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Im going to field a punisher this weekend for the first time instead of a demolisher. I am interested to see what kind of damage I can do. I play against alot of SM, CSM, and daemons. What kind of damage do you think I will be able to do?

Less than its points in guardsmen with lasguns.

None. None at all.

12

Well, that depends. Do your opponents use cover? Do they spread out their models? Then it'll do more than any other Russ. If not, well, your opponents are pretty bad and should be easily overcome anyway.

EDIT: Oh, and it will utterly destroy Daemons, by the way.

Very little, especially against marines. You get 20 shots, 10 of which will hit. About 4 or 5 will wound and maybe get a kill or 2

Billagio wrote:Very little, especially against marines. You get 20 shots, 10 of which will hit. About 4 or 5 will wound and maybe get a kill or 2

Whereas an LRBT will kill about 6-7 direct, maybe 2-3 depending on the scatter.

Less if they are using cover and are spread out.

I've been using a squadron of 2 to great effect.

Remember 2 is 1, 1 is none.

I'm not a big fan of squadrons though, the cons outweigh the pros :/

None. Punishers are garbage. More of a handicap in your list than anything.

mathammer says they are crap, but mathammer isnt always right.... With me, things always go better that calculated. I'd propably drop at least 4 marines, any less and id be disappointed Some people refue to play againt me becaue of my luck :/

BS3 so 10 hits on average. Let's be generous and say 14 hit.

3+ to wound so about 9 wound. 9 armour saves of 3+

Roughly 3-5 marines will die per turn with respectable rolling

ideally the punish cannon is meant to shaft much different profiles than a marine, remember everything about the IG is tooled up to screw someone up. In my opinion? it's the orks and baby nids that a squadron of punishers eat up (unless they have a dashing mek boy who provided mobile cover saves of course lol)

Ideally i agree with these posters. It's ideally not your best variant to be an all comers list. Id suggest either the nova cannon, exterminator or simple battle cannon to do that.

Big Mek Wurrzog wrote:ideally the punish cannon is meant to shaft much different profiles than a marine, remember everything about the IG is tooled up to screw someone up. In my opinion? it's the orks and baby nids that a squadron of punishers eat up (unless they have a dashing mek boy who provided mobile cover saves of course lol)

Ideally i agree with these posters. It's ideally not your best variant to be an all comers list. Id suggest either the nova cannon, exterminator or simple battle cannon to do that.

I still don't really agree with this, due to having no armor piercing punishers still aren't going to get as many orks or nids as some far cheaper options that the IG has. hell two griffons (150 pts) will kill more of those types of units and still leave you with 40 pts to play with.

I know that with Pask in it it destroys monstrous creatures/demons.

Plus because the internet says it is bad people don't take it seriously.

You have to build your army to work with it. I often drive a wall of chimeras up the board with a hell hound on each side to protect the weak side armour.
I tried replacing the dogs with punishers, worked well.

I should say I am the opposite of a "win at all costs" player.
I like them because they are fun.

rob-or-ross wrote:Plus because the internet says it is bad people don't take it seriously.

Normally, I'd agree with this sentiment. You should look at the math and the fieldcraft before you rush to judgement, and the internet gets it wrong nearly as often as it gets it right, but in this case, looking at the fundamentals, it's just not there.

Even with pasq against AV10 and MCs, you're looking at hideously overpaying for what the tank can accomplish. When you throw on some HB sponsons, you're spending over 250 points, just to possibly take down a 160 pt. MC or a couple 30 pt rhinos before they get into melta range/close combat.

Lord_Vader wrote:

Billagio wrote:Very little, especially against marines. You get 20 shots, 10 of which will hit. About 4 or 5 will wound and maybe get a kill or 2

Whereas an LRBT will kill about 6-7 direct, maybe 2-3 depending on the scatter.

Well its AP 3, so it depends on the cover save. Plus the range is much longer and the tank is cheaper by about 30 pts.

I have tried fielding one. On a scale from one to ten, it would get 3.

First of all, it is absolutely devastating against horde armies if equipped properly. If you have x3 HBs, it will hit so hard even elite units will have hard time with it. I tried it against Tyranids, and killed scores of Gaunts and even a Carnifex.

But on the other hand, it can be completely useless against a MEQ army with high armor saves. Against an opponent like Grey Knights, it is as devastating as a slingshot is against a tank. If you get any kill points at all with it, its because they died of laughter.

My advice: don't use it.

The advantage of a punisher is the wound everybody aspect.
With all heavy bolters, you're looking at 19 shots (before you toss on the pintle).
You're not going to wipe out squads in the same way you do with your run of the mill battle cannon.
What you do is wound whole squads, forcing them to roll saves for the vet, special and heavy weapons.

I don't know about you, but if you score 10 wounds on my assault squad, the only 3 saves I fail is the sarg and both melta guns.

It's not a horrible choice.

-Matt

I'd have to quote half the thread to address the misconceptions, and that would clog up my post.

"A Leman Russ can kill 6-7 Marines." At no point in time are mech anything without cover. If they get out of the Rhino, it will obscure them. If the Rhino wrecks, it will obscure them. If the Rhino explodes, they have 4+ rubble. At no point in time are units forced to clump up. You can, with an amazing corner shot, put the template over 4 Marines maximum. (Seriously, go get out your models and try this. Your opponent has to be incredibly lazy for you to get more than that.) Statistically a blast template hits within 3" of its target about the same rate as its BS, so a Russ still has about 50% accuracy. 4x.5x.85x.5 is less than 1. In the same situation, a Punisher will achieve 2 kills virtually every time.

The Punisher is also better than any other Russ at MC killing simply because it can inflict more than 1 wound at a time (and does). It is even more effective than the Executioner (1.25 vs 1.65 against T5 3+ MC).

The Punisher is better than every Russ against hordes. Even if an opponent clumps his models up such that a large blast template can hit 7 models (small blast would hit about 4), a Punisher is better. Assuming a scatter only drops the hits to half (because the horde is so large) large blast templates score 4.3 kills out of cover on average. The Executioner can get 7.47, hitting 4 models. The Punisher 6.9 T3 6+ models out of cover, and 5.5 T4 6+. Now watch what happens if the horde has even 5+ cover: Executioner drops to 5, but the Punisher only drops to 5.5 and 4.4 respectively. By 4+ cover, the Punisher is the most effective at clearing horde (save for the Eradicator, but no one uses that).

Oh, and a Punisher with sponsons will inflict wound allocation on a unit, statistically able to kill 1 of the 3 important guys every turn while giving them a morale check.

DarkHound wrote:By 4+ cover, the Punisher is the most effective at clearing horde (save for the Eradicator, but no one uses that).

No one uses the Punisher so declaring the 'Punisher is the best at Hordes' when you ignore the Eradicator is blatant cherry picking.

Sorry but no matter what mathhammer you try, the Punisher fails at nearly everything that any other russ variant can achieve for cheaper. Its just a bad tank. Never forget its a 24" gun, and the more you add to it, the more it become an expensive, terrible tank. Pask doesn't make it better, neither do sponsons; they just make it a more expensive handicap in your list. You can achieve everything the Punisher does using units from the same or different force org chart for cheaper, with greater efficiency and with greater versatility.

The Punisher is simply only half-way decent at either killing T3 mediocre save units out of cover or pinging one or two (at best) wounds of an MC, which is what any other russ variant can do for the same cost, and still perform other functions admirably.

Never forget the pitiful 24" range. The Demolisher may also have a 24" gun, but it makes up for that in cheaper cost, a far better gun and the ability to effectively eliminate any threat on the board with reliability.

The Punisher is just plain bad at everything its supposed to be good at it. Adding stuff to it doesn't make it good. Its an overpriced, under ranged gun with mediocre anti-horde ability that can't be filled in by nearly any other russ variant with a large blast template or a manticore, or even a hellhound.

*EDIT* Why doesn't someone tell us what the Punisher is actually good at, for 180pts. I'd rather see people try and justify them in a list, because, honestly, any other russ variant is better, and other heavy support slots perform the job better, let alone other force org slots.

Horribly inefficient I'm pretty sure, but I really do like the idea of a squadron of three Punishers sporting Hvy. Bolter sponsons and Hvy. Stubbers.

It's a bit over 600pts for the trio, but it's over 90 shots every shooting phase until you shut them up.

Panzerboy26 wrote:Horribly inefficient I'm pretty sure, but I really do like the idea of a squadron of three Punishers sporting Hvy. Bolter sponsons and Hvy. Stubbers.

It's a bit over 600pts for the trio, but it's over 90 shots every shooting phase until you shut them up.

But you can only shoot at one target. Wasting 600 points on a squadron of tanks that can only shoot one target is unfathonable for a reasonable Guard player.

KplKeegan wrote:

DarkHound wrote:By 4+ cover, the Punisher is the most effective at clearing horde (save for the Eradicator, but no one uses that).

No one uses the Punisher so declaring the 'Punisher is the best at Hordes' when you ignore the Eradicator is blatant cherry picking.

I used to use the Punisher, quite a bit in fact. The fact that these thread pop up, but you never see any threads about the Eradicator, is what I was pointing to.

Now to Blacksails: what? I'm going to refer your first few sentences back to my first post. I don't advocate taking sponsons on any Leman Russ. To the notion that you can do everything the Punisher does for cheaper: no. The only thing that competes for anti-infantry effectiveness is the Colossus. Manticores come close if you roll a 3, and they certainly make up for it by being able to crack tanks. However AV12 open-topped is not as good as AV14 no matter, no matter how you look at it.

Sometimes you will be able to kill 7 Marines in a single shot with an artillery or Russ. This is not a point in the favor of the vehicle. Playing optimally, this is impossible. A poor opponent does not make a unit good.

DarkHound wrote:To the notion that you can do everything the Punisher does for cheaper: no. The only thing that competes for anti-infantry effectiveness is the Colossus.

What? The Leman Russ Battle-Cannon, Demolisher, Eradicator, and Executioner patterns; Hell Hounds and Bane Wolves; and Basilisks, Medusae, Griffons, and Mortars would like to have a word with you.

Playing optimally, this is impossible. A poor opponent does not make a unit good.

This could be applied to the Punisher also because no decent player would bother to waste munitions on such a useless tank.

KplKeegan wrote:What? The Leman Russ Battle-Cannon, Demolisher, Eradicator, and Executioner patterns; Hell Hounds and Bane Wolves; and Basilisks, Medusae, Griffons, and Mortars would like to have a word with you.

I was referring to units within the Heavy Support selection. I've already objectively shown that Executioner, Demolisher, and Battle Tank variants are inferior for anti-infantry.

You keep saying it is useless, but have yet to produce any reason for it. I've given plenty of evidence to my point. If you want anecdotal evidence instead of empirical, I've got a couple battle reports with Punishers on Dakka.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

KplKeegan wrote:
But you can only shoot at one target. Wasting 600 points on a squadron of tanks that can only shoot one target is unfathonable for a reasonable Guard player.

Panzerboy26 wrote:
Horribly inefficient I'm pretty sure.

I'm aware of how inefficient it is.

The entire point would be to focus the firepower. On average rolls the unit should be able to remove a 10 man tactical squad or a carnifex per turn. While also letting you still have some other Russes for harder targets in the other Heavy slots.

Yes, darkhound, I agree with you. Smart players can seriously reduce the damage from blast weapons. Not... quite as easily with large blasts, but still.

If anything, though, what you're making an argument for is how crappy a regular russ is, not how good a punisher is.

Ailaros wrote:Yes, darkhound, I agree with you. Smart players can seriously reduce the damage from blast weapons. Not... quite as easily with large blasts, but still.

If anything, though, what you're making an argument for is how crappy a regular russ is, not how good a punisher is.

(And Demolishers, and Executioners.)

What I'm pointing out is, despite how valid the appreciation of these other tanks are, the Punisher is better still. You know what: I'll go through the artillery and show you how it stacks up, because no one can dispute how effective they are.