Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So what is the best (or your favourite) weapon in 40k at the moment? I'm looking at direct shot, non-ordnance weapons, so no orbital bombardment or battle cannon, but flamestorm cannon and plasma cannon are ok.

I ask because of my personal favourite... the assault cannon. Back in 3rd edition it was a glorified heavy bolter, three shots, no rending, less range. Now, the extra shot and rending mean it is fantastic at thinning hordes but can also threaten power armour and terminators. Not only that but it can even be effective against armoured vehicles. Without spamming them, assault cannons can be extremely effective in numbers, but they are hampered by their range, but backed up by longer range weapons this isn't so bad.

To me it's the best all round weapon in the game.

Any thoughts?

I can't get enough of the twin-linked punisher cannons on the FW Vulture. Heavy 20 twin-linked makes for some fun times, it's just sort of a pain in the butt to have to ally with Elysians and have the IA books.

Asscannon is pretty good.

I'm going to go Pulse Submunitions cannons on the R'varna. S6AP4 with a 60" range, shooting up to 4 blasts per turn. Did I mention it gets 2 hits against certain targets? and 3 hits against others?

I put 58 attacks from four large blasts into one of my enemy's beast squads once. It was a turn 3 table against an opponent that, before that, I hadn't beaten in a long time.

If your allowing Flame Storms I'm just going to say the Bale flamer simply because its the same stats but has torrent in it. I'd swap out my LRC for LRR in a heartbeat if flamestorms could have the torrent rule.

The weapons listed here are contenders except for the assault cannon, which I find in practice to be a rather poor weapon for the points.

The humble Multi Melta. Salamanders in 5th made them easily the best weapon, and theyre FREE nonetheless. Now with Overwatch i cant tell you how many times ive melted special characters on the charge and saved my squad.

Martel732 wrote:
The weapons listed here are contenders except for the assault cannon, which I find in practice to be a rather poor weapon for the points.

We'll ignore the fact that most of the things that take assault cannons get them either for free or base.

Let's have a think of the main contenders, shall we?

Storm Talons, Storm Ravens, Land Raiders. Do we have any other commonly used tanks that have Assault Cannons on them? I mean, we can talk about land speeders or terminators, but both of those are wasteful to run assault cannons on. IS there any other meaningful unit with any access to assault cannons, that doesn't have them thrust upon them?

You yourself advocate storm talons. How can that be the case if you don't like the forced assault cannon? It's a very pricy caddy if all you're getting is two missiles, a lascannon or a triplet of autocannon shots.

With my very limited experience (only 9 games so far) my favorite weapon that I have used so far is the Frag Cannon on the Furioso Dread. This thing is a nightmare I love it! Rending, template assault 2 seems pretty good to me. However this is a "my favorite" kind of thing and I am not really qualified to say what the best one in the whole game is. I hear a lot about some gun that a Riptide has that like shoots around corners and hits like a brick s***house though...

For my money, it's hard to beat the humble demolition charge, so long as you can get the poor guy carrying it into range!

The Medusa artillery battery with bastion breacher shells. It's crewed by infantry, so can be given orders (Bring It Down!) to twin link it, and with a S10 AP1 small blast, 48" range, 2d6 armour penetration, it's pretty hard to not do some serious damage to enemy armour.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The weapons listed here are contenders except for the assault cannon, which I find in practice to be a rather poor weapon for the points.

We'll ignore the fact that most of the things that take assault cannons get them either for free or base.

Let's have a think of the main contenders, shall we?

Storm Talons, Storm Ravens, Land Raiders. Do we have any other commonly used tanks that have Assault Cannons on them? I mean, we can talk about land speeders or terminators, but both of those are wasteful to run assault cannons on. IS there any other meaningful unit with any access to assault cannons, that doesn't have them thrust upon them?

You yourself advocate storm talons. How can that be the case if you don't like the forced assault cannon? It's a very pricy caddy if all you're getting is two missiles, a lascannon or a triplet of autocannon shots.

Razorbacks can take them, and I see them there occasionally. The BA Baal Predator can take it or a flamestorm cannon and I've seen both used pretty much evenly. Assault cannons on termis were everywhere in earlier editions, especially before the nerf to rending.

Twin-linked Tesla Destructor. Assault 4, Str 7, 6's add two more hits, has a chance to jump to other units.

Exitus Rifle is my favourite.
I also kind of like hotshot lasguns..

Conceptually - or if you'd rather, visually - I also like psylencers (terminator's, pa's and above all dk's gatling one) [and I'm thinking of using some on basic gk troops, but I digress]

 Jayden63 wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The weapons listed here are contenders except for the assault cannon, which I find in practice to be a rather poor weapon for the points.

We'll ignore the fact that most of the things that take assault cannons get them either for free or base.

Let's have a think of the main contenders, shall we?

Storm Talons, Storm Ravens, Land Raiders. Do we have any other commonly used tanks that have Assault Cannons on them? I mean, we can talk about land speeders or terminators, but both of those are wasteful to run assault cannons on. IS there any other meaningful unit with any access to assault cannons, that doesn't have them thrust upon them?

You yourself advocate storm talons. How can that be the case if you don't like the forced assault cannon? It's a very pricy caddy if all you're getting is two missiles, a lascannon or a triplet of autocannon shots.

Razorbacks can take them, and I see them there occasionally. The BA Baal Predator can take it or a flamestorm cannon and I've seen both used pretty much evenly. Assault cannons on termis were everywhere in earlier editions, especially before the nerf to rending.

I know people hate on dreadnoughts, but I like the assault cannon on them. It’s a good TAC wandering around sorta gun. And for the topic of the thread, they are one of my favorite guns.

Also up there is the sternguard special ammo bolters.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The weapons listed here are contenders except for the assault cannon, which I find in practice to be a rather poor weapon for the points.

We'll ignore the fact that most of the things that take assault cannons get them either for free or base.

Let's have a think of the main contenders, shall we?

Storm Talons, Storm Ravens, Land Raiders. Do we have any other commonly used tanks that have Assault Cannons on them? I mean, we can talk about land speeders or terminators, but both of those are wasteful to run assault cannons on. IS there any other meaningful unit with any access to assault cannons, that doesn't have them thrust upon them?

You yourself advocate storm talons. How can that be the case if you don't like the forced assault cannon? It's a very pricy caddy if all you're getting is two missiles, a lascannon or a triplet of autocannon shots.

If by "advocate" means that I'll use them under duress, then yes I "advocate" them. Both the Stormtalon and Stormraven are significantly inferior to the best fliers in 6th. But not having having AA is a really fast way to get all your expensive bikers barbequed by Helldrakes. 6th edition is literally TAC hell for marines. Also, I'd say the assault cannon is decent on fliers. But only decent, because against Helldrakes, you are still having to roll a "6" to do anything.

The assault cannon really suffers on ground units, imo. With a range of only 24", you have already suffered at least one salvo from something like multilasers or scatterlasers. Having to get within 24" to even begin firing opens up the assault cannon-bearing unit to all kinds of counter fire. And the damage output the way the Imperium fields these things is not that impressive. Single assault cannons here or there might as well not exist. If we had a warwalker equivalent AND if the weapon were fairly priced, they would be good, but as they exist now in cost and mode of deployment, they kinda suck, imo.

I think the scatterlaser is strictly better than than the assault cannon. AP 4 is not even that useful, since marines have few ways to confer ignores cover to an assault cannon unit.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nevelon wrote:

 Jayden63 wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The weapons listed here are contenders except for the assault cannon, which I find in practice to be a rather poor weapon for the points.

We'll ignore the fact that most of the things that take assault cannons get them either for free or base.

Let's have a think of the main contenders, shall we?

Storm Talons, Storm Ravens, Land Raiders. Do we have any other commonly used tanks that have Assault Cannons on them? I mean, we can talk about land speeders or terminators, but both of those are wasteful to run assault cannons on. IS there any other meaningful unit with any access to assault cannons, that doesn't have them thrust upon them?

You yourself advocate storm talons. How can that be the case if you don't like the forced assault cannon? It's a very pricy caddy if all you're getting is two missiles, a lascannon or a triplet of autocannon shots.

Razorbacks can take them, and I see them there occasionally. The BA Baal Predator can take it or a flamestorm cannon and I've seen both used pretty much evenly. Assault cannons on termis were everywhere in earlier editions, especially before the nerf to rending.

I know people hate on dreadnoughts, but I like the assault cannon on them. It’s a good TAC wandering around sorta gun. And for the topic of the thread, they are one of my favorite guns.

Also up there is the sternguard special ammo bolters.

Sternguard special ammo bolters are way better than assault cannons. The special bolters are definitely way up the chart.

 Spinner wrote:
For my money, it's hard to beat the humble demolition charge, so long as you can get the poor guy carrying it into range!

Marbo laughs at the concept of "carrying it into range," he makes that thing soooo deadly.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
Asscannon is pretty good.

So....is that mounted on a donkey or does it fire them?

For me, Shokk attack gun, so much random, its fun (also, tends to get the goat of the local tfg, because of that). If I ever manage to roll box cars on a riptide, it'll make all the other times it killed my own guys (I also hope it with the local tfg's tau, and someone gets a vid of it, cause, it'd be some epic rage quittin)

In reg 40k, ion acc gets a special mention

For apoc my favorite would be the Vengeance Cannon from the emperor titan datasheet.
360" SD AP2 Heavy 4, 7" blast, Primary Weapon, Destroyer

 Jeeves wrote:
[Assault Cannon]
To me it's the best all round weapon in the game.

Then I give you the Psycannon: +1 strength, and it can fire as assault 2 vs. heavy 4 if you want.
However, my personal favorite is the exitus rifle (Vindicare assassin)with turbo-penetrator rounds.

I suppose for just statline potential the Ion Accelerator is pretty dang good.

Then you see the platform it's mounted on and its effectiveness goes down a little (I'm specifically talking about BS3 here, not trying to say the riptide is a bad platform...it's just not good for firing blast weapons)

Then you take into account the support it gets from the rest of the army/the wargear options available to the mounting platform...things go crazy and the needle breaks off the effectiveness meter.

5pt bolter acolytes en mass have to be contenders for anti horde. 180pts for 36 bolter shots above 12" and 72 bolter shots within 12". That's only 30pts more than 2 C:SM razorbacks with assault cannons which will only put out 8 shots, albeit bs4 s6 rending and tl. The assault cannons obviously have the AT capability as well.
TFC also have to be up there with anti troop, especially considering their sniping capabilities.
For AT 10pts is not a bad investment for a relentless, ignores cover, deepstiking multimelta on a LotD squad. Especially if twinlinked with Vulkans ability. Mobile multimeltas in general are brilliant for their points if you are thinking of closing the distance. 10pt upgrade on any landraider that can be fired with PotMS at a different target to the other weapons so synergy is not as much of an issue.
The 2 top weapons imo have to be: runner up - serpent shield, ignores cover, st7, d6 + 1 shots, tl with scatter, and 60" range is insane. The only reason it is not the winner is because it takes down the shield.
The winner however has to be the tesla destructor. 4 tl st7 shots which on average hit more often than the number of shots fired, lose little efficiency when snap firing and very often hurt nearby units to the target. On 90pt hard to kill skimmers (plus more tesla shots underslung), or 100pt flyers. That is german level efficiency for you right there! The only downside is the 24" range. Which tbf isnt much of a downside to crons as 12-24" is their preferred battle range.

When I played Salamanders I had a thing for Multimeltas, one on a single land speeder bouncing about from cover to cover and then destroying a much more expensive tank on side or rear armour was fun.

How do people feel about Eldar heavy weapons? My Flesh Tearers once got wiped out by Ulthwe Eldar star cannon spam at a 1000 point tournament. I wouldn't have minded but the guy was a real jerk about it, kind of put me off Eldar a bit.

Scatter laser uber alles. (For Eldar)

Psycannon, all the awesome of the assault cannon +1S.

The psycannon is significantly better than the assault cannon because it causes double the HP vs AV 12. The range still sucks, so I can't consider it for best weapon.

Railcannon.

Str10 AP1. Say what you will about its platform and its smaller cousins, the Railcannon is a beast.

The lasgun of course! Very point efficient. Its just too bad fielding large swarms of IG is unwieldy, difficult, and annoying.

For the same points you get a weapon with +1s and 1 better ap with inquisition.

The Riptide's Ion Accelerator is the best, followed very closely by the Heldrake's Baleflamer. Their statlines alone are crazy good, and they're also mounted on incredibly powerful, flexible units. These two are definite standouts, IMO.

A lot of the other stuff mentioned in this thread is also pretty excellent (Psycannons, the Hammerhead's Railgun, Eldar stuff in general).

I can't think of any stand-out Space Marine weapons. If you're running Salamanders with Vulkan (like I do), then the multi-melta is probably the best. If you're any other chapter, then... I dunno, maybe bike-mounted Gravguns? The OP mentioned the Assault Cannon; it's good, but not the best.

One of the hellhound variant cannons, they all have so much use it's hard to decide. But probably the chem cannon has given me the best results