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So in the new IG/AM codex, the stock Battle Tank and the Demolisher were the only variants of the Leman Russ to not go down in price (the Demolisher was actually +5 points). Most people considered these two to be the weakest varieties because they couldn't fire their hull or sponson weapons at full BS, yet every other variant went down in points and in some cases sponson weapons got cheaper also. Seems like the good got better. So what could possibly be the reason for this? The easy answer is that GW yet again doesn't seem to understand its own rules, and puts way too much value on big blasts that can kill marines. The second, more optimistic, possibility is that the Ordnance rule is being reworked for this mythological 6.5/7th edition update that we're going to see sometime in the near future. If that second option is the case, what would make Ordnance tanks rival their peers again?

Fire all their hull/sponson weapons at full BS?
Ignore cover?
Better vehicle penentration rule
Reduced scatter?

Just idle speculation.

Honestly I don't see the rules for ordnance changing anytime soon, yes the Leman Russ and Demolisher are the most expensive and can't fire they're sponsons if they fire their main cannon. However even then, they are still worth taking, in particular the Demolisher because who can refuse a strength 10 ap 2 large blast.

Wait, are there people who don't field LRBT and Demolishers?

Ordnance could have it's own chart again.

Let's return the instant death to all people in transports option! That'll teach those wave serpents.

And every other army in the game.

Biophysical wrote:
So in the new IG/AM codex, the stock Battle Tank and the Demolisher were the only variants of the Leman Russ to not go down in price (the Demolisher was actually +5 points). Most people considered these two to be the weakest varieties because they couldn't fire their hull or sponson weapons at full BS, yet every other variant went down in points and in some cases sponson weapons got cheaper also. Seems like the good got better. So what could possibly be the reason for this? The easy answer is that GW yet again doesn't seem to understand its own rules, and puts way too much value on big blasts that can kill marines. The second, more optimistic, possibility is that the Ordnance rule is being reworked for this mythological 6.5/7th edition update that we're going to see sometime in the near future. If that second option is the case, what would make Ordnance tanks rival their peers again?

Fire all their hull/sponson weapons at full BS?
Ignore cover?
Better vehicle penentration rule
Reduced scatter?

Just idle speculation.

I think Ordnance is fine as is. Everyone and their mother used to take LRBTs and Demolishers for the past 5 years, and it took a while till Executioners started gaining popularity. Nobody bothered with the Punisher, Vanquisher, Eradicator or Exterminator, and with the exception of the latter, now these variants are popular once more - first due to 6th, and then even more so due to points cost reduction in the AM codex.

The Battle Cannon still is a solid gun for a LRBT, and just like the Demolisher Cannon, these two guns allow you to field Leman Russes that do not have side sponsons - the option is there from a builder's perspective, but nobody built their tanks without sponsons in previous editions because they were too good to pass up. Now you can actually field sponsonless Russes and not get the feeling that you kicked yourself in the nads by taking this aesthetic decision.

That being said, you can still take 3 HBs and snapfire them in addition to the main gun's firepower, or alternately you can still purchase a Lascannon and 2 MM side sponsons (e.g. for the Demolisher) to serve as an alternate firing mode against enemy vehicles - I believe 2 S8 AP1 and 1 S9 AP2 is better than 1 S10 AP2 that rolls 2D6 and you pick the highest result for armor pen

if I was going to be taking sponsons on a LRBT I'd proably kit it out with flamers, dirt cheap and that'd dischourage people from trying to melee with it

Biophysical wrote:possibility is that the Ordnance rule is being reworked for this mythological 6.5/7th edition update that we're going to see sometime in the near future.

This is probably the best guess of the ones you stated.

Though my thinking is that 6.5 is going to change the rule for "heavy" to make it so that ordnance weapons don't cause you to snap fire all the others. Because if that winds up being the case, I'd actually consider the demolisher again, even at it's now relatively expensive state.

 TheSilo wrote:
Wait, are there people who don't field LRBT and Demolishers?

I haven't fielded an LRBT since the FAQ nerf that came out of nowhere last Codex and the rise of the Riptide. I get better anti-infantry out of the other tanks, Executioners solve my MC issues and AT, at least now with the new Dex, is good left to Pask in a Vanquisher. The far superior Jack Of All Trades tank that gets away with versatility that usually kills a unit because of its great ability on one front is the Pask Punisher, and that's cheaper than a Pask LRBT.

The Demolisher I fielded a few times just before the new Dex in low points games because the Executioner was too expensive, there were plenty of doubling out opportunities and because the extra AT was nice. But in the New Dex, Executioners can take a Lascannon and still be 5 points cheaper than the LRDT, so all they really lose is some iffy AT.

My friend swears by Exterminators now but I don't see the appeal.

As it is right now the ordnance tanks are not worth their value. The main weapon is not bad but snap firing all the other weapons is a huge drawback. Making either ordnance or heavy so that the other weapons fire at regular BS would make them on par with the other weapons.

As for people saying they are already great tanks you should seriously look at them again. Any of the non ordnance leman russ tanks will do far more damage per point once you start putting some appropriate sponsons on them. Now with easy prescience access and the cheaper cost across the board the non ordnance leman russ tanks are actually very competitive.

Gimme Old School Lumbering Behemoth back for one.

you guys do realize 6th edition boosted ordnance blast to kingdom come, right?

in 5th edition (the one the last IG codex was written for), using an ordnance tank to target enemy armor was a tradeoff as you got the additional D6 to choose from, but you would risk dropping the S of your gun to half if the central hole scattered off its hull.

6th edition has removed that, so you can now very well go tank hunting with these weapons, which is a fair tradeoff for only being able to hit on 6s with the Lascannon instead of on 4s. Also 6th edition has generally made tanks killier - if anything glanced your AV 14 Leman Russ in 5th, unless they rolled Immobilized, you would say goodbye to your entire shooting for the following turn. In 6th, until you get triple glanced, your Russ won't lose even 1% of its firepower the following turn. Also, if the opponent rolled a weapon destroyed in 5th, you would have to say goodbye to your main gun. Again, no longer the case in 6th. So all these changes would have made LRBTs and Demolishes that much killier in 6th thus the new ordnance secondary weapon restrictions bring some balance.

 gmaleron wrote:
Honestly I don't see the rules for ordnance changing anytime soon, yes the Leman Russ and Demolisher are the most expensive and can't fire they're sponsons if they fire their main cannon. However even then, they are still worth taking, in particular the Demolisher because who can refuse a strength 10 ap 2 large blast.

It's rather pricey for what it does, especially compared to other Russ models and something like the SM Vindicator with the same gun. Essentially if you're taking a demolisher, you're paying a 45pt tax over a Vindi for AV14 instead of AV13, at a tradeoff of speed (a Vindi can relocate up to 18" in a turn, a Demolisher only 6") and scatter reduction.

 Sir Arun wrote:
you guys do realize 6th edition boosted ordnance blast to kingdom come, right?

in 5th edition (the one the last IG codex was written for), using an ordnance tank to target enemy armor was a tradeoff as you got the additional D6 to choose from, but you would risk dropping the S of your gun to half if the central hole scattered off its hull.

6th edition has removed that, so you can now very well go tank hunting with these weapons, which is a fair tradeoff for only being able to hit on 6s with the Lascannon instead of on 4s. Also 6th edition has generally made tanks killier - if anything glanced your AV 14 Leman Russ in 5th, unless they rolled Immobilized, you would say goodbye to your entire shooting for the following turn. In 6th, until you get triple glanced, your Russ won't lose even 1% of its firepower the following turn. Also, if the opponent rolled a weapon destroyed in 5th, you would have to say goodbye to your main gun. Again, no longer the case in 6th. So all these changes would have made LRBTs and Demolishes that much killier in 6th thus the new ordnance secondary weapon restrictions bring some balance.

It's not like these tanks were exactly overpowered before the FAQ and eventually new codex. If they're just going to be snap-firing then the options to take the secondary weapons might as well not exist because they're priced as if they can be fired at full BS with the main gun, not as if they're going to be snap-firing. Let's also not forget that tanks in general have lower lifespans than in 5th, meaning instead of being shaken or stunned quite often they'll just be dead instead.

Besides, tank hunting has never been the primary role of either the LRBT nor the Demolisher, it's been heavy infantry engagement. The Battlecannon still isn't a spectacular AT weapon for 150pt unit, while the Demolisher has a rather short range which usually means most tanks it engaged are transports or assault walkers. One will notice that people aren't rushing out to buy Ordnance tanks for dedicated AT in their Imperial Guard armies.

Trying to construe it as an intended balance mechanism is silly, all they did was replace a codex rule with a rulebook rule to simplify things.

 Ailaros wrote:

Biophysical wrote:possibility is that the Ordnance rule is being reworked for this mythological 6.5/7th edition update that we're going to see sometime in the near future.

This is probably the best guess of the ones you stated.

Though my thinking is that 6.5 is going to change the rule for "heavy" to make it so that ordnance weapons don't cause you to snap fire all the others. Because if that winds up being the case, I'd actually consider the demolisher again, even at it's now relatively expensive state.

I think either 6.5ed will make it so that Heavy vehicles ignore snap fire on Ordnance, or Ordnance will drop the snap fire rule entirely. I'm holding out for the second option personally, because presently Hellfire missiles are beyond useless for having the Ordnance rule... and Storm Eagles have to spend 40pts to get 'em.

I'm under the distinct impression that GW, at least at the design level, considers Heavy to allow Ordnance and others to fire normally. All their displayed armies, studio and personal, have Ordnance Russes with lascannons, multi-meltas, the works. Now their armies are rarely WAAC levels, but they rarely include objectively stupid decisions like spenidng 50+ points on weapons you'll basically never use. This seems especially true given that they didn't drop in points at all.

Of course, it is entirely possible GW is over-valuing the ability to kill marines out in the open; just look at anything with a hotshot lasgun (though marines relative worthlessness is another point of frustraton for me, but that's another matter entirely).

I feel kind of lucky I never built many standard battle tanks; I've only got one demolisher, and three battle tanks, everything else is an Exterminator, Punisher, Annihilator, Executioner, Eradicator (a big winner in this book) and so on.

What I had hoped for was for the standard battle tank to get multiple ammo types, kind of like the Hammerhead. A direct fire AT shot st8 ordnance but Ap2, or a high-explosive round with higher st, but lower AP. Versatility should, if anyone gave a damn about the fluff anymore, be the strength of the LRBT, not the very niche role of killing marines in the open and hull-pointing light vehicles.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
I'm under the distinct impression that GW, at least at the design level, considers Heavy to allow Ordnance and others to fire normally. All their displayed armies, studio and personal, have Ordnance Russes with lascannons, multi-meltas, the works. Now their armies are rarely WAAC levels, but they rarely include objectively stupid decisions like spenidng 50+ points on weapons you'll basically never use. This seems especially true given that they didn't drop in points at all.

Of course, it is entirely possible GW is over-valuing the ability to kill marines out in the open; just look at anything with a hotshot lasgun (though marines relative worthlessness is another point of frustraton for me, but that's another matter entirely).

I feel kind of lucky I never built many standard battle tanks; I've only got one demolisher, and three battle tanks, everything else is an Exterminator, Punisher, Annihilator, Executioner, Eradicator (a big winner in this book) and so on.

What I had hoped for was for the standard battle tank to get multiple ammo types, kind of like the Hammerhead. A direct fire AT shot st8 ordnance but Ap2, or a high-explosive round with higher st, but lower AP. Versatility should, if anyone gave a damn about the fluff anymore, be the strength of the LRBT, not the very niche role of killing marines in the open and hull-pointing light vehicles.

I wouldn't say that. They have designed the Penitent Engine, the Flaming Chariot of Tzeentch (AV10/10/10 fast skimmer that if moves can't fire its flames mode and can only snap fire d3 las cannon shots that are likely to give your enemy fnp), and the defiler (schizophrenic beast that doesn't know what it wants to do). Also the plasma pistol being generally sub par whilst costing the same as a plasma gun. Ah yes, and the Helbrute that punishes you for building it in any way past its normal form.

It probably has something to do with anti-marine as they usually overprice it. The only real exceptions I can think of are he
Drakes and ap2 which always seems to be not nearly as pricey.

And I kinda like your idea! Heck, even if they only had limited ammo for their alternate shots it would have been rather interesting.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 gmaleron wrote:
Honestly I don't see the rules for ordnance changing anytime soon, yes the Leman Russ and Demolisher are the most expensive and can't fire they're sponsons if they fire their main cannon. However even then, they are still worth taking, in particular the Demolisher because who can refuse a strength 10 ap 2 large blast.

It's rather pricey for what it does, especially compared to other Russ models and something like the SM Vindicator with the same gun. Essentially if you're taking a demolisher, you're paying a 45pt tax over a Vindi for AV14 instead of AV13, at a tradeoff of speed (a Vindi can relocate up to 18" in a turn, a Demolisher only 6") and scatter reduction.

You forget the side armor upgrade from a patheric 11 by +2 armor point values to a solid 13. That's the front armor of most SM tanks, for gork's sake. And the upgrade of rear AV 10 to 11, which again comes in handy especially against infantry assaulting it.

Sir Arun wrote:you guys do realize 6th edition boosted ordnance blast to kingdom come, right?

in 5th edition (the one the last IG codex was written for), using an ordnance tank to target enemy armor was a tradeoff as you got the additional D6 to choose from, but you would risk dropping the S of your gun to half if the central hole scattered off its hull.

6th edition has removed that, so you can now very well go tank hunting with these weapons, which is a fair tradeoff for only being able to hit on 6s with the Lascannon instead of on 4s.

They did get rid of the center of blast rule (like how they cleaned up rules for the other templates), that is true, but that is literally the only thing they gained.

Meanwhile, they lost big on the vehicle damage chart, as a LRBT is now HALF as likely to cause a vehicle destroyed result with a penetrating hit as it was before. Meanwhile, a battlecannon can no longer stunlock enemy vehicles with glances. And shooting their main gun, regardless of how the vehicle moved, now causes all the other weapons to snap fire, which is a pretty big deal, especially when that means that you can't even fire plasma cannon sponsons AT ALL.

That's one gain to three huge nerfs. And that's before we consider how the meta has changed since 5th ed. 6th ed now has fliers which battlecannons and demolisher cannons can't even target AT ALL. We have a huge proliferation of monstrous creatures, which said weapons can, at most, ever do only one wound to (which makes them much worse than multi-shot weapons). And the guard codex has changed to add in prescience which helps multi-shot tanks a lot better than single-shot-scatter-die ones.

And then, to make it all worse, both ordnance tanks got effectively ~40 points more expensive than their non-ordnance buddies, a completely unjustified price hike, given the current rules. That the demolisher did, in fact, get more expensive is just adding injury to insult.

Sir Arun wrote:Also 6th edition has generally made tanks killier

Indeed, but demolishers got only a little killier, and LRBTs are, at best, a wash, while the other tanks in the guard arsenal got both much cheaper, and much killier simultaneously.

LRBTs and Demolishers were already at the bottom of the stack compared to the other options, and now they got worse, relative to the other tanks. Either this is a colossal blunder or, as is being hoped, they're going to make a change to the rules so that the other tanks can use hull weapons properly again.

Causing a lascannon HWS worth of firepower to hack its BS down to 1 just so that you can fire a blast krak missile is silly.

Hello All,

This is my first post, so please be kind. But didn't they give the new Techseer (or techpriest) the ability to give a vehicle PoMS within 12 inches. So you can shoot the LRBT cannon and then still shoot a Las Cannon at the full BS.

I know my LRDT has 3 heavy flamers, so if they knock out the cannon, he just rolls up and flames the heck out of them. My other LRBT sits in back (with the 72' range) and fires pie plates while the Techseer lets him shoot his las cannon at a different target. Seems to work so far.

So it seems a trade off, if you pick the right units.

Big Joe wrote:
Hello All,

This is my first post, so please be kind. But didn't they give the new Techseer (or techpriest) the ability to give a vehicle PoMS within 12 inches. So you can shoot the LRBT cannon and then still shoot a Las Cannon at the full BS.

I know my LRDT has 3 heavy flamers, so if they knock out the cannon, he just rolls up and flames the heck out of them. My other LRBT sits in back (with the 72' range) and fires pie plates while the Techseer lets him shoot his las cannon at a different target. Seems to work so far.

So it seems a trade off, if you pick the right units.

yes of course, and I think it is a good idea to at least include one techpriest in your army as he can hang back and also repair HPs of tanks - especially when youre fielding executioners with plasma sponsons

I'm backing the "Let's pray we get Lumbering Behemoth back in the FAQ!" stance. Really, that it was FAQ'ed out of the Russ's rules was pretty silly.

A change in Ordinance rules would be nice for my Defiler. Seems silly that a chassis designed to handle these big guns get's adversely affected when it wants to use them.

I'm pretty sure LRBT and Demolishers cost what they do because Space Marine.

I reckon LR tanks should have a rule that lets them fire the other weapons at full BS even if they fire Ordnance.

Actually I don't really like the tank firing rules at all, I'd be happy to see them overhauled.

MarsNZ wrote:
A change in Ordinance rules would be nice for my Defiler. Seems silly that a chassis designed to handle these big guns get's adversely affected when it wants to use them.

Got to agree with that statement. Seems silly that Monstrous creatures get to fire ordinance and do other stuff, but vehicles can't (I think that's how it works). Wish they would just axe the armor penetration mechanic entirely to be honest and do something to give all vehicles wounds and an armor save. It would make many things much simpler. They're already halfway there with Hull Points...

No, MCs cannot fire ordnance and anything else. At least vehicles can snap fire....

Actually, there is a way to use all of an ordnance tank's weapons, it's just probably not as easy to pull off. You can use a Techpriest and try to confer PotMS on some Battle Tanks or Demos if you sink points into lascannon/multimelta/plas cannons on the hull and sponsons.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's not like these tanks were exactly overpowered before the FAQ and eventually new codex.

They were, because 90% of IG players were fielding one of these two variants in their army.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Let's also not forget that tanks in general have lower lifespans than in 5th, meaning instead of being shaken or stunned quite often they'll just be dead instead.

But what was the point of a Russ that kept getting glanced and glanced and glanced some more in 5th? It was a useless paperweight. Due to being heavy, it couldnt even use the turn it was shaken to relocate....it really just was an LoS blocking paperweight. This is why I prefer 6th's glancing hit - Hullpoint tradeoff but continued 100% firepower to 5th's uselessness.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Besides, tank hunting has never been the primary role of either the LRBT nor the Demolisher, it's been heavy infantry engagement. The Battlecannon still isn't a spectacular AT weapon for 150pt unit, while the Demolisher has a rather short range which usually means most tanks it engaged are transports or assault walkers. One will notice that people aren't rushing out to buy Ordnance tanks for dedicated AT in their Imperial Guard armies.

Dont underestimate things. A 72" S8 weapon that rolls 2D6 armor pen and picks the highest can definitely be used from all the way across the other side of the board to strip the last hullpoint off another tank you managed to damage, but not fully destroy. And regarding ordnance in general, this is how I roll with my Manticore. Placing D3 S10 large blasts over a parking lot hidden behind an ADL can ruin their day.

And if they bring back the LRBT's ability to fire its main cannon and then all secondaries, once again there'll be little point in fielding an Eradicator, and similarly for the Demolisher which in turn will cause people to stop bothering with Executioners altogether, now that they have gained Gets Hot

Really, the only tank people should be pissed off about is the Exterminator, since it continues to suck hard in the new codex. Ideally it should have really only costed 110 points.