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Hey, fellow conscripts!

So I have heard around that Mortar Heavy Weps. Teams are pretty good. I'm building a gunline army, and was wondering which would be better? Mortars, or Lemans with Punisher cannons and bolters? I do plan on spamming conscripts and having a few commissars, and I wasn't planning on having vet squads or guardsmen to put mortars with. Thanks a bunch!

Well, I am. And I'd like to know which is better.

Play whatever you like, regardless of what anyone here says.

I don't have the knowledge to tell you which is best (I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along shortly), but why not take both? Mortar heavy weapon teams are dirt cheap anyway.

I can tell you that mortar teams are an extremely annoying dilemma for me as an opponent; I don't want to waste firepower on such a puny and cheap squad, but they keep exploding my precious space elves!

Guard seems to attract all the playground bullies nowadays.

Ultimately the best option will always be matchup specific, but if you just take a combination of all the underpriced Guard stuff you've been making topics about you'll autowin 90% of your games regardless.

Just be sure to dodge that 1 really good player at your club and don't forget to join in with the rest of the "IG is fair and balanced" choir here :p

They do different things.

Punisher
-shorter range'
+tougher
+stronger shots
-more concentrated
-direct fire

Mortars
+indirect fire
+not concentrated in one model
+longer range
-weaker shots
-weak defensively

For me the question is mostly about durability and the T of your target.

Point for point, Mortars put out twice as many shots as a Russ with a Punisher. The mortars are much more resistant to anti tank weapons because of the number of models, but much more vulnerable to small arms and being swept in melee.

Against T3 it's a close call. I'd say a mix would probably be a reasonable idea.

Against T4 the value of Mortars drops significantly and I'd be much more tempted by Punishers.

I can tell you that on the painting and modelling front, Punishers are probably less work than Mortar Teams, which are pretty fiddly. However when building Mortars you get quite a bit of creativity over the posing and "narrative" of the little base.

If that helps at all.

Mortars are great for the points and brilliant for screening as well - they take up a fair amount of space to prevent those horrible turn 1 deep strikes. Well, Turn 2!

Punishers can be pretty lethal when they fire 40 shots but the main downside of them is that 24" range. You need to stick them right up front to actually DO anything - but then they are really quickly locked up by melee units attacking them.

I sometimes use my Punisher as the furthest forward point of my deployment.

The plan is to be able to shoot their screens turn 1, then pretty much bait people into charging it... using the "defensive gunners" stratagem you are overwatching on 5's. As long as they can't immediately take it prisoner by totally wrapping it, you can then fall back and open up with the rest of your army on that assault unit.

Worked well for me against genestealers and other "come at me bro" units

Mortars are more killy. Punisher offers tough tank but if you don't have other tanks you will just provide easy target selection for opponent's AT fire. Thus if you take punisher you must(unless you want to waste points on punisher) take other tanks(and not basilisk hidden out of LOS!).

Oh and conscripts? Unless you have that valhallan heirloom those are royal waste of points.

Thanks, guys!

I'll second what tneva82 said about conscripts, they just really really aren't good any more. They have been nerfed many many times since the IG Codex came out.

Just remember, if you're playing using the FAQ army building changes, you can only have three mortar squads.

 Mmmpi wrote:
Just remember, if you're playing using the FAQ army building changes, you can only have three mortar squads.

Plus one mortar embedded per infantry squad, anyway.

9 mortars is plenty for most people anyway. 9 mortars, 9 basilisks. If that's not enough long range indirect for you what is

Would it just be cool to bring Punishers, battle tanks, and Basilisks since it's mainly a mech army? If so, how much of each should I bring in a 2000pt army?

My TAC tournament list features a tank commander in a punisher who alone in the last 2 games has killed probably 150 odd cultists? The first game only went to turn two and the other to turn three they are brutal against screens and not half bad at anything else either but for screen removal look no further

Sqauwky wrote:
My TAC tournament list features a tank commander in a punisher who alone in the last 2 games has killed probably 150 odd cultists? The first game only went to turn two and the other to turn three they are brutal against screens and not half bad at anything else either but for screen removal look no further

...

Is that possible?

I suppose with Grinding Advance, but he'd have to be throwing his Cultists at you haha

Stux wrote:

Sqauwky wrote:
My TAC tournament list features a tank commander in a punisher who alone in the last 2 games has killed probably 150 odd cultists? The first game only went to turn two and the other to turn three they are brutal against screens and not half bad at anything else either but for screen removal look no further

...

Is that possible?

I suppose with Grinding Advance, but he'd have to be throwing his Cultists at you haha

Yep easily possible especially with the relic of lost cadia and the for cadia stratagem and its hard to hide squads of 40 cultists when they're spread all around the board in order to establish board control

Mortars are also popular because they are shockingly cheap for massed indirect dice.

Have you considered wyvrens? They are a better comparison to mortars than punishers.
Personally, I reccomend simply embedding mortars into infantry squads, otherwise it’s simply too easy to remove a mortar unit. A custodian bike in rapid-fire range can kill an entire mortar team in a shooting phase. Granted that’s 90 pts killing 27 but what else would he shoot at? It is cheap firepower, but it’s such an obvious target that making it your primary artillery source is going to end badly (so what I’m saying is, take both). Plus an embedded mortar team gives your guardsmen a way to contribute to a long-range gunfight and makes your opponent have to consider killing them. If I recall correctly heavy weapons teams don’t give up their lasguns either so you can still switch to those for FRFSRF once in range.

 greyknight12 wrote:
Have you considered wyvrens? They are a better comparison to mortars than punishers.
Personally, I reccomend simply embedding mortars into infantry squads, otherwise it’s simply too easy to remove a mortar unit. A custodian bike in rapid-fire range can kill an entire mortar team in a shooting phase. Granted that’s 90 pts killing 27 but what else would he shoot at? It is cheap firepower, but it’s such an obvious target that making it your primary artillery source is going to end badly (so what I’m saying is, take both). Plus an embedded mortar team gives your guardsmen a way to contribute to a long-range gunfight and makes your opponent have to consider killing them. If I recall correctly heavy weapons teams don’t give up their lasguns either so you can still switch to those for FRFSRF once in range.

Sure most things can wipe them off the board but they don't need LOS and hence can spend all game hiding out of it meaning unless you hit their gunline your likely not going to be able to see them

Probably mortars, because shooting without LoS is pretty useful.