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.

Ok, after reading several Necron wishlists, I admit i'd like to see an improvement to Gauss Weaponry. Rending is too powerful, but how about this?

Gauss Weapons: When rolling to hit with a gauss weapon, keep 6's aside from your other hits. Any 6's you roll to wound from the "to hit" rolls that were 6, count as rending shots.

This gives them an edge, but isnt too over powered I feel. Thoughts?

That's useless.

You won't be hurting vehicles OR infantry with that.

grayspark wrote:That's useless.

You won't be hurting vehicles OR infantry with that.

Please expand upon your statement.

Sounds good to me, I guess.

Well, don't you think ALL 6's to wound/penetrate is ust a BIT too powerful? Think eldar rangers, thats sort of how it works for them.

I'd say just make glances from Gauss weapons be rolled at -1 on the damage table instead of -2.

That would make me a happy camper.

Gauss: when ever a Gauss weapon rolls a 6 to wound it automatically wounds regardless of Toughness. against Vehicles a 6 to penetrate inflicts an automatic glancing hit, unless the weapons Str would make it a penetrating hit. this hit is made at AP1.

Sigh. How about instead of playing around with situational rules or stipulations, just make gauss weapons Melta weapons. No changes to strength or AP from the base weapon. So a gauss flayer will still be S4 AP5, and will get 2d6 for armor penetration at 12". And then hey, issue resolved, Necrons restored to being devestating against vehicles with common shooting, using a USR. People on the boards seem to like the idea of using USRs for Necrons as opposed to something unique. That'd work. And it has the benefit of not upsetting people with being able to drop marines in droves with our shooting.

dancingcricket wrote:And it has the benefit of not upsetting people with being able to drop marines in droves with our shooting.

None of the suggested solutions fit that description.

dancingcricket wrote:Sigh. How about instead of playing around with situational rules or stipulations, just make gauss weapons Melta weapons. No changes to strength or AP from the base weapon. So a gauss flayer will still be S4 AP5, and will get 2d6 for armor penetration at 12". And then hey, issue resolved, Necrons restored to being devestating against vehicles with common shooting, using a USR. People on the boards seem to like the idea of using USRs for Necrons as opposed to something unique. That'd work. And it has the benefit of not upsetting people with being able to drop marines in droves with our shooting.

I like it actually! I would add in that you use the rapid fire range. So Gauss flayers get one shot at 24", 12" melta or 2 shots at 12", 6" melta.

Seriously? Melta? So a standard warriro coudl potentially land a S16 hit at 12".

OP me thinks. i think rending would work fine, considering that it only gives you an extra D3 now and not the full D6 liek it used to.

means the standard necron warrior can potentially hit at S13 IF you roll 6 to pen, then 4/5/6.

Praxiss wrote:Seriously? Melta? So a standard warriro coudl potentially land a S16 hit at 12".

OP me thinks. i think rending would work fine, considering that it only gives you an extra D3 now and not the full D6 liek it used to.

means the standard necron warrior can potentially hit at S13 IF you roll 6 to pen, then 4/5/6.

Actually, it would be a 13 if you roll 6 to pen, then 5/6, not 4/5/6. 4 would be a 12. And actually it's not that OP. It brings it back in line with the older fluff and rules let them deal with any vehicle, as the old glance charts allowed vehicle destroyed options. So, for your flayer against that A14, on two dice you need to roll a 10 for a glance, and an 11 for a pen, and then you still need to roll a 5+ to pop it and get the guys out of the Land Raider, or get the KP for the Russ if your shooting the front. About a 1/12 chance to get a pen result on AV14. Then you have 1/3 chance to actually destroy it after that. Which would indicate, if probability works the same as fractions (which I admit, I never took probability), your looking at a 1/36 chance that any shot will be able to cause your Land Raider to be forced to empty it's contents, or finally put your Russ down.

Now, a Lascannon shot, which we are already assuming hits, as your argument was the ability to get a pen off a hit, is going to get a pen on AV14 on a 6. 1/6 chance. The melta guns that are often hidden in your average marine squad are able to get up to a S20, with AP1. 7/12 of the hits will be penetrating, and 1/2 of those will destroy the tank against a LR. While the individual die is only concerned with a 1/6 chance of a particular result, over time we'd expect it to take an average of 12 hits from a gauss flayer using the melta rule to secure a penetrating hit on a Land Raider, 6 hits from a Lascannon, and 2 guys with your Marine melta guns to be able to get a pen.

I'm not talking about giving them S8 AP1 melta, I'm saying standard flayer, S4 AP5. No bonus to pen. You have to be up in your enemies assault range to use it, and yes, a 10 man squad of warriors rapid firing at 6 inches is likely going to get 1 to 2 penetrating hits on your LR. Considering the fluff of the necrons and their super advanced tech, as well as the pic we have of a regular destroyer shooting through both sides of a LR in the codex, this doesn't seem that OP to me.

Granted, this will make them more devestating against lighter transports, but, IMHO, their is already too much mech in this game. Giving people a reason to consider not bringing the tanks might allow other strategies to emerge, and maybe make the game a bit more fun for people who aren't looking to have armor battles, or throw their nids, daemons, necrons, or other primarily foot army against a heavy mech list.

dancingcricket wrote:

Praxiss wrote:Seriously? Melta? So a standard warriro coudl potentially land a S16 hit at 12".

OP me thinks. i think rending would work fine, considering that it only gives you an extra D3 now and not the full D6 liek it used to.

means the standard necron warrior can potentially hit at S13 IF you roll 6 to pen, then 4/5/6.

Actually, it would be a 13 if you roll 6 to pen, then 5/6, not 4/5/6. 4 would be a 12. And actually it's not that OP. It brings it back in line with the older fluff and rules let them deal with any vehicle, as the old glance charts allowed vehicle destroyed options. So, for your flayer against that A14, on two dice you need to roll a 10 for a glance, and an 11 for a pen, and then you still need to roll a 5+ to pop it and get the guys out of the Land Raider, or get the KP for the Russ if your shooting the front. About a 1/12 chance to get a pen result on AV14. Then you have 1/3 chance to actually destroy it after that. Which would indicate, if probability works the same as fractions (which I admit, I never took probability), your looking at a 1/36 chance that any shot will be able to cause your Land Raider to be forced to empty it's contents, or finally put your Russ down.

actually you both have some bad numbers. Melta changes the distribution. considerably. each roll is no longer equally likely like on once dice.
2 2.78%
3 5.56%
4 8.33%
5 11.11%
6 13.89%
7 16.67%
8 13.89%
9 11.11%
10 8.33%
11 5.56%
12 2.78%
so for our Str4 gauss flayer the chance to glance AV10 is .139 and pen .582
glance pen
AV11 .166 .416
AV12 .139 .277
AV13 .111 .166
AV14 .083 .083

Given that the chance to glance is currently .1666 for all armor values this is a signifigant improvement at all levels. Perhaps drop the strength or make it AP-

Another option might be similar to Eldar haywire grenades. something like "on a 6 to penetrate the vehicle is effected by a haywire grenade effect in addition to whatever other roll"
This would mean that instead of a .166 chance to glance Gauss weapons would have a .111 chance to glance and a .028 chance to penetrate any armor. Not huge odds but with a lot of shots it would pay off. Its certainly better than it is now.
This would be in addition to whatever else was rolled so AV 10 would get get crushed by Str4 and higher strength Gauss weapons would further wreck higher armor values.

Let me get out my calculator. 1/12 = .083333 Hmm. Looks lime my numbers for getting a pen matches. Since the concern was getting a S16, the most likely concern is getting through the AV14 on land raiders and Russ'. On a 10 man squad shooting at rapid fire to get the melta, 20 shots, so your looking at 1 penetrating at that chance, and then only 1/3 of those will pop the tank. Obviously it would be easier to get a pen result on lower AV's. But that's true for any weapon that has a sufficiently high strength or means to get numerically beat AV14.

Now for haywire grenades. 1/6 hits will do nothing, 4/6 will glance, and 1/6 will penetrate. So 5/6 hits will do something to the target tank. Same 20 shots doing a haywire effect. 12 hits. 2 pens, 8 glances, 2 nothing. .166 chance of a pen, twice as effective as a melta at half range. Less effective against lower AV, but more effective against AV14. Chance to glance .66. So against the 12 hits there will be 8 glances, with standard distribution we can expect to get rid of 1 weapon and immobilize the vehicle. And a whole bunch of cant do anything.

The idea of making the haywire effect only working on a 6 to pen. 1/6 get a chance. 1/6 pen. 1/36. .028 A 3% chance. So out of 100 shots you can reasonably expect 3 penetrating hits. And 11 glancing hits, 2/3 of which would have no lasting effects on the vehicle.

Sum up :
Melta at S4 VS AV14 - 8% chance at a pen.
Haywire effect on each hit - 17% chance of a pen
Haywire on 6 to pen - 3% chance
Rending at S4 vs AV14 - 0% chance, you'd have to have different, stronger weapons.

Having played with necrons and against them for a while... I feel the Gauss weaponry isn't the problem with the codex. Gauss weaponry works well already...

A squad of 20 warriors can double tap into anything and reasonably have a decent chance at destroying it. They can do that to anything. Even though it doesn't always work out well or it seems underpowered.. it can do a lot of damage against armies with lots of Mech or Lots of high toughness creatures. Also, it disregards abilities That ignore melta or rending special rules... since it's neither. While it might not be statistically great.. I think that it is a strength in the Necron army. The ability for any unit in the army to be able to wound or glance any vehicle or unit in the game no matter how tough or how much armor... is very underrated. That's my opinion though.

I think the Necrons will need a tweak in other departments.. specifically versatility (since there are no Necron upgrades or options for any unit besides Scarabs and Lord). I also think that the Pariahs need to be retooled and be Necrons. These are off topic though.

I hear you. First though squad size is 10-20. But outside that, I agree we need an update to versatility. But this thread was about making gauss better. In earlier editions, a glancing blow could wreck any vehicle, regardless of AV. It's there to compensate for necrons not really having other anti-tank weaponry. So the goal is to find someway to make necrons decent at anti-tank, and balanced against other armies shooting wise, without being OP, and hopefully while maintaining some uniqueness.

dancingcricket wrote:I hear you. First though squad size is 10-20. But outside that, I agree we need an update to versatility. But this thread was about making gauss better. In earlier editions, a glancing blow could wreck any vehicle, regardless of AV. It's there to compensate for necrons not really having other anti-tank weaponry. So the goal is to find someway to make necrons decent at anti-tank, and balanced against other armies shooting wise, without being OP, and hopefully while maintaining some uniqueness.

Sorry, Didn't remember if it went to 30 or not. I thought it did... but I don't have the codex in front of me. Thanks =)

Yes Gauss Glancing is nerfed because of the New Rulebook, but my point was that I don't think it needs to be retooled. Glancing can be deadly and most vehicles don't have more than 3 weapons... So looking at that, out of 40 double tapped shots, if you roll 5 immobilized/weapon destroys on the glance table than most vehicles are dead. And any unit in the army can do this.

If I'm correct, Tomb Spyders are monsterous and therefore are stronger melee against vehicles. On top of which, scarabs do get the forcefields things that make them auto glance on a 6 to pen. Not especially great... but Can be strong considering they can turbo-boost across the map on a single move action.. Yes it's an unlikely thing, but its not exactly underpowered. idk, I just feel like it doesn't need to be retooled.

dancingcricket wrote:Let me get out my calculator. 1/12 = .083333 Hmm. Looks lime my numbers for getting a pen matches

The distribution is markedly different further down the line though. I couldnt tell if you understood that or not. Im sorry I did not mean offense.

dancingcricket wrote:
Now for haywire grenades. 1/6 hits will do nothing, 4/6 will glance, and 1/6 will penetrate. So 5/6 hits will do something to the target tank. Same 20 shots doing a haywire effect. 12 hits. 2 pens, 8 glances, 2 nothing. .166 chance of a pen, twice as effective as a melta at half range. Less effective against lower AV, but more effective against AV14. Chance to glance .66. So against the 12 hits there will be 8 glances, with standard distribution we can expect to get rid of 1 weapon and immobilize the vehicle. And a whole bunch of cant do anything.

The idea of making the haywire effect only working on a 6 to pen. 1/6 get a chance. 1/6 pen. 1/36. .028 A 3% chance. So out of 100 shots you can reasonably expect 3 penetrating hits. And 11 glancing hits, 2/3 of which would have no lasting effects on the vehicle.

Sum up :
Melta at S4 VS AV14 - 8% chance at a pen.
Haywire effect on each hit - 17% chance of a pen
Haywire on 6 to pen - 3% chance
Rending at S4 vs AV14 - 0% chance, you'd have to have different, stronger weapons.

Im not debating AV14. There are not that many AV 14 vehicles outside of theoryhammer. Im worried about what it does to AV11 and AV12. Melta would own them so completely hard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I was thinking about the haywire effect because people were saying they wanted a return to the original codex, when Gauss glancing could destroy vehicles. That use to be 6 to glance and then 6 to wreck. The haywire effect I am suggesting is 6 to wound/pen 6 to get a penetrate and then 5 or 6 to destroy. Not great but melta would penetrate AV 10 more than half the time.

Exergy wrote:

dancingcricket wrote:Let me get out my calculator. 1/12 = .083333 Hmm. Looks lime my numbers for getting a pen matches

The distribution is markedly different further down the line though. I couldnt tell if you understood that or not. Im sorry I did not mean offense.

dancingcricket wrote:
Now for haywire grenades. 1/6 hits will do nothing, 4/6 will glance, and 1/6 will penetrate. So 5/6 hits will do something to the target tank. Same 20 shots doing a haywire effect. 12 hits. 2 pens, 8 glances, 2 nothing. .166 chance of a pen, twice as effective as a melta at half range. Less effective against lower AV, but more effective against AV14. Chance to glance .66. So against the 12 hits there will be 8 glances, with standard distribution we can expect to get rid of 1 weapon and immobilize the vehicle. And a whole bunch of cant do anything.

The idea of making the haywire effect only working on a 6 to pen. 1/6 get a chance. 1/6 pen. 1/36. .028 A 3% chance. So out of 100 shots you can reasonably expect 3 penetrating hits. And 11 glancing hits, 2/3 of which would have no lasting effects on the vehicle.

Sum up :
Melta at S4 VS AV14 - 8% chance at a pen.
Haywire effect on each hit - 17% chance of a pen
Haywire on 6 to pen - 3% chance
Rending at S4 vs AV14 - 0% chance, you'd have to have different, stronger weapons.

Im not debating AV14. There are not that many AV 14 vehicles outside of theoryhammer. Im worried about what it does to AV11 and AV12. Melta would own them so completely hard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I was thinking about the haywire effect because people were saying they wanted a return to the original codex, when Gauss glancing could destroy vehicles. That use to be 6 to glance and then 6 to wreck. The haywire effect I am suggesting is 6 to wound/pen 6 to get a penetrate and then 5 or 6 to destroy. Not great but melta would penetrate AV 10 more than half the time.

Understand. And I appreciate the distribution. Again, I didn't take probability, so someone else willing to run the numbers is great.

For the AV10, 11, 12. Yep. Melta is going to penetrate much more easily. The argument though is that penetration is going to happen much more easily on any weapon that doesn't have a fixed value for penetration regardless of T, like a haywire does. Against AV10, a lascannon hit will glance 1/6 of the time, and pen 5/6 of the time, AV11 1/6 glance 4/6 pen, and so on. So looking at the numbers you've provided, the S4 melta will get a pen 58% of the times it hits AV10. The lascannon will get a pen 83% of the time it hits AV10. The lascannon has a huge range where it can do so. At over half range the s4 melta will only glance a S10 1/6 of the time, and not affect anything with better armor. Against AV10, a plasma round will pen 50% of it's hits, at any range. Marine melta will pen 66% of the time at better than half range, and have a bonus to the result chart. Krak missile will be like the melta at long range, without the bonus. I think that as you look at the distribution across the various AVs, you'll see that the individual shot isn't quite as monumentally important. On the macro, I can see some argument against it though, so let's take a look.

AV10. 10 warrior squad in rapid fire range. 20 shots 13.3 hits. 7 pens. Standard distribution would indicate that yes, it's going to explode the vehicle. On the other hand, to get to that point, the warriors had to cross the table to get into rapid fire range, not shooting unless we give them relentless. And while neither side is operating in a vacuum, most vehicles will be able to outpace the warriors, and will have shooting to help reduce the numbers that can close in on them. By the way, a rending attack from S4 would either not get any results, or pen results, no glancing what so ever. So 13.3 hits, equal distribution gives 2 pens. And 11 shots that can't glance. Not sure I like the skipping the result in the middle.

AV11. Same size squad. 20 shots 13.3 hits. 5.5 pens per your chart. Now, still dangerous, no guarantee of a explode. No guarantee of not wrecking it, high probability though. Still, chance that we might just be keeping it from shooting. Rending would give you 13.3 hits, 1.33333 pens, and .6666 glances.

AV12. The sweet spot. 20 shots 13.3 hits, 3.6 pens. Good chance of surviving this, but not unscathed. Rending instead? .666 pens .666 glances out of two possibles.

So yeah, it's a better against armor when you can pour on the fire. But then, what army isn't better against armor when it can pour on the anti-tank fire? If it's that OP, just make it so that when shooting at vehicles, anything less than a gauss cannon only gets 1 shot regardless of range. They need to 'use concentrated fire' 'steady their aim to hit vital points' or 'the first round(s) are to open a whole in the armor for the one shot that's going to do the damage', or whatever explanation you like.

Unfortunately, I'm still against the haywire as you've presented it. 1/6 get to roll haywire, 1/6 get a pen. 1/36. Then 1/3 will pop the vehicle. 1/108 .009 chance for such a shot to take down a tank regardless of it's AV. Take out one of the 1/6's and now you have something much more effective. 1/18 chance to pop a tank on a successful hit. .0555. But again, a squad getting 20 shots, if it doesn't kill any tank outright with the pen, is going to glance it to death. 13 hits, 2 pens, but 11 glances. Not every vehicle comes with 3 weapons so it can take an equal distribution of glancing results and only wind up a useless chunk of metal acting as a bunker for a round. And if it is reduced to that point from the glancing, the pens have a much higher chance of wrecking it, as 2/3 of the results will now kill it.

How about chaging it so Gauss stays as it is but gets a +1 on the vehicle damage table, thus making glancing hit mean -1 instead of -2. That way we still have a slim chance to wreck a vehicle.


Although i suppose that could be considered OP if, for example, you fire a gauss Cannon at the back of a Rhino to get a natural pen Hit, you would then get +1...........

Maybe make it so Glancing hits only suffer a -1 instead of a -2?

Praxiss wrote:Maybe make it so Glancing hits only suffer a -1 instead of a -2?

Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier.

It makes them as good as they were before with what I believe to be the least amount of changes.

To a certain degree I can see where your coming from on the make it a -1 instead of -2 on glancing. But there's the flipside. Why shouldn't the weapon be a bit more devestating against vehicles that are more lightly armored? There's less to get through before the gauss 'energy field' can get to the engine, ammo, or whatever might make it go boom. And the lower armored vehicles are going to be more prevalent, so I'm ok with being able to deal with them a bit more quickly to get to the squishy bits inside.

Well the point is to fix the Gauss Weapons to where they were before they were nerfed, not make the OP.

My guess is that, with GWs precedent for switching to universal special rules, they will become rending in the new codex.

I like the way rending gets called OP, then suggested that its changed to melta 0_o
No offence, but that is OP.

Please dont add fluff into it either, otherwise you could take BA allies with crons after thier little love affair.


I would suggest either:

a: only -1 on the chart instead of the usual -2.
b: keep them the same and add in some new gauss weapons made for tank hunting.

No offense taken. But would like a bit of an explanation as to how you came to the conclusion that general rending isn't OP. And how you determine that melta on a S4 AP 5 weapon is OP. Explanations for why rending is OP for everyone to have has already been given, and the case for melta has been made above. Your arguments againt that please?

Oops - realized I was getting my various threads slightly mixed up. Rending OP primarily because it's more effective at wounding the stuff you cant hurt otherwise. If your shooting at a TMC, T6 with your S4 rending. On a wound result of 1-5 you get nothing, but on a 6, not only do you wound, but you also ignore the targets armor save. Got a 2+ armor save on that MC to make sure it has a chance to get to combat. Doesn't matter anymore. Similarly, when it comes to vehicles. Against AV10 that S4 will either do nothing to the tank, or it will get a pen result. No glances are possible. Seems a bit odd to have such a thresh-hold. Particularly when something with a S5 shooting at the same AV10 vehicle can now glance, where you couldn't with the lighter weapon.

yeah, Melta would only work against vehicles.

Rending works in all instances.



a Gauss flayer would, on average, only glance AV11 with the potential to Penetrate AV14. the Gauss Flayer's damage output against vehicles would actually go down on avarage with the potential rising.

Gauss Blasters would, on average, glance AV13, with a decent chance to Pen AV14.

Gauss Cannons become more effective against Vehicles(the most advanced race in the galaxy's best gun is, currently, a 36" lascannon )


keep in mind that all of this ONLY works within 1/2 range. Necron players would have to decide between closing for decent anti-vehicle and having the potential on a disadvantageous assault, or staying safe and not getting the Melta dice.

Exactly. This puts the game toward a choice. Do you stay back and trade fire against necrons, run forward across the table, or consider the vehicles an acceptable risk/loss to close in to short range/assault?

Edit- spelling

Im seeing your point here, but why would crons have to be geared up to take on tanks with thier basic trrops?
This still gets me.

I think its good enough you can do damage to AV14 with a basic 18 points model (that is troop and has a pretty decent stat line and rules as it is)


I think they should move it into more of a speciality type choice.

IE: Adding in new weapon options and upgrades for units.
The possibility of adding in a heavy gauss flayer or 2 to a unit would help to no end.
Or even a whole new weapon.

Crons really do lack variety in both weapons and unit types.
As a result people are trying to get duel use from units.

I think their are several reasons for trying to get the multiple use out of the gauss.

First - is that's what it was until the start of 5th. The basic trooper had a chance of taking out the most armored vehicle, without upgrades. Alot of people would like to keep the same general utility.

Second - it matches the fluff of the necrons. The codex mentions several times in it's fluff that even the lightest gauss weapons are able to deal with the heaviest armor.

Third - is fear of Necrons becoming Marines. Stats are already the same, if WBB changes to FNP, and instead of gauss we start upgrading one squad member to carry a heavy weapon, and another to carry a special weapon, then it wont be long before we have sergeants with powerfists, popping out of a necro-rhino, and charging in with their necro-chainsword CCW's. We don't want to be marines.

Zachthechaoschild you scared the sh*t outta me when I saw your profile picture