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Huh? There already is a way of moving and firing the main cannon.

You move 6" and fire the Ordnance.

That's what the rules say.

Are you playing a different version of 40k than the rest of us?

...only half the time.

What I said I meant while still allowing sponsons firing, I thought that was the context of the conversation. That if you allow the LR to fire its ordnance and sponsons even if it moves, there should be some additional trade off, either in how it moves or its accuracy.

Currently, there is no reason to take a hull mounted HB and/or HB sponsons, or flamers, really, because when you can fire them, you can fire the Battle Cannon. Why even have the other weapons, pay for them, model them, paint them, if you're only going to use them if the main weapon gets knocked out, but it is just as likely, if not more likely, that the whole vehicle is going to be taken out.

First, the sponsons look stupid.

Second, you would never use them, because you always fire Ordnance.

So there's no point.

The funny thing about this is that this dilema is linked to why sponsons on tanks died out. Aside from the limited ability to aim something like a sponson, there was rarely an instance where you needed two different sized guns. If its big and armored the big gun kills it, if its small and armored the big gun kills it easily. Logistics and cost of ammo aside, there is no real need for a battle tank too have multiple different weapons like that.

On the flip side you could also point to the fact that similar weapons to those used in sponson arrangments are still used, they've just become co-axial or pintle mounted weapons. That those weapons are only employed to provide support fire when you're trying to avoid friendly fire or collateral damage that the bigger weapon would cause. None of those things are really concerns in 40k and don't really fit the not so sentimental attitudes of the imperium.

A radical change to "modernize" the Leman Russ, would move the las-cannon to a co-axial position and mount atleast one heavy bolter as pintel mounted weapon. Wouldn't change many of the issues but it'd make things interesting.

Actually sponsons came about to keep the enemy off the sides of the tank and repel flanking infantry or lighter vehicles. Additionally! When the tank, only on the Mark I used during WWI, crossed the trenches they were used to clear the trenches.

Sponsons went out of style for several reasons, none of them Mythos mentioned. As tanks evolved they lost the room for sponsons as the tracks no longer leapted high over the sides. Also, anti-tank tactics evolved, especially with the wider use of large caliber, infantry portable weapons like the M2 .50cal Machine Gun, anti-tank thermite grenades, recoilless rifles such as the Bazooka, and light artillery which could be maneuvered by infantry (think of the old Cadian lascannon but a regular cannon instead of the las type). Since infantry could now more easily destroy tanks, sponsons became less important, as the enemy infantry no longer had to approach the vehicle at close distance to destroy it.

Were sponsons difficult to aim from a mowing vehicle? I'm sure they were, but if that was the only reason then the hull mounted machine guns would also have been removed, same thing with coaxials machine guns, heck, aiming the main cannon was more difficult to aim on the move than any of the other weapons.

Since the Leman Russ DOES have high tracks, close range infantry problems, and trench clearing abilities, sponsons seem much more plausible attachments.

@ DD : hence the reason to allow all weapons to be fired. DUH! Have you read anything that has gone on here? I'm starting to understand why HBMC rags on you. It is so easy and is meritted! And I hate to say that.

Actually, I'm thinking of a quad-sponson Baneblade-based tank *without* a "main" gun.

The BB chassis is large enough to carry multiple sets of gun sponsons, and it has the ability to spread fire around as needed. As a spearhead vehicle, this is pretty good, and the only question is what to do with the hole in the top. I'm thinking Assault Mortar or rocket launcher, myself...

Sponsons were difficult to aim not because the vehicle was moving but because they had extremely limited traversal, compounded by the fact that it was moving. They also provided logistical issues for the Mk1 because they had to be removed for trains to transport them; also they made traversing rough terrain difficult because they'd often get lodged into the dirt. In the case of the M3 the sponson was the main gun, and that was a big waste of a tank. The reasons sponsons died off was because they had only been used because the earliest tanks would would have been made too top heavy by turrets. Sponsons died out for tanks the same reason they did for battleships at the same time, it was found that they were ineffectual relative to other weapon configurations.

When I said: "The funny thing about this is that this dilemma is linked to why sponsons on tanks died out." I was referring to JohnHwangDD's comment: "you would never use them, because you always fire Ordnance. "

Sponsons dying out had little to do with reduced room, they just weren't effective enough to keep. Sponsons in their most effective configuration required a tank to have two of everything that a turreted tank only required one of. Sponsons were removed to gain wasted space. There were many reason to get rid of them and very few reasons to keep them.

And that is why none of my Russ-based "counts as" Russes have turrets... They're all SPGs because a turret makes the vehicle too tall, and the proportions aren't right to carry sponsons. Hence, hull-mounted main gun and secondary HB.

Now 40k is a very different battle universe, where you can have a target for each sponson, and don't have to worry about transport by rail. But if you did this, then each sponson would need to have the equivalent of a "main gun" of some sort, like the Baneblade Lascannon & twin HB.

3 HBs isn't bad for 5th. With the amount of cover saves and the scatter on BattleCannons, having a backup S5 AP5 Heavy 9 gun isn't a bad thing.

There are worse things you can spend 10 points on.

BYE

I could actually see an argument for the sponson mounted flamers, though it's situational. That situation being when the opponent is close enough that you don't want to shoot them with the battle cannon. No cover saves, and you don't have to worry about it drifting back on yourself. Good way to add injury to insult (as in they failed their morale from the tank shock, and now in the shooting phase you flame them, hoping to cause enough casualties to make them run again.), or to have something to do against that group of nasties that are going to bang on the hull of your immobilized LR next turn, and you can typically hit more with a flame template (or two) than you can with the same number of HB shots.