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I know it probably will depend on what else your army is bringing, but I think the Quad-Gun is best option, just for the 4 twin-linked shots.
Although the Icarus LC can shoot pretty much the entire length of the board, but you still would need LoS.

depends on your army, if you have a psyker with Divination (or something else that makes things twin linked like IG Orders) the Icarus kills things better, as the Quad gun, Hulls things better. (usually)

I had Coteaz manning my Quad gun, but his Divination was wasted, so i switched to the Lascannon, much better along with 3x Monkees with Lascannon/Multimelta twin linked.

Yea I was thinking of having my Chaos Havocs sit back behind the aegis and let the champ shoot the turret

without access to Divination (unless your allying with Demons) go with the Quad gun, statistically much better than LasCannon.

Quad gun always works better than a Icarus with the grots I toss behind the ADL. Though, as mentioned above, it depends on the army and access to powers they have

I like the Icarus. It makes the most sense, given a BS 5 archer.

All things being equal, the Quad-gun hits more often, and the Icarus shoots things down more often. If I was going to put a basic character on it, I'd go with the Quad-gun. But if I'm going to put something on it with BS 5+ (or manage to twin-link it somehow) I go with the Icarus.

There are other considerations aren't there? What if abilities grant an additional shot? And also if you're able to give BS+ modifiers wouldn't you want to go with the Icarus?

I've also thought about Aegis + Icarus + Tau Sensor Tower. Put say.. the Cadre Fireblade on the gun with a full team to man the Aegis. So they're not moving, Fireblade grants +shots for the squad (but not for the aegis gun) and Sensor Tower grants the full squad TL shots on any weapons that aren't already TL. Quite a lot of very nasty firepower.

Thoughts?

I'm a minimalist. I like to spend as little as possible to get thge job done. Expensive "combo units" and the like aren't really my favored way of building a list. A house of Cards takes little effort to upset.

Better to accept the acceptable losses and continue onward. But if you got the towers and wanna do it, its not like its a bad idea.

A Twin-Linked BS 4 Icarus Lascannon against an AV 12 Flyer with a 5++ (Jink or Daemon) is getting 0.30 Penetrating hits and 0.10 Glancing hits. A Quad Gun is already Twin-Linked and at BS 4 against an AV 12 Flyer with a 5++ its getting 0.40 Penetrating and 0.40 Glancing hits. So the Quad Gun is better, given the same Ballistic Skill.

In the end it comes down to this: Your Army List. Do you have the points for a Quad Gun? Would you be better served spending the difference in points on something else? Do you have other weapons that can shoot down Flyers? Any other source of Skyfire?

Answer those and you'll see if the Icarus Lascannon will work better for you. But from a math perspective, the Quad Gun is better.

Dont forget that the ic or quad can also be used against non flyers.

The quad mulches carapace troops, but a well placed character/IC can snipe pretty well with a icarus.

for Tau we can make it precision shots on a 5+ with tank or monster hunter which seems awesome.

Edit: Dark strider on a Icarus can also use it to instagib T5 models.

While cowmonaut is correct, he seems to have ignored a couple of important points.
1) the Icarus isn't TL therefore is even worse than his math points out, or you must invest in a prescience bitch.
2) when the Icarus does penetrate, that pen has 1/3 chance of destroying the vehicle, whereas the quad gun has only 1/6. However, clearly the quad gun is more of an HP stripper.

With havoks, I'd go with the quad gun. As the character is shooting, you have 4 chances at precision shots when not targeting fliers and the str7 will overlap with whatever guns they're using, whereas the Icarus wouldn't unless you kit them all out with lascannons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
While cowmonaut is correct, he seems to have ignored a couple of important points.
1) the Icarus isn't TL therefore is even worse than his math points out, or you must invest in a prescience bitch.
2) when the Icarus does penetrate, that pen has 1/3 chance of destroying the vehicle, whereas the quad gun has only 1/6. However, clearly the quad gun is more of an HP stripper.

With havoks, I'd go with the quad gun. As the character is shooting, you have 4 chances at precision shots when not targeting fliers and the str7 will overlap with whatever guns they're using, whereas the Icarus wouldn't unless you kit them all out with lascannons.

I was thinking all lascannons for havocs

I'd go for the lascannon. As gridellol notes, the autocannon is a better HP stripper, but what's the point? Turn 2, a flier shows up, and you irritate it with a missing hull point or maybe two. Then the flier hacks at stuff. Then the quad gun can't fire again, because it's interceptor. Then the flier hacks at stuff again. Then it's turn 4, and you've only shot at it once. Then you get a chance to throw off another hull point or two. Maybe you wreck it, but maybe you don't, and if you don't, now it's turn FIVE, and the flier is still in the air. If the flier goes off the board, then it will be turn SIX before you get the chance to finish it off.

Ho, as they say, Hum.

The simple fact is that using an AA gun to strip hull points is pretty useless, especially when we start talking about AV12 fliers (which the quad gun probably won't shoot down), one of which can HEAL GLANCING WOUNDS.

The only way that your AA gun is going to have a serious impact on the game is if it blows up fliers, and blows them up early. The lascannon does this better than the quad gun.

If it's a matchup between a weapon that will have very little impact, or a weapon that will likely even have slightly less, but COULD have much more, then take the lascannon.

Plus, as has been mentioned, the lascannon is likely going to be more useful if your opponent doesn't bring fliers, especially since lack of fliers means more points spendable on heavy armor.

"1) the Icarus isn't TL therefore is even worse than his math points out, or you must invest in a prescience bitch. "

Griddle I think the question of TL at this point in the conversation was in response to my note regarding the combination of the Aegis and Tau Sentry Turrets (which can bestow TL'ing to a unit within 6" once per turn at the start of the player's turn) which effectively leaps that gap for me. FW item, I know, but it's becoming more and more acceptable for usage in came so I wanted to ask thoughts on that being part of the conversation.

The usage of it against ground forces is also pretty nice. I would point out that with good ML support, you should be able to make the character behind the gun a true beast on the field against a wide variety of targets.

The Las is sadly the best anti AV14 shooting the Orks can get.

I am tempted to run a shooty slannesh chaos list allied with demons to have skarbrand fire the lascannon. hit on 2's with rr's
if they do charge they get to eat a bunch of overwatch followed by going second in combat. in which we get rr's.

This was actually broken down in great detail today.

http://www.3plusplus.net/2013/05/killing-flyers-in-40k-part-1-quadgun-vs-icarus/

tl;dr The Quadgun is better in nearly every scenario.

anonymou5 wrote:
This was actually broken down in great detail today.

http://www.3plusplus.net/2013/05/killing-flyers-in-40k-part-1-quadgun-vs-icarus/

tl;dr The Quadgun is better in nearly every scenario.

Ninja'd. This is a great read, I second this post.

 Griddlelol wrote:
While cowmonaut is correct, he seems to have ignored a couple of important points.
1) the Icarus isn't TL therefore is even worse than his math points out, or you must invest in a prescience bitch.
2) when the Icarus does penetrate, that pen has 1/3 chance of destroying the vehicle, whereas the quad gun has only 1/6. However, clearly the quad gun is more of an HP stripper.

1. I was assuming Divination being cast on the unit manning it, but deleted the bit where i sad that before posting. My bad!
2. The Quad Gun will Pen just as much as a TL Icarus, so without Divination you are penetrating more often with the Quad Gun anyways.

So the Icarus only really makes sense if you cant afford a Quad.

I actually have not played against flyers yet. None of us have any flyers so we don't play with flyers. I am looking to use the Aegis as cover for my havocs and an additional long range shooting. It may not be the best use for it, but I am going to try and see. I was thinking of going all Lascannon (4x havocs, 1x aegis). Since they all would have to shoot at the same target.

 Solomongrundy wrote:
I actually have not played against flyers yet. None of us have any flyers so we don't play with flyers. I am looking to use the Aegis as cover for my havocs and an additional long range shooting. It may not be the best use for it, but I am going to try and see. I was thinking of going all Lascannon (4x havocs, 1x aegis). Since they all would have to shoot at the same target.

Seems reasonable, and the cheaper cost of a Icarus helps offset the more expensive Havocs.