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Why is the general advice on her to fit only heavy bolters on Leman Russ hull/sponsons?

Is it just a rate of fire thing? Personal preference? You can't fire an ordnance weapon and other weapons so why not lascannon?

Just curious, sorry if it seems a touch newbie-esque...

 

Is this a rules question?

Maybe not, oops! Anyway, whilst we're here...?

Cheaper points for the Battle cannon maybe?

Personally I wouldn't use any sponsons. Just take the Hull HB and the Battle Cannon.

bolters are cheaper, good for killing infantry. plus if you get a weapon detroyed, would you rather lose a cheap h. bolter or a lascannon? still keep main weapon.
plus heavy bolters are very cool. i have a leman russ exterminator for my space wolves. twin linked auto cannon. plus storm bolter, and three heavy bolters. i can move 6 inches and fire the main turret gun (2 twin linked auto cannon shots) and the storm bolter( 2 shots) and the heavy bolters (9 shots!) all in the same round because the bolters are all defensive weapons. good against horde armies especially.

Sure, works with the Predator, but that tactic wouldn't work with a Russ as the battlecannon is ordnance. Guess it's just cheapness? Same reason why a lot of folk on here don't use sponsons?

Saves on points. If you fire the Battlecannon you cannot fire any other weapons.

The Battlecannon instant kills Marines with no save and has enough range for you to keep the Russ safely out of the range of Lascannons and Missile Launchers.

There's no reason to waste points on a Lascannon or sponson if you only plan on using the Battlecannon.

Thought that was the plan, although as a re-starter I have of course built all mine with sponsons. Ah well...

Annoyingly, those Black Templar goons get a 6+ invulnerable on one of thier vows, and my opponent made 7 saves against battlecannons with it in the last game. Needless to say the dice responsible have been ground into a fine powder and hoovered up.

You put three heavy bolters on a russ because it is the same cost as putting on one lascannon. However three bs3 heavy bolters are more than 3x effective vs 99% targets. The only real debate is to but on 3 heavy bolters or 1. Personally I go for three, especially on a demolisher, because it is a rare game when I do not fire the heavy bolters at least one turn.

Cool, may do a quick swap on my Russ that has a hull lascannon before I paint it. Just did the maths, and even against marines there's more probability of killing a trooper with the bolter than the lascannon. Consider me convinced!

Cool, may do a quick swap on my Russ that has a hull lascannon before I paint it. Just did the maths, and even against marines there's more probability of killing a trooper with the bolter than the lascannon. Consider me convinced!

But is it actually smarter to add HB sponsoons to a tank that is effectively moving VPs after it loses the battle cannon, than to add another plasma gun somewhere else?

Posted By bigchris1313 on 03/03/2006 12:44 PM
But is it actually smarter to add HB sponsoons to a tank that is effectively moving VPs after it loses the battle cannon, than to add another plasma gun somewhere else?

A 3HB Russ is still a threat, not moving VP's. People who spread out non-MEQ's are more vulnerable to HB fire than the Battle Cannon anyway.

I say again, how is an av14 russ with the battle cannon blown off any easier to kill that an untouched Russ? The answer... its not! The whole point of a Russ is to blow away infantry and to soak up heavy weapons. The three heavy bolters make the tank much more survivable, and enven if the battle cannon gets blown off, it is still one heck of a threat. Besides there are time when it is better to shoot the bolters than the battle cannon, deep striking vet squads, nasty eldar with 4+ saves, wolf scouts. that last fearless melta gunner, or powerfist that survived the shots from the rest of your army and is about to charge or blow up your tank. Heck even ork tank bustas on some occasions. Any time you have a small deadly squad that has to be mowed down.

I don't ever see when you'd choose to fire the 3 heavy bolters over a battle cannon. Against MEQs that spread out, the battle cannon is still superior, and against hordes, I've never seen one spread out enough to make the HBs a superior choice.

It depends on the enviroment I guess.

Here horde armies like Orcs and Guard tend to bunch up a bit. Even Tau do somewhat.

In other enviroments, I guess they must disperse more evenly across the table making the bolters a better choice.

There's alot of times I'll fire the secondary weapons instead of the Battlecannon on my Russ. Granted, I used the Battlecannon more, but if you're trying to hit a small squad (1-3 things), the secondaries are WAY more accurate than the Battlecannon.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Lascannon/HB Russ. However, since I'm heavily mechanized, I don't pack quite as many lascannons as most guard armies do (I'll have 7, but 2 are on Russes. Only 5 Infantry ones)

Against someone who's scared of the pie-plate, the HBs will be more effective; around here, even the hordes space out widely when a Russ or Defiler is in play. Even Marines have to respect that many shots, even with saves.

I'm not convinced heavy bolter sponsons are a good buy. I'd hopefully be hiding a battle tank without a battle cannon, but the main reason is that heavy bolter sponsons add versatility to the lemun. I can afford to have heavy bolters elsewhere. I don't need the lemun to be able to handle all types of anti-infantry.

The 3 heavy bolters are fan-friggin-tastic for killing trukks, landspeeders and dark eldar raiders. Way better than one battle cannon shot.

Not sure if that was a reply to my post, but my response is that the battle cannon is good for other things. What I can do is use the battle cannon for what it's good at, instead of using the heavy bolters instead, and use weapons in other units for killing what lemun heavy bolters are good for. You're giving versatility to the lemun, when you don't need to.

I also agree with the triple HB over the single lascannon. As mentioned, the equal price is a good thing. But if you opt not to use the battle cannon, I like the idea of having 9 shots going out instead of just one. Gives a bit more of a buffer to work with in case the dice aren't friendly to you. And if it's something so big that you need the lascannon.... thats what the battle cannon is for.

-Hans

I always take HB sponsons, it makes the tank more durable. With just a hull HB when your opponent gets a weapon destroyed result he has effectivly removed your tank from the game and for all non victory point purposes it is destroyed, with 3 HBs it is still a real threat with all those shots.

I agree sponsons are great. Last game I lost both battlecannons and the Russes kept on taking out Templars. Without sponsons they would have just been expensive scenery!

And what about the five other games where you never fire the Sponsons?

It is a poor practice IMO to spend points on weapons that you should only be firing if your weapon is destroyed (a result that will not happen in most games).

A Russ with a blown off Battlecannon doesn't give away any Victory points, and still has a Battlecannon. Why spend 10 points on something you may or may not use when you can buy weapons for your units that you know you'll use every game?

I did a break down of the effectiveness of each type of weapon a devastator squad can use a couple days ago, you can reasonably use that chart to compare the power of 3 heavy bolters to most of the weapons available for a leman russ. . .

Over all what I found out was that a heavy bolter is probably the most efficient weapon in the game, the only things that came anywhere close were a plasma cannon against terminators, and an assault cannon. . .

One important thing to note about having multiple guns is that they're:
a) very cheap
b) Make your tank less likely to explode due to multiple immobilize/weapon destroyed results, which happen alot on an AV14 vehicle (at least in theory)

The reason I don't use sponsons is that my army is specialized. Each unit does a job, and uses all of its points for that specific job. My leman russ is for taking out MEQs and drawing fire. I have other units for anti-infantry. Guard needs to specialize to be effective; generalizing is something Marines do. They have the codex and the stats to pull it off, Guard doesn't.

I Am Noob so please dont burn me for heresy... in the few games i have played i found the plasma cannons-lascannon on the demolisher very very very useful vaporising deepstriking terminators and Deamon Princes..... in a close range the hull -sponson mounted guns have saved me quite a few times. The demolisher cannon is formidable but when your opponent reaches your lines it gets too risky to fire ...

When using Demolishers, I'm using the plasma cannons for the first few turns 90% of the time. Spitting death at 36" with overlapping templates is chock full of win.

When using Russes, the MBC is a great weapon for massed infantry, but when a squad is down to 2 or 3 models in cover, 3x Heavy Bolters suddenly become really good at executing the remainder.

Plus there's the bonus of quadrupling the number of weapon destroyed results necessary to remove your tank from action. I can't count the number of times having two or more sponsons on a chassis has kept it rolling around killing off stray squads.