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Hey friends... I’m having a debate. Which seems stronger?

Option 1 - 2 packs of 5 Long Fangs with 4 lascannons each
(10 power armored dudes, 8 lascannons, reroll hits on select targets)

Option 2 - 3x, 6 man (3 bases) heavy weapons teams with 3 lascannons each
Plus a company commander for order shenanigans
(Essentially 18 guardsmen, 9 lascannons, orders, AND a command point! [vanguard])

The Long Fangs come to 340 points
The Guard detachment comes to 295 points

What do you think?

I debated this myself. Both options are very goodl. I woulf say it would depend on the rest of your list.

How reliable are the orders, I do not know them?

Long fangs re-rolling 1's are very reliable. But they will be targeted by anti tank, that helps to saturate that. Shooting IG with anti tank is very bad, but heavy bolters will go their way.

If the guard element is cadian, and you make the company commander your warlord with both master of command and laurels of command relic they will outperform the long fangs shot for shot as they will get full rerolls to hit on all three squads (very marginally worse accuracy than the long fangs if the long fangs only shoot at one target per turn), and half of the time you will also be able to the put bring it down order on each firing unit (better than the long fangs every time it goes off).

The strength of the long fangs is that they don't need to huddle up (a must for the cadians to benefit from orders) so they can make better use of things like rooftops to get better firing positions.

Durability wise, guard are better per point. The long fangs will lose a cannon per wound (after the first), whereas it is for every two wounds on the guard.

So the debate was originally how to fit my second long fang pack. The list would be:

Spearhead -cadian warlord with 9 lascanons

Batallion - Bjorn and Njall, Primaris Marines (9), two grey Hunter packs I’m razorbacks (min squad, plasma)

Vanguard - kitted our biker iron priest, 2 wulfen packs and Dakka wolfguard bike squad (storm bolters and shields)

Is it the take ail order that lets you re-roll? It only lets you re-roll 1''s though.

And how are orders given? Is there a dice roll?

 Niiai wrote:
Is it the take ail order that lets you re-roll? It only lets you re-roll 1''s though.

And how are orders given? Is there a dice roll?

There's no roll, unless the ordered unit is conscripts, who require 4+ to succeed.

Normally, "take aim" is reroll 1's to hit and "bring it down" is reroll 1's to wound. Cadian regiment trait allows "take aim" to become full rerolls if stationary and the laurels relic will allow a second order to be applied to the same squad on a 4+ which I believe is one of the only ways to apply more than one order per unit.

Back to the OP question, a 3rd option would be 2 company commanders and 4 HWT's - only 32 points more than the Long Fangs and would allow you to spread out a bit more if you were concerned about fire lanes or presenting too big a target.

Aha.

Imperial guards do not get the cadian bonus when they are friends of genestealer cultists.

Point for point i'd say the Long Fangs are better. More durable, and slightly better to hit.

Plus thematically flows better with a Space Wolf force.

In my meta I have a lot of Deep strikers with strength 4 guns. These would chew up guard but not hurt Long fangs as much with a 2+. A squad of 10 Reivers (fairly common right now in my area) do 20 str 4 shots.

That's 2 dead bases of hwt or 1 Long fang which isn't even a missile launcher.

Another common one in my area is 20 guardians.

That's 10.2 w so 5 dead bases of hwt or 3.6 long fangs.

It's close but i like long fangs.

Incognito15 wrote:
Point for point i'd say the Long Fangs are better. More durable, and slightly better to hit.

Plus thematically flows better with a Space Wolf force.

In my meta I have a lot of Deep strikers with strength 4 guns. These would chew up guard but not hurt Long fangs as much with a 2+. A squad of 10 Reivers (fairly common right now in my area) do 20 str 4 shots.

That's 2 dead bases of hwt or 1 Long fang which isn't even a missile launcher.

Another common one in my area is 20 guardians.

That's 10.2 w so 5 dead bases of hwt or 3.6 long fangs.

It's close but i like long fangs.

I think that the legendary space marine durability and accuracy is a bit misleading here.

340 points gets you 2 units of 5 long fangs with 4 lascannons, for only 2 points more you can have 4 units of 3 lascannon teams plus a company commander.

If we assume that the pack leader gives an ablative wound and the company commander is hiding so has no affect, it plays out as follows:

40 shots from guardians (including rends) cause average of 13 unsaved wounds on guardsmen - 6 cannons lost/6 remain (156 points of army lost)
The same shooting will cause 6 unsaved wounds on long fangs - even assuming the elder doesnt split fire this is 4 cannons lost/4 remain (170 points of army lost)

20 shots from reivers (rounding up - you never know they may be salamanders) would just about put 6 wounds on guardsmen - losing 3 cannons/9 remain (78 points of army lost)
The same versus the long fangs would put 2 unsaved wounds on the unit - 1 cannon lost/7 remain (53 points lost including pack leader).

Accuracy wise, long fangs can buff themselves with reroll 1's - but only if the whole unit shoots the same target giving maximum accuracy of about 77.7% (6.2 hits/turn at full strength). The Cadians will be a mixed bag, if the company comander isn't your warlord you will have minimum accuracy of 2 units with full rerolls (75% accurate) and 2 units rerolling 1's (58.3% accurate), or 8 hits/turn at full strength.

IMO the Cadians when shot at will lose comparable points of models, but will crucially always return fire with more lascannons, and at a minimum will match the long fangs for hits/turn (although they could be further buffed by more orders through warlord traits and relics for no extra point cost).

Things do get slightly better for the long fangs if you assume that they can fit into cover and the guardsmen cannot (a reasonable assumption), while the long fangs would become more durable on a points/wound basis you would still have (slightly) more lascannons left to shoot back if you used Cadians.

Drawbacks for the cadian detachment = 2 extra units in deployment, hard to fit into cover harder to get elevation / line of sight.

Benefits for cadian detachment = often more shots, extra command point, cheaper.