Ed_Bodger wrote:I haven't played loads of 8th Edition but a decent amount and I have noticed that cannons seem to be seriously unbalanced. I have several armies: Empire, HE, DE, Brettonians and have seen how it performs both for and against my armies and I think it is now wrong. Dwarf artillery aside, artillery in the old world is supposed to be fairly crude and pretty hit and miss, The Empire cannons are supposed to be unreliable as are their mortars and orc stone throwers are supposed to be a bit of a joke. However it is no very easy to snipe a single model of a huge dragon without much risk of the artillery piece blowing up.
This is annoying because it has taken out something that used to be an important part of the game: range guessing. Now I think the no guessing when charging is good because there is still a degree of uncertainty to the actual distance you will travel and an inch really does make a lot of difference. However although there is a small amount of uncertainty with firing a cannon because of the artillery dice it is nowhere near as crucial since that inch is not as important because of the bounce. I think that as a result of the rule change the price of cannon etc should increase and perhaps there should be a few more magic items in army books that give a bit more protection to those big monstrous creatures.
So what do you think Dakka has it gone too far the wrong way or are things fine as they are?
Apologies for the late start, but I feel I must disagree.
Sure, the removal of guess range has made Cannons easier for newer players (either to the game or the piece of artillery) to get to grips with, but I fear you are missing a big change in their potential. Namely, the deliberate and unsporting overguessing to hit something outside of
LoS. The initial position of the template MUST be in
LoS now, thus unless said Cannon is on a hill, this will be in front of the enemy army somewhere. Then with the overshot and bounce, you have to be lucky to clobber something you couldn't have originally aimed at. This means Wizards and other characters can chance a quick sprint between units should they need to, and certain individuals can operate outside of units completely.
This to me is a good thing, and indeed the only way to prevent the old 'tactical overguess' was to remove guess range altogether.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And on the subject of increased dice rolling, again this is a good thing to me, as the more that can potentially go wrong in a tactic/strategy, the more thought and effort has to go into it. The sure thing isn't so sure anymore.