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 alextroy wrote:
That's 1 Space Marine or 2 Guardsmen

It is 1 guardsman because they "soak up" an extra damage from being W1 vs D2.

 alextroy wrote:
So the question is are you fighting tanks or fighting hordes?

The problem is that it is not just tanks but also monsters and heavy infantry (like Gravis). While the HB is not really that great vs hordes either (43% chance to kill a fifth of a 20-strong AM unit? So you might kill 'em all by the end of the battle?) it is mostly a nu-MEQ killer (due to its D2) but do you really need to spec into nu-MEQ killing with Heavy Bolters?

You also need to factor in points cost of the target unit, because 3 wounds of guardsmen aren't equal to 3 wounds of leman russ.

Based on the index killing 3 guardsmen is worth (3/10)*65= ~20 points, doing 3 wounds to a russ is worth (3/13)*195 = ~45 points*. Based on that the lascannon is getting more than twice the return on investment vs a russ than what a heavy bolter gets vs guardsmen.

Agreed on the importance of variance, nice touch.


* the wounds dealt to a russ only pay off once you bracket and/or kill it. I'd guess that makes them less valuable than wounds with a direct payoff (whittling down an infantry squad). But I don't think instant payoff wounds are 2.25 times more valuable than delayed payoff wounds.

Edit: Basically repeating the post above, which I didn't see when replying.

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When approached on the rawest basis, you'd need to indicate some "points per damage" if you are going to count that.

So for example a regular Leman Russ is paying 15 points per wound. An Intercessor just 9.5.

So the HBs are doing 9.5*4=38 points worth of damage into the Intercessors. Whereas Lascannons doing 3 Leman Russ points would be 45.

The HB is then just doing 15*0.67=10 points of damage into the Leman Russ, while the Lascannon is doing 2.08*9.5=19.76 into the Intercessors.

Clearly this will vary from unit to unit - but it sort of indicates why the Lascannon is better. Sure, the HB is about twice as good into Marines - but the Lascannon is 4.5 times as good into the tank. The Lascannon is doing better at the task you want it to do - and you are less "badly off" if you are using it to do something else. (Okay you could I guess say you want to swap Guardsmen and it will be worse - but when there are so many things that can kill Guardsmen, this isn't something that matters.)

This is before we get into the reasonable point that lascannons will sometimes spike high into tanks - whereas HBs killing a few extra marines than you might expect will rarely matter.

If lascannon is so much better try facing infantry horde without vehicles with them

you mean regular weapons can be ignored as only the heavy weapons do anything?

 kodos wrote:
you mean regular weapons can be ignored as only the heavy weapons do anything?

In the context of talking about balancing the heavies against each other to being points neutral, yes.

well, saying you need anti infantry heavy weapons to fight hordes and cannot do that if you only have anti-tank heavy weapons, ignoring the regular weapons is a problem

simply because you can fight hordes with regular weapons but you cannot fight tanks with them

so a unit with Bolter + 1 Laser cannon is a valid choice as it can fight Hordes and Tanks
a unit with Bolter + 1 heavy Bolter still can fight Hordes but not tanks any more

so the statement that "try fight Hordes with only Laser Cannons" does not work well as argument as you still have other weapons for that job
while "try fight tanks with only Bolters" is the one you are looking for

Yeah, this is a silly argument. Has there ever been a faction that can't generate enough anti-infantry weaponry if they spec into it? I can't think of an example. But there's certainly been factions with the issue of not being able to bring enough anti-tank.

The two categories are not equivalent; it makes zero sense to measure an anti-tank weapon by its efficacy against MEQ or GEQ.

Maybe I'm just grouchy, but this edition has me feel like I've taken crazy pills. GW may have created a new game but there are still common sense, obvious rules of thumb to it (like this one).

Remember that Heavy Bolter has been given Sustained hits 1. This gives it quite a bit more power.

3 heavy bolters don't inflict 2 damage on a Rhino, they inflict 2.5, so compared to a lascannon you are inflict one third less damage to have a good anti MEQ weapon. It is a valid treadoff. Where you lose is against very heavy targets (T10+ 2), but you gain if you plan to move, since sustained hits offsets partially the lower accuracy (lascannon loses 25% accuracy, the heavy bolter loses 20%).

To this you have to consider the faction. Do you plan to have reroll wounds on that squad? Have you access to +1 wound? The heavy bolter is a weapon which reacts a lot better to bonuses compared to a lascannon.

I know that with sisters I'm seriously considering them as an option.