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Is it possible to make a mech guard list around them? They're cheap but kinda crappy, though I have four of them (don't ask). Should I wait until they're viable, or hunt for alternate cannons on ebay?

I don't think they're crappy. They are kinda awesome at killing anything with a 3+ save. There total utility depends on the sponsons though. Kit em oyt with a las and either plasma or multimelta, throw in a couple of artillery pieces and you have the start of a nasty army

How about

CCS las
PCS, 4 x flamer, chimera
IS las melta
IS las melta
IS las melta
IS las melta
PCS, 4 x flamer, chimera
IS las melta
IS las melta
IS las melta
2 x russ with las and plasma
2 x russ w las and plasma
2 x griffon

You'll have decent anti tank, a surprising amount of AA, lots of bodies and chimeras with flamey PCS to clear guys sitting in terrain. By no means optimized but certainly with some fun elements.

ender502

Even with the change to heavy, an AV 14 battle cannon isn't trash.
Keep it cheap, no sponsons and heavy bolter or flamer if you want snap shots or an emergency weapon.

Why on earth would you give Ordinance Russes sponsons?

Personally, what jumps out at me is the cost of a vanilla russ. It is 150 points for a 72" pie plate with good strength and ap. Not to mention av14 on the front. Well worth its points if you take it bare imo, especially when my punisher and executioner cost upwards of 200 points each and have 36" range max. I could afford three vanilla russes for the price of the the other two.

 TheCaptain wrote:
Why on earth would you give Ordinance Russes sponsons?

To give them something to do when their one target isn't there to shoot at.

Not that I'm recommending it, but to use the vanilla Russ, it needs something to make it viable against more than one target.

 Griddlelol wrote:

Not that I'm recommending it, but to use the vanilla Russ, it needs something to make it viable against more than one target.

What restricts a battle cannon against only one target? As far as I'm concerned, it works against pretty much everything.

Ordnance.

And I suppose you'd do it because the battle cannons can't snap fire. Lascannons in a pinch can shoot fliers.

Use them occasionally? Yes. They're cheap and efficient if you want the things they offer.

Build a list around them? No. Their role is way too narrow, and they aren't good at anything else. Build-around units need to be good at several things, otherwise you build a list that is very focused on one thing but loses against everything else.

Final answer: find spare turrets. Even if you do use a LRBT occasionally you're never going to want four of them, and you are going to want the other variants.

 ghastli wrote:

 Griddlelol wrote:

Not that I'm recommending it, but to use the vanilla Russ, it needs something to make it viable against more than one target.

What restricts a battle cannon against only one target? As far as I'm concerned, it works against pretty much everything.

It's restricted to one target because it's criminally inefficient against anything other than MEQ with a 5+ cover save or worse. 150pts for 1 mediocre shot per turn is pathetic. Its only saving grace is its range.

 Griddlelol wrote:
To give them something to do when their one target isn't there to shoot at.

But then you make them more expensive and lose the one thing they're semi-decent at: efficiently killing marines. If you try to make them a "multi-role" unit you just have an expensive tank that is bad at several different things.

 ghastli wrote:
What restricts a battle cannon against only one target? As far as I'm concerned, it works against pretty much everything.

Medium STR and poor AP = not very impressive against vehicles.

Single shot for 150 points = not that great against hordes.

No ability to ignore cover = not that great against hordes or camping objective holders.

Single-shot blast weapon = not that great against anything that can spread out to minimize hits.

The only thing the LRBT is really good at is killing marines, especially marines that have been forced to stay in a tight formation. Against anything else it might be able to roll dice, but you aren't going to be happy with the fact that you have to settle for a LRBT.

 Peregrine wrote:


But then you make them more expensive and lose the one thing they're semi-decent at: efficiently killing marines. If you try to make them a "multi-role" unit you just have an expensive tank that is bad at several different things.

I wasn't advocating it, I was merely rationalising it for someone else. It's hardly a good rationalisation, but it's the only one I could think of.

I really don't understand why everyone hates the vanilla Russ in 6th edition, to me it's far more valuable than it was in 5th with the trend towards foot armies and the fact that it's now way more difficult to one-shot the battle cannon off. Sure it doesn't do sponsons well, but so what? No one took them with sponsons in 5th and there was no complaint then.

Sure it doesn't do that great against vehicles, but even in this regard it's better than it was last edition because you're at full strength on anything under the template. That and no one took it for anti-vehicle duty, it's meant to kill infantry and it still does that really well. At only 150 points it also still gives you plenty of room to include anything you deem to be more efficient.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ghastli wrote:
What restricts a battle cannon against only one target? As far as I'm concerned, it works against pretty much everything.

Medium STR and poor AP = not very impressive against vehicles.

Single shot for 150 points = not that great against hordes.

No ability to ignore cover = not that great against hordes or camping objective holders.

Single-shot blast weapon = not that great against anything that can spread out to minimize hits.

The only thing the LRBT is really good at is killing marines, especially marines that have been forced to stay in a tight formation. Against anything else it might be able to roll dice, but you aren't going to be happy with the fact that you have to settle for a LRBT.

Medium str? With 3 being low and 10 being high, it leans toward the high side. Poor ap? Ap3 is quite nice considering how many marine codices there are at the moment. One shot from a 3 hp av14 platform for 150 points, not an av12, open topped artillery peice. Not bad for a 25 point upgrade (rather than a basilisk) imo. Can't ignore cover? More like forces the opponent to use cover for fear of their marines being battle cannoned off the table.

 ghastli wrote:
Medium str? With 3 being low and 10 being high, it leans toward the high side.

Against vehicles strength isn't linear from 1-10. A lasgun isn't "low", it's nonexistent. A low-strength weapon is STR 5-7 (need volume of fire and luck to do anything, and can't hurt the toughest targets), mid-strength weapons are STR 8-9, and high-strength weapons are STR 10 ordnance/melta/etc. A battlecannon is STR 8 ordnance, which is about the same as a lascannon but without AP 2.

Poor ap? Ap3 is quite nice considering how many marine codices there are at the moment.

Read again. I said poor AP against vehicles, where the only AP values that matter are AP 1/2 and AP 3 is just as bad as AP -.

One shot from a 3 hp av14 platform for 150 points, not an av12, open topped artillery peice. Not bad for a 25 point upgrade imo.

But you lose barrage fire. And it's not just a problem compared to the Basilsik (and other artillery tanks), you also have to compare it to the other Leman Russ variants.

Can't ignore cover? More like forces the opponent to use cover for fear of their marines being battle cannoned off the table.

Which is useful. But when you're dealing with a unit with a 2+ cover save camped on an objective you need cover-ignoring weapons, not AP 3.

I would get extra turrets, as has been said, you would have to snap fire the sponsons every time you fire the battle cannon(which is almost every time), I recomend the executioner with the plasma sponsons as that can fire all of them even at moving 6 since the russ is a super or ultra heavy vehicle(or whatever the proper adjective is) now with the faq

 TheCaptain wrote:
Why on earth would you give Ordinance Russes sponsons?

So the main gun has a better chance of surviving a weapon destroyed result. It improves the chance from 50% to 75%

And 9 snapfired HB shots can still pling a wound or 2 on an enemy unit.

 minigun762 wrote:
Even with the change to heavy, an AV 14 battle cannon isn't trash.

Well I've used them against necrons and marines. Against 'crons, their battle cannons bounced off AV 13. Against marines they were too inacurate, and when they did hit cover saves meant that little damage was done.

 Peregrine wrote:

Can't ignore cover? More like forces the opponent to use cover for fear of their marines being battle cannoned off the table.

Which is useful. But when you're dealing with a unit with a 2+ cover save camped on an objective you need cover-ignoring weapons, not AP 3.

So you take other stuff for those 2+ cover saves.

The LRBT is good against regular marines hugging cover because they have to OR just putting wounds on hordes. You should have a mix of stuff.

 Grey Templar wrote:
So the main gun has a better chance of surviving a weapon destroyed result. It improves the chance from 50% to 75%

No, it improves the chance from 8.3% to 4.1%. Don't forget that you first have to roll "weapon destroyed", which is only a 1/6 chance.

And 9 snapfired HB shots can still pling a wound or 2 on an enemy unit.

Against MEQs you average 0.333 dead per turn, and against anything weaker you aren't going to inflict enough wounds to matter. Obviously you snap fire if you have no choice, but I would never spend points on snap fire HBs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
So you take other stuff for those 2+ cover saves.

Isn't that exactly what I said? The LRBT has a purpose, but you can't build a list around it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ghastli wrote:
Poor ap? Ap3 is quite nice considering how many marine codices there are at the moment.

Read again. I said poor AP against vehicles, where the only AP values that matter are AP 1/2 and AP 3 is just as bad as AP -.

One shot from a 3 hp av14 platform for 150 points, not an av12, open topped artillery peice. Not bad for a 25 point upgrade imo.

But you lose barrage fire. And it's not just a problem compared to the Basilsik (and other artillery tanks), you also have to compare it to the other Leman Russ variants.

Can't ignore cover? More like forces the opponent to use cover for fear of their marines being battle cannoned off the table.

Which is useful. But when you're dealing with a unit with a 2+ cover save camped on an objective you need cover-ignoring weapons, not AP 3.

My apologies for the comment on poor ap against vehicles, you have a valid point there. However, I think ap3 is good overall. I'm not saying it's killing power is all that it is good for, it has the ability to alter how your opponent moves his troops, ie in cover all the time for fear of being obliterated. Barrage fire is good if you are running squadrons, which is not always necessary with the new double force org. 150 points doesn't really compare to the other leman russes, because they get pricy very quickly with necessary upgrades, not to mention an increased base cost.

I was assuming you'd already suffered the WD result as a given. it improves the survivibility of the main gun significantly. And if it is destroyed you arn't left with a useless AV14 hull.

The best thing you could probably do with them right now is run them as vanquishers. The main guns are virtually indistinguishable from each other. If you were really worried about it, you could chop the end of the barrels off and then insert a piece of plasticard tubing and glue the ends back on.

Otherwise, yeah, start looking for autocannons. The exterminator is better than the battlecannon against practically everything, and it can still use sponsons. Much better, all around.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I was assuming you'd already suffered the WD result as a given. it improves the survivibility of the main gun significantly. And if it is destroyed you arn't left with a useless AV14 hull.

But that's not a very good assumption. Losing a Leman Russ to a "weapon destroyed" result (rather than just losing the entire tank) is a fairly rare event in 6th, so it doesn't make much sense to pay points to make an unlikely event even more unlikely.

 ghastli wrote:
I'm not saying it's killing power is all that it is good for, it has the ability to alter how your opponent moves his troops, ie in cover all the time for fear of being obliterated.

I'm not disputing that. I said very clearly that the LRBT has its uses, it just isn't something to build a list around.

Barrage fire is good if you are running squadrons, which is not always necessary with the new double force org.

What do squadrons have to do with anything? Barrage fire is about ignoring (most) cover, it has nothing to do with taking squadrons or not]

 Peregrine wrote:

What do squadrons have to do with anything? Barrage fire is about ignoring (most) cover, it has nothing to do with taking squadrons or not]

I was referring to multiple barrages in particular. Maybe it is just my LGS, but there seems to be a lot of area terrain (we have lots of ruins).

Personally I am off ordinance weapons for the Russ. It really gimps the platform. I can take ap 3 blasts in the form of basilisk, they can hid out of LoS and are cheaper. The only ordinance Russ I still like is the Demolisher however it's not high on my list to include. I definitely favor artillery this edition but I am holding out hopes for the Vanquisher with las and MM sponsons.

I never thought I'd see the day when I'd recommend the Exterminator and the Vanquisher over the standard LRBT, but I'm with Ailaros.

I've been taking the Exterminator and/or the Punisher and/or the Vanquisher nearly every game and they've killed their points worth. I don't meant to say the LRBT is worthless, but it's easily replaced by it's counterparts.

A barrel extension to make a Vanquisher is probably the easiest conversion to pull off.

In fairness to the battle cannon, 6th edition changes have improved it somewhat.

If its over a vehicle, its always S8, none of that S4 stuff.
Cover saves are lower on average.
More people are going infantry heavy, so you have a more target rich environment.

As for the Leman Russ chassis, the big strength is its armor. In a world of autocannons and plasma, that is a big deal. Don't forget that the AV13 side armor helps protect it from annoying vector strikes as well.

It gained better accuracy against vehicles, but its killing power was halved due to damage chart changes. Cover saves are lower, but that only helps them against one target type - a target type which can now take ADL's for a 4+/2+ save. People are bringing more heavy infantry, but Ap3 still gives it an armor save.

Things got better in some ways, certainly, but overall its worse.

I do agree that the chassis got better, though.