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D weapons....dun dun dun!


I have just one simple question, if all these robots running around have D weapons then why isnt the chapter master orbital bombardment a D weapon?

5 story tall robot vs 5 km long space ship...im pretty sure the fire power on the space ship would be stronger. Yes I know fluff wise there were a few ground based weapons that were close to strength of that on space ships, but they were very few and far between.

I think the best solution (besides GW trying to push overpriced giant robots) is to remove the D weapon all together or severely limit it. Each playable army would get maybe one creature or robot or whatever with the D weapon and it would be LOW choice only 0-1 and all would be in the 500 point range. Also how many playable races are we up too now? 23 total...

Orbital Bombardment is a round fire from orbit, whereas Distortion weapons open a small portal to the Warp itself, which explains the D profile. Would be nice to either tone down the D profile entirely or make them less attainable.

Orbital bombardment is a Space ship thats a couple miles long, firing its MAIN weapons at the earth. These weapons are capable of destroying other Space ships that are also Miles long and have Meters if not a Dozen meters thick Armor plates and almost always have VOID shielding.

If any one weapon in this game should have Strength D it is orbital bombardment. (BTW im an ork player so don't think im just defending my Spessmarynes)

To be fair, I do not think it's firing its larger weapons. That's gigaton-level ordnance that would vaporise the battlefield and a fair area around it.

It's still arguably D though.

Yeah, Orbital Bombardment is not the ships' main guns. Its the Lances, normally, or occasionally a single small torpedo in the ridiculously underpowered case of the old Inquisition codices.

I think it's worth noting the real answer is because SD didn't become a mainline thing until after codex: space marines came out

I've done a lot of work with the point totals of weapon upgrades, and near as I can tell to make any str 10 weapon into strD you need to pay 30 points per shot/attack on the profile.

If you wanted to make the chapter master's orbital bombardment strD you could make it a 30 point upgrade and it shouldn't be too far off in regards to power level. 15 points if that seems too points intensive for a one shot weapon.

I'm fine with orbital being D.
As a necron player (I'm biased), I like how they have D.
I have three potential units (all c'tan) which can get D on a dice roll of 5.
and even then its only one shot.

I would be happy with D if every army had 1 unit that could use it, with definitive setbacks for use.
(one use only, random chance, bad range, etc.)

I suspect that GW needs to do a serious survey of the D v 10/1 weapons in their universe.

And there are only 7 playable races. 400 of them are Imperium.

I'd like them to be SD, makes it better for when they accidentally scatter onto their allies.

I feel players that bash D weapons are players whose armies fights without it... So we try and bring lore and military weapon technology to try and back our argument up.... but it doesnt work....

Who knows maybe the further the D- weapon blast travels the weaker it is, and thats why an orbital bombardment wouldnt work.....

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:
I feel players that bash D weapons are players whose armies fights without it... So we try and bring lore and military weapon technology to try and back our argument up.... but it doesnt work....

Who knows maybe the further the D- weapon blast travels the weaker it is, and thats why an orbital bombardment wouldnt work.....

I personally have an issue with the rampant power crepe. i cant stand the Alpha strike nature of the game as it is now. loosing half your gak T1 REALLY sucks. worse when your careful placement behind terrain and what not is completly ignored by no scatter deep strikes or ignore cover nonsense.

I put a ton of work into my models and removing them before i even get to use them is disheartening.

That said unlocking a D or two at 1500-2000 points and above wouldn't be too bad.

That's a big problem for some people, and I agree to some extent. GW realyl need to reign in some of the more powerful stuff at certain points levels.

It's never going to happen, but thins like bringing D strength weapons to games of 500 points (or even less?) should not be possible. I would like to see more definite brackets with minor rules changes maybe, like they used to forbid some stuff under 2000 points and so on.

Ideally they would have actually different games for things like kill team and small(ish) skirmish games and then apocalypse.

Lythrandire Biehrellian

That's impossible. Wraith guard and knights didn't jump 30pts per shot.

Also, I agree that if anything should be D it's the SM orbital bombardment.

Lastly, Orcs don't have the D because we're fungi. And I would argue Salamanders, Tyranid, and Necron shouldn't have the D. That it's all.

Probably because it's the smallest ordnance available to them that can be used tactically.

It's like if you're on a battleship of old and someone asks for close support. If the enemy is 30 feet away from your guys are you going to use a tomahawk? 5" guns? 16" guns?

Hell, if the blast in DoW or TT is anything to go by that's probably some silly point defense weapon they're plinking at the Earth. Because if Warhammers LUDICROUS AND IMPOSSIBLE estimation on the weapons used in ship to ship combat is anywhere close to true, if they fired any of their main cannons/lances/derps/herps into a combat on the ground they'd probably just blow up the whole battlefield with their "petatons" and "gigatons" of energy.

Imagine being the guy on the ground.
"WHAT'S A NOVA CANNON? YOU KNOW WHAT, FORGET IT. THEY'RE 200 METERS TO THE RIGHT OF MY POSITION, GO NUTS."

Actually, what we saw was games workshop decided that the old distort rule was equivalent, or more than likely a place holder for strength D on those units.

They seem to equate a penetrating hit with instant death for vehicles, so with high enough strength you can kill them just like you can with wound based models. Vehicles are just immune to most small arms fire.