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Given that you don't ignore range penalties, and in the case of chariot/cannons (skull cannon, ironblaster) you don't ignore movement penalties; is their any use at all from grape shot?
An artillery die of shots hitting on 6's is pretty lack luster.

-Matt

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
Given that you don't ignore range penalties, and in the case of chariot/cannons (skull cannon, ironblaster) you don't ignore movement penalties; is their any use at all from grape shot?
An artillery die of shots hitting on 6's is pretty lack luster.

-Matt

If a unit of war machine hunters ends within 12" of said cannon. That's a use for it.

Empire/Dwarven cannons with engineers normally need 4s/3s(with runes) respectively To Hit on long range. So yes, there are uses for grapeshot.

It's sort of a last ditch Plan C in my experience. It's there, it's handy once in a blue moon, but it's not something that has a constant use. I still have to look it up every time to remember the stats.

If you've got some war machine hunters coming in and you're caught out of position... well, it would be nice if you hadn't been caught out of position, but at least you've got SOMEthing you can throw at them. Again, Plan C.

Well, the Bloodletters shooting the Skullcannon are BS 5.

I used it once to good effect trying to kill a single model with a Skullcannon, but only on a single occasion.

Oh, I forgot another occasion where it was good. Playing a WE player who deployed a small unit of Scouting archer types out of the Skullcannon's charge arc, then moved out of arc after I pointed to face. The WE player didn't consider the grapeshot option. On the next turn, I moved within 6" and hit them with a load of canister. Ploouie. No more woodies.

I have not used it like Saldiven mentioned, however I have aimed it that way before with intent to do so. However my screamers took care of the Woodies with slashing attacks first.

Generally speaking, the grapeshot won't be enough to kill any serious threat to the warmachine
If it's a very small/weakened unit, fair enough
But otherwise, I'd say you're better off getting one last juicy shot agaisnt a monster or such and accept the fate of your cannon

Depends on the Cannon in question.

A Skullcannon's Grapeshot can easily reduce an incoming threat to the point that it's not really worth the attacker charging. Same with the Ironblaster. A Dwarf cannon has 3 T4 wounds, compared to most others having 2-3 T3 wounds; taking a unit of Dark Riders, for example, from 5 models to 2 models makes it likely the Dwarven cannon will survive the attack and run off the attacker.

Harvester cannon on DoC. It's there. Might as well use it. If you can't march.

Iron Blaster grapehsot is A-mazing. Get to close with a unit of say Reavers and you're toast! Great for killing chaff that are threatening the machine.

Khannon grapeshot routinely destroys or neuters my dark riders/warlocks before they can destroy/engage the khannons.

 John Rainbow wrote:
Iron Blaster grapehsot is A-mazing. Get to close with a unit of say Reavers and you're toast! Great for killing chaff that are threatening the machine.

I tend to find it total trash if played correctly. Usually I see the Ironblaster firing at long range after moving. That's 0-10 shots hitting on 6's. If you're really lucky, you'll get 2 hits. More often than not, it's 1 or zero hits. At that point, you would have been better charging or just firing the cannon.
I see people all the time pivoting to fire (which you cannot pivot a chariot, and only unit type warmachines has a rule to allow pivoting to not count as movement for shooting).

As for engineers (both flavors) with cannons, does anyone actually do that? I thought all engineers were always ordered to work the Hellblaster/Volleygun. Because if you're using the BS to hit, you want more than 1 artillery die of shots, and you want more than 12" of range.

-Matt

I've never seen anyone use an Engineer for a cannon's grapeshot. In a Dwarf army, any engineer I've seen is there to boost the BS of the Organ Gun and allow a re-roll if you roll a crappy number of shots on one of the artillery dice.

Honestly, the only particularly good grape shot I can think of is the Skull Cannon. With BS 5, even movement and long range mean you're still hitting on 4+. It's good for small, chaff type units and single model units, especially if you're close enough to move into range, but far enough that you don't want to risk a failed charge.

When your opponent screws up and forgets about it, leaving his artillery-hunters within range for you to fire a grape shot.