space Marines in Tactical Dreadnought armor to utilize grenades to pin down enemies stationed in cover while assaulting. Should a unit assault a unit that has been shot at with a weapon with this quality in the shooting phase of its turn, it counts as having assault grenades.

Slugs: Slugs are used by Scouts to deal with armored enemies. These large rounds are quite capable of piercing many types of armor, but unfortunately have less brute force when compared to the standard spread shot.

Slugs Profile
Range-18 S-3 Ap-4 Type-Assault 2

Note: Since these are AP 4, I'd recommend that they be an upgrade that can be purchased at 2 or 3 points per Scout in order to balance. They'll hurt IG Vet squads pretty well, if nothing else.

Incendiary Rounds: These rounds are used by Scouts on units in cover in order to flush out forces hiding inside.

Incendiary Rounds Profile
Range-12 S-3 Ap- -- Type-Assault 2, Ignores Cover

Note: Should be pretty good against stuff like Guard and Gaunts inside cover. Even though it doesn't ignore their armor, 5+ saves are worse than the 4+ cover.

These are just some ideas off of the top of my head. I'm not really sure if they're balanced or not.

I think shotguns should be used as a template weapon without the no cover save rule. And they would have like S 4 AP 4. Its just odd to me that a bolt pistol is better than a shotgun up close.

The thing is, the bolts are explained in the fluff as being big rounds propelled by rockets that can punch through pretty decent armor. Their supposed to be some three quarters of an inch to larger than one depending on whether you're talking about a boltgun or a heavy bolter. Shotguns are represented like this because they really don't have that much penetrative power and just use brute force, while the boltguns and bolt pistols have both brute force and some armor penetration.

Um...no?

You're saying that a shotgun shot has the same amount of scatter as a flamethrower?
No.
And they definitely should not have ap4. That would be so unbalanced, it would screw up a lot of stuff.
And why is it wierd that a bolt gun is better then a shotgun up close?
A bolt gun literally shoots a bullet that explodes inside of you. Compared to a handfull of buckshot, Im pretty sure the bolter would win.

I hafta say Im liking Markinglight's stats for the shotgun shells. They all seem fairly practical and well balanced.

Sorry I meant bolt pistol. And if not AP4 the at least an AP value of some sort.

12" S4 AP - Assault 2, +1 to hit modifier

That would make me happy.

Rurouni Benshin wrote:That all being said, Shotguns aren't as bad as they seem. They're effectively Stormbolters without an AP...

They have half the range of a storm bolter, which matters quite a bit.

rodt777 wrote:I think shotguns should be used as a template weapon without the no cover save rule. And they would have like S 4 AP 4. Its just odd to me that a bolt pistol is better than a shotgun up close.

Shotguns are not magical tubes of death. They're just shotguns.

Actually I like the option of having a shotgun use a large flame template. Scatter on a real one depends one the choke setting, mostly.
A scatter shot, using the large flame template, same str and AP... but assault 1, due to more potential hits, but allows cover saves. As for points... this isn't really that big of a change, I don't see it as a game changer, or overpowered I would make it a straight option, no cost.

10 man Scout Squad Versus 27 Termigaunts, about the same amount of points without Camo cloaks or other upgrades.

The Scouts outflank, and then get off all of their shots into the Gaunts. Since they're attacking form the side, they'll probably get a good number of them under each template, but we'll assume an average of 4 since this requires alot of proper placement.

40 hits, 27 wounds, 18 dead. The Scouts then assault. 21 attacks hitting at a higher initiative give 10.5 hits, 7 wounds, and 4.33 gaunts dead. 4.66 gaunts remain and a have a good chance of dying to no retreat wounds.

Regular shotguns in the same scenario

20 shots, 10 hits, 6.66 wounds, 4.44 dead. The Scouts then assault. Same number of gaunts are killed by them in assault as they were last time. Leaves about 18 or 19 gaunts left to tarpit the unit while a Tervigon goes and spawns some more.

It really increases their firepower.

Ok.. and that result differs from a 10-man ork burna boys squad how? Though you could drop the strength to 3 on the 'special' ammo, I suppose.
Of course it could make scout speeders a real dangeous unit.... like burnas in a wagon....

god. this thread again?

Well. shotguns, as they are are in fine form. they're stronger then bolt pistols [2 shots] and can provide good fire support.

the only wish I have is, like in COD and such games, that they'd replace your pistol, which as it is is useless now.

[as a SM player] and maybe costed more. then, we could have our ranged bolters, and keep some more power for close combat.

it's a dream. admittently, s stupid one.

since when does a shotgun shoot in a teardrop? if anything, it explodes ad impact, which would entai a blast template.

giving them either would break the weapon, they'd be really bad.

we COULD offer them an alternate fire type.

The problem here is that Burna Squads don't have Scout, Infiltrate, 4+ armor saves, and aren't scoring. Burnas are an elite choice, and they should have greater damage potential and greater flexibility than a troop choice. The Burnas specifically forgo flexibility for sheer power, what with the whole power weapon and 15 flame templates thing. They need a Battlewagon or a Trukk in order to get close, something that a Scout Squad doesn't. The Scout Squad shouldn't be able to perform this closely to that unit and still remain cheaper, with better survivability and very powerful USRs attached to it.

Wow, you guys are going nuts. Just giving it rending would be less OP then most of the suggestions :-\. I think something like a +1 hit modifier or rolls to hit of 6 get to roll an extra attack to represent hitting another person or just the raw power of a point blank blast. But then if you change that then you'd have to change everything else in the game, like Shuriken Catapults so they don't totally blow or the entire Nid army .


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Has anyone ever heard, seen, or even imagined a single shotgun blast ripping through six or seven men? If shotguns were that powerful, no one would ever touch an assault rifle.

Actually, they probably wouldn't use shotguns at all then, since that amount of recoil would send you flying back to Holy Terra

I think that the point of this thread was to see if there were some ways to make the shotguns more versatile without making them gamebreakingly so. YMMV on how good of an idea that is, but it can't hurt try and make some stats for it.

RENDING.

are you serious?

It's MICRO pellets. they're th size of your nail. they're not shot fast enough to be like assault cannons.

silly boi.

They're still fine as they are.

I was using Rending as an example of how exaggerated this thread is getting. A flamer template even with S2 is still pretty OP and makes no sense. A 6 to hit in shooting confering an extra shot fired (but doesn't stack) to the unit being fired at makes some sense and shouldn't be game breaking. Or that +1 to hit like Deschenus said. MarkingLight also had a good idea.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But yes, I agree that they are fine the way they are, just giving some suggestions.

Counter-Attack? sounds fair to me, makes it that being so close (but out of assault range) isn't so bad and gives you a little extra kick. think of it as blasting the zombies as they come.

anyway, Military Shotgus wouldn't be well represented with a template would they? aren't they far more precise than that

and as some people like to think of a shotgun as being really powerful (against a test dummy from a TV ducumentary, or some guy shooting a point blank range in a movie), think of it like this, lets say both of the shots hit a termagaunt, you now have to 4+ chances to kill a crazed bug monster, a Space Marine Shotgun has 2 3+ attempts to kill it, sounds strong to me. there are many things that can go wrond in a frenzied battle, some people will make kills, some won't hit anything important, especially if they believe the spray will do thier work for them.

Termagants suck, who cares about them. lol

hmm. been doing some reading, and originally, shotguns had explosions, much like elephant guns.

so, I'd assume then, that we could up the strength to five, keep it as AP- Assault 2.

This shows an extreem blast of maybe 20-35 pellets

The other use is for room clearing. at close range, it literally shreds through cover.

This would be larger pellets, maybe only 10 or 15.

something like melta. if at half range, then it ignores cover saves.

if you really can't see why this might work, I salute you. Really. shotguns are fine as it is.

But for the sake of people not understanding the tactical useful ness of an extra shot [albeit at the sacrifice of range]

Allow me to average it out:

okay! 10-man squad of scouts. all have shotguns. they are shooting 10 man squad of tactical marines.

they do 18 shots at BS3, 2 at BS4 11 hit. they then proceed to do 11 hits at S4. of which, 6 hit.
they will do about 2 wounds.

now, what do those shotguns cost them? an average of 14 points. so, thats 140 points just done 32 points of damage. thats more then 20%
they then proceed into assault.

they do 21 attacks, of which 11 hit, 6 wound and 4 are saved. another 20%

in retaliation, they do 9 attacks [they've already lost 2.], hit 5 of them, wound 3 times and do 1 wound.
they've taken 10%

who won this little assault? it's 5 scouts with shotties, 1 to taccies.

okay! second situation:
Same thing. 10 scouts, though with Bolters:
Can't shooties da boltah, no 2 S4 AP5 hits.
so,
10 @S4 AP5. does 5 hits, 3 wounds, 1 unsaved.
10%

In CC, they get a total of 21 attacks, hit 11, wound 6, 2 unsaved.
20%

Marines:
Do 10 attacks, hit 5, wound 3, we save 2. they do one wound.

whats the margin here? it's 1 to 3. we only mod their Ld down to 6 D:

Then, the final close range option:
take a combat blade yey!
Do 10 shots in at range, hit 5, wound 3, unsaved 1.
10%

Then, charge into combat. do 11 base + 10 for chargin + 10 for 2 CCW. thats 31 attacks!
of those 31, we hit 16, we wound 8, and 3 go 2 go unsaved.
20%

Then, they do 10 attacks, [9+1 for serg's extra]
5 hit 3 wound, 2 saved.
10%

So, here we do 3 Vs 1.

N: Your results may vary.

can you now see why shotguns are the best option, for an assaulting squad?
I mean, so what? if your fighting a horde army, they're usually not stronger then T4 sv4+.

shotguns every time for scouts.

Err, no? S5 is silly. Especially if Guard also get that (and it'd be stupid to have Marine shotguns be S5 but Guard shotguns be S3). S5 is the level of a heavy bolter-- basically a bolter heavy machinegun, capable of doing damage to tanks, something no shotgun is going to be able to do (even slugs would have issues with that, if they could at all).

sebster wrote:

Rurouni Benshin wrote:That all being said, Shotguns aren't as bad as they seem. They're effectively Stormbolters without an AP...

They have half the range of a storm bolter, which matters quite a bit.

I know their range is only half of what a Storm Bolter gives, but taking into account when playing Scouts, a smart players will generally have them in transports (ie - LS Storm) move them across the field, disembark into Assault range, unload their shots, and then Assault. Aside from Terminators and a few SM vehicles, Storm Bolters don't come stock with many units, but for what they are worth, they are obviously "cheap" enough for some units to take.

In this case, I propose the analogy of "Storm Bolters are to Terminators, as Shotguns are to Scouts". When used correctly by each of their respective models, they yield very similar results.

Proposed rule:

Shotguns combine with the scout upgrade 'Leather jacket and shades, 1pt/model'. Bestows ability to shoot one handed while spouting Arnie quotes. Targeted enemy units suffering a wound must take a leadership test or fall back. Rolls of 1 to hit cause a wound on the firing model due to arm rupturing.