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Then you're trying to use them as Valkyries. If you use them to do alpha strikes or play very aggressively, they won't get to fire much since they are either trying to get somewhere or are being shot at at close range.

I prefer to put cheap units like SWSs and PCSs into Vendettas to make them scoring, and keep them in my back ranks snipping enemy vehicles, and only in the last turn do I move them aggressively (turbo-boosting if I must) to deposit my small troop squads on objectives and clear out any enemies with massed flamer templates/demolition charges.

I think it's apples and oranges, in a way. The vend is a powerful unit, as Terminus has outlined above. But the HWS lascannons can kill anything the vend can, and can't be taken out with one shot, excepting a pieplate/template. With proper cover and leadership, the HWS is often harder to kill.

But you don't have to "kill" them. just making them run away is enough.
i prefer the Vendetta given the 2, for the TL.

True. I've been relying on a triad of the company commander, regimental standard, and lord commissar to keep my HWS in line and firing effectively. Rerolling morale on ld10 means they basically ain't goin nowhere, and have to be completely destroyed to silence the battery. In cover, especially with GtG or even I!, they take some effort to dig out.

a lot of sentiment here for grouping like weapons together, but I like to take a HWS of two autocannons and one missile launcher. Nice and versatile against swarms or light armor. Heavy armor draws fire from tanks or lascannon squads.

murdog wrote:True. I've been relying on a triad of the company commander, regimental standard, and lord commissar to keep my HWS in line and firing effectively. Rerolling morale on ld10 means they basically ain't goin nowhere, and have to be completely destroyed to silence the battery. In cover, especially with GtG or even I!, they take some effort to dig out.

Eeeeew, Lord Commissar. Yes, let's throw away points on one of those, and then add some overpriced HWT lascannons and then order them to ground so we can't even shoot them.

I don't know guys, I just can't stomach dropping 35 points for a single BS3 lascannon that dies to pretty much anything that shoots at it. If I'm getting lascannons, I'll put them into platoon squads where they only cost 20 and have a bunch of ablative bodies to catch shots and have much better leadership for orders and morale.

Lol - don't hold back now Terminus, tell us what you really think about Lord Commissars and HWS's....

Seriously though, I use lascannon batteries, and HWS's in general, and they don't just 'die to pretty much anything that shoots at it', at least not all the time. I pretty much give them priority for the best cover in the deployment zone. It's alot easier to get a HWS into terrain than a 30 man blob. If it's a 10 man squad, those 4 extra wounds - sorry 'bunch of ablative bodies' - really aren't going to buy you that much extra time in the face of dedicated anti-geq firepower.

I don't really see how the Lord Commie is 'throwing away points' when it provides not one but multiple squads with ld10 on morale/pinning/orders (perfect for ld7 units with 3 models that are at the top of the enemy's target priority, and are also top candidates for the orders issued by the CCS, which the Lord Commie usually hides in). That's better than ld8/9. I just don't find it difficult to place my CCS near my most important HWS's.

Your cost analysis is blurry. If you look at it as 35 points for a single lascannon in a HWS, you have to call it 70 points for a single lascannon in a PIS. If you're going to talk about them being 'only' 20 points in a PIS, well they are 15 in a HWS. It's fair to compare the two units by total unit cost, or total cost per LC, or cost to upgrade each single lascannon, but one category at a time...

Also, with GBitF, you can shoot with a unit after it has GtG. It would have to be a special circumstance for me to issue Incoming to a squad that I need to have fire that turn.

I'm not trying to argue that heavy weapons are more survivable in HWS than PIS. Clearly a single, unsupported PIS is more survivable than a single, unsupported HWS, and does a cheaper and better job of protecting the last gun. Clearly the HWS is a very fragile unit, and can't be deployed carelessly. However I don't dismiss them out of hand - I use them every battle, and I take measures to ameliorate their weaknesses and bolster their strengths.

I think Murdog make some good points, if I was going to take a LOS based HWS like 3LC, I would at least take a regimantal standard and stick them in as heavy cover as I could find. However I would want more than 1 HWS to warrant a Lord Commissar.

My favorite HW (look wise) is the mortar.

Does anyone have any tips on fielding them?
how many is good to have?

Don't take too many, because there will be targets on the field they're completely useless against. I think the general problem with such weapons is that they're useless against vehicles and not worth much against marines - the most prevalent targets around.

If you do use them, I don't think more than 2 HWS is a good idea (because of the aforementioned problems). I'd never use them in a PIS, only in a dedicated HWS. If you play an opponent with no real outflanking/deepstriking potential, they could be useful for holding a well-hidden objective in your deployment zone.

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly is right I like the mortar but S4 AP6 limits your targets, so you don't want too many of them.

This is a long thread and maybe this belongs in a different thread, but I don't see anybody pointing out the basic flaw in Ailaros's math.

It's true, as stated in his article,(http://www.ailarian.com/folera/articles/tacticas/transport-defense.html) that an autocannon gets a .095 immob+ result on an AV11 rhino with one shot.

However, when he says "This means you need 11 hits to take it out," that's totally incorrect. It's a misunderstanding of how probability works.

The damaging hits fall on a bell curve. The .095 means that, about half the time, you will immob or better the rhino after 5-6 hits, and about half the time it will take more than 5-6 hits to immob or better. Sometimes you'll nail it with the first hit (but not very often) and sometimes you'll get 11-12 hits with no effect (but not very often). I don't have the statistics skills to calculate the standard deviation, but most of the damaging results are clustered in the middle, at between 4 and 7 AC hits.


So the math is right, but the interpretation is wrong.

One HWS firing autocannons at a rhino out of cover will immob or better it about 25% of the time. So two squads can disable a rhino about half the time.

Thowing BiD on the HWS will increase the odds by about 25% for a target in cover, 50% for a rhino in the open. Throwing FoMT on the squads is actually better, though, if the rhino is in cover because it gives you 50% more hits that actually do something (instead of the 25% more hits you get from BiD).

I agree that if the numbers were as bad as Ailaros calculated, HWs wouldn't be very good. But the numbers that take the probable distribution of hits into account correctly reflect the threat of ACs versus transports more accurately.

murdog wrote:I'm not trying to argue that heavy weapons are more survivable in HWS than PIS. Clearly a single, unsupported PIS is more survivable than a single, unsupported HWS, and does a cheaper and better job of protecting the last gun. Clearly the HWS is a very fragile unit, and can't be deployed carelessly. However I don't dismiss them out of hand - I use them every battle, and I take measures to ameliorate their weaknesses and bolster their strengths.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I like HWTs. I use autocannon teams all the time, and occasionally even throw in some mortars. I just feel the lascannon team is too expensive for what it does, especially when you compound their cost with a Commissar (two such HWTs + a naked LC run you 290 points... that's two vendettas and a doctrine). The Lord Commissar also means you are limited to only two BiD orders unless you take Creed. If you're adept at keeping your LC solo on foot and running around to keep your various elements in his tiny aura, that's great, but I found that makes him an easy kill point. Plus, when I need my blob to break, I can guilt-free and without hassle let the Jr. Commissar die; that's not so easy with the LC.

You mentioned that a 30-man squad is too hard to hide, while the 10-man is "only 4 extra ablative wounds" (by the way, depending on what S weapons are firing at you, the infantry squad could have up to 7 extra wounds). While we play on tables with enough terrain to hide a 30-man squad (especially considering how far they can stretch across the table, using those big HW bases as anchor points), did you consider the 20-man squad? It now provides a good bit more ablative wounds, you can FRFSRF to at least some effect, can issue reliable orders that don't require a Commissar, all while still staying < 150 points.

Flavius Infernus wrote:
Thowing BiD on the HWS will increase the odds by about 25% for a target in cover, 50% for a rhino in the open. Throwing FoMT on the squads is actually better, though, if the rhino is in cover because it gives you 50% more hits that actually do something (instead of the 25% more hits you get from BiD).

I thought these gave exactly the same effect?

BiD raises hits from 50 to 75%; FoMT raises effective results from 50 to 75%. It looks like exactly the same modifier, but one is at the beginning of the sequence, and one at the end.

Autocannons are generally the best to spam because they're the most general of all the weapons and they're cheap.

But Missile Launchers are pretty good, too.

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:Don't take too many, because there will be targets on the field they're completely useless against... I'd never use them in a PIS, only in a dedicated HWS. If you play an opponent with no real outflanking/deepstriking potential, they could be useful for holding a well-hidden objective in your deployment zone.

Terminus wrote:I just feel the lascannon team is too expensive for what it does, especially when you compound their cost with a Commissar

I agree with all of this about heavy weapons in general. Niche uses, best in HWS, objective camping, expensive for what it does (especially if you have support units sit around), etc.

I likewise wouldn't take more than about 2.

Flavius Infernus wrote:So the math is right, but the interpretation is wrong.

It's interpreted using standard deviation. What's wrong with that?

Melissia wrote:Autocannons are generally the best to spam because they're the most general of all the weapons and they're cheap.

The unfortunate thing with being general is that in order to gain long shot odds against several target types, the autocannon becomes ineffective against all target types*. So while you're spamming the most general weapon, you're also spamming the most ineffective weapon. Why spam ineffective weapons?

As well, they're cheap compared to a super plasma executioner, but they are not cheap for what they do. Why not spam points-effective weapons instead?




* except AV10 that your opponent moves directly out in front of your stuff without smoke or SMF and IG HWS that your opponent doesn't put in cover for some reason.

You don't need every unit in your codex to be a specialist at destroying something. And Autocannons will save you points to GET specialists anyway.

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:

Flavius Infernus wrote:
Thowing BiD on the HWS will increase the odds by about 25% for a target in cover, 50% for a rhino in the open. Throwing FoMT on the squads is actually better, though, if the rhino is in cover because it gives you 50% more hits that actually do something (instead of the 25% more hits you get from BiD).

I thought these gave exactly the same effect?

BiD raises hits from 50 to 75%; FoMT raises effective results from 50 to 75%. It looks like exactly the same modifier, but one is at the beginning of the sequence, and one at the end.

Whoops, yeah I forgot that "fire on my target" forces a cover reroll, which reduces the number of hits that "stick" by 25%. So the commutative property wins the day. I was thinking that "fire on my target" negated cover.

Actually, now that I think about it, it depends on the cover save. Versus a 5+ or worse cover save, "fire on my target" is marginally better. Versus a 3+ or better cover save, "bring it down" is better.

Ailaros wrote:The unfortunate thing with being general is that in order to gain long shot odds against several target types, the autocannon becomes ineffective against all target types*. So while you're spamming the most general weapon, you're also spamming the most ineffective weapon. Why spam ineffective weapons?

As well, they're cheap compared to a super plasma executioner, but they are not cheap for what they do. Why not spam points-effective weapons instead?

* except AV10 that your opponent moves directly out in front of your stuff without smoke or SMF and IG HWS that your opponent doesn't put in cover for some reason.

Aaand he's back again, quoting the same nonsense based on rudimentary, roughly rounded and poorly interpreted statistics. You've yet to actually illustrate how the autocannon is not a points-effective weapon, nor have you provided a superior alternative for infantry squads. You've yet to respond to my multiple invitations to play a quick game or three on Vassal, so at this point my only recourse is to just (re-)write you off as another attention-seeking troll (hey, maybe you can be the next Stelek and have your own legions of drooling devotees).


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Flavius Infernus wrote:Actually, now that I think about it, it depends on the cover save. Versus a 5+ or worse cover save, "fire on my target" is marginally better. Versus a 3+ or better cover save, "bring it down" is better.

You got those backwards. Forcing a re-roll on a crappy cover save is inferior to re-rolling your attacks (though often only marginally so).

I think the problem is not the weapon itself , but how GW designed the latest IG codex.

If you think about it , IG are supposed to be soso geared army that depend on flesh and steel tanks.

Specialists like melta vets should never existed in IG , they are pretty much reliable like Fire Dragons...

Its not Autocannon is too mediocre , its melta vets are too cheap and effective.

Terminus wrote:Aaand he's back again, quoting the same nonsense based on rudimentary, roughly rounded and poorly interpreted statistics. You've yet to actually illustrate how the autocannon is not a points-effective weapon, nor have you provided a superior alternative for infantry squads. You've yet to respond to my multiple invitations to play a quick game or three on Vassal, so at this point my only recourse is to just (re-)write you off as another attention-seeking troll (hey, maybe you can be the next Stelek and have your own legions of drooling devotees).

What do you hope to achieve through your endless stream of personal attacks on me? Do you really think that it's convincing anyone that you're right about anything?

I've already given several illustrations with regards to points-effectiveness. If you choose not to be convinced, that's fine, but if you're going to convince me that they ARE points effective, you're going to have to actually articulate an argument. The scant few times you have, I've addressed them, but haven't gotten anything after that other than yet more personal insults.

Furthermore, I have proposed superior alternatives to PIS autocannon. Your denial of this fact won't make my oft-linked essay dissappear off the internet, no matter how strong your desire.

And I've rejected your call to vassal because vassal is subjective while polluted with several serious uncontrolled variables. If you said anything as to how this is more objective than statistics, I'd like to hear your reasoning. Instead you appear to only repeat your belligerent demand that we whip them out on the table and measure...

Perhaps the troll here is the one that's making their argument by coming up with round after round of personal insults against other posters, rather than attempting serious dialogue on the topic at hand.

Melissia wrote:You don't need every unit in your codex to be a specialist at destroying something. And Autocannons will save you points to GET specialists anyway.

The argument here is that yes, points are being spent on crappy guns, but they're cheap, so you can buy good guns elsewhere. Why not just spend the points on the good guns in the first place? Why not spend points ONLY on good weapons?

LunaHound wrote:I think the problem is not the weapon itself , but how GW designed the latest IG codex.

I'd agree with this. Back in the day, we may not have had any choice but to use infantry heavy weapons. Now we do have a choice. Likewise, as has been mentioned, the 5th ed rulebook is unkind to heavy weapons, while simultaneously being kind to special weapons and assault.

LunaHound wrote:Its not Autocannon is too mediocre , its melta vets are too cheap and effective.

Yeah, what a pain to have cheap, effective weapons

That said, comparisons aside, autocannons still aren't stellar, what with their poor showing against infantry targets in the statistics, and their unfortunate tendency to cost more than what they kill (along with other disadvantages, such as with movement, etc.) We may have been blessed with some good weapons, but we haven't been SO blessed as to have had lots of good weapons that do the same thing, and we have to pick between only good options.

Ailaros wrote:What do you hope to achieve through your endless stream of personal attacks on me? Do you really think that it's convincing anyone that you're right about anything?

Personal attacks? I don't think disputing your claims as false and asking you to actually prove your theories in a game counts as personal attacks.

Furthermore, I have proposed superior alternatives to PIS autocannon. Your denial of this fact won't make my oft-linked essay dissappear off the internet, no matter how strong your desire.

Your linked essay is crap because the kind of averages you are calculating cannot be applied to multiple rolls. A fraction of a destroyed result doesn't mean anything, the only thing that gives an even remotely accurate representation is your percent chance of a particular result. For example, the linked essay calculates that an autocannon deals 0.05 destroy results to an AV12 target in cover (i.e. the hardest possible target), and then blithely concludes it takes 20 autocannons to pop one of these transports. This is of course nonsense. Does it really mean 20 autocannons firing have 100% chance of success? Does that mean if you fire 21 autocannons, do you suddenly have a 105% chance of success?

Sorry, but statistics don't work like that (look up binomial distribution), and in addition you are making your determinations in a complete vacuum. The average bubblewrap/tarpit IP squad is 20- or 30-strong, and is usually the most eligible to receive orders, particularly in the first few turns when your special weapons are outside of their 12" range (or you don't want to disembark). With three autocannons and BiD, you have a roughly 12% chance of destroying the vehicle (without cover it jumps to 22%). Of course, then you also have to consider that stunned and immobilized results are also good against transports as they prevent movement (which gives a combined 32% chance of at least one favorable result, or 54% without cover). The percentages are even more favorable against shooty tanks, as shaken results alone can be worthwhile. Then when you consider lighter transports such as a rhino, you have a 43% chance of at least one favorable result, and 72% outside of cover. AV10 targets just get shredded. For only 30 points, those are not bad numbers at all (and no, you can't include the rest of the squad in the cost because they serve a different function, and you can't include orders because you'll always for at least one turn won't have veterans in position).

So your math and the conclusions you draw from it are simply wrong. Your recommended alternatives are the heavy bolter, which is practically useless against vehicles and only offers a bit of extra performance against T3 infantry, and the mortar, which needs to be massed even more than autocannons to get anything out of them while being utterly useless against vehicles. Or perhaps simply spamming melta-vets is the solution (i.e. playing right into the hands of the very combat capable Space Wolves and Blood Angels which are the toughest fights for IG?)

Ailaros wrote:Yeah, what a pain to have cheap, effective weapons

But dont you think melta vets are abit too good? compared to specialists like Fire Dragons.

they are cheaper , just as good BS and they can hide inside the chimera and shoot without exposing themselves
like Fire Dragons.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I like HWTs. I use autocannon teams all the time, and occasionally even throw in some mortars. I just feel the lascannon team is too expensive for what it does, especially when you compound their cost with a Commissar (two such HWTs + a naked LC run you 290 points... that's two vendettas and a doctrine). The Lord Commissar also means you are limited to only two BiD orders unless you take Creed. If you're adept at keeping your LC solo on foot and running around to keep your various elements in his tiny aura, that's great, but I found that makes him an easy kill point. Plus, when I need my blob to break, I can guilt-free and without hassle let the Jr. Commissar die; that's not so easy with the LC.

You mentioned that a 30-man squad is too hard to hide, while the 10-man is "only 4 extra ablative wounds" (by the way, depending on what S weapons are firing at you, the infantry squad could have up to 7 extra wounds). While we play on tables with enough terrain to hide a 30-man squad (especially considering how far they can stretch across the table, using those big HW bases as anchor points), did you consider the 20-man squad? It now provides a good bit more ablative wounds, you can FRFSRF to at least some effect, can issue reliable orders that don't require a Commissar, all while still staying < 150 points.

You make some good points here, but I think the ld10 is more important than more orders - I see the orders as a bonus. I don't run the LC solo unless he can be hidden from LoS. I put him in the CCS with a medic and standard. There's 10 wounds in that squad; with 2 refractor fields and the medic, in cover it can take a beating. And if you're shooting at it, you're not shooting the stuff that is killing your army. Two killpoints for the squad is definitely regrettable. And instead of letting the commissar die to avoid his ld, can I just choose to not use his ld, being different squads?

I didn't say the 30 man squad is too hard to hide, I said the HWS is easier to place in cover. Good point about the 20-man squads, tho, they are definitely a good compromise in that regard. It's nice that you can decide at deployment, so that you can choose a size that will match advantageous terrain.

I don't think I'd ever have the heart to field a CCS without a transport bunker (for protection, not to mention the range increase for orders and standard), but okay. So you're keeping him in there just to keep the CCS from running? I usually find a Ld9 with re-roll is more than sufficient for keeping them in play. As for choosing not to use the Commissar's leadership, it depends on the wording of his ability and I don't have the book handy. I'll check on that and get back to it later.

And yes, HWSs are easy to place in cover, but the 30-man squad is not much harder. You only have to get 14 models claiming cover to give it to the whole mob. That's why I like using blobs in combination with HWSs (since you need at least 20 men to field a HWS anyway). I stick the mob in cover and wrapping my long-ranged vehicles' flanks, then stick the remaining members of the squad out in the open. Then I place the HWSs behind these soldiers, essentially extending the cover as far as I need it to be.

And yes, choosing at deployment is great. My platoons are mechanized more often than not (even if they blob up, I can rent out those chimeras to the Inquisitor, SWSs, HWSs, or just empty for interference), so this gives me a lot of options. If the scenario/terrain calls for a lot of movement, I'll split the squads and run them in the vehicles. If the terrain doesn't give me a lot of cover and/or the mission necessitates another scoring unit, I frequently leave 20 in the blob and make just the one mechanized. The platoon is an incredibly flexible troop choice, and anyone running IG without them is selling themselves short (melta vet spam simply isn't that great).

I make use of a transport bunker for the CCS as well, for the protection and leadership range increase, like you say. When it blows up they use it for cover (I think of them as bringing their own cover). The Lord Commissar is not there to keep the CCS from running, or the commiblobs, it's there to keep the ld7 HWS's from running. I just find a gunline CCS is the best place to put him, for protection and because the CCS also boosts the performance of the HWS; I run a gunline, and I get good synergy off my command triad and 2+ HWS.

I've been learning the hard way about the need for plenty of regulars to screen for the HWS and tanks, just like you say. Doesn't leave much room for vets.

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing against PIS squads with heavy weapons, of any type, in blobs or not. They are definitely safer there, fire just as well at better base leadership, and when deployed along a wide front they can create a crossfire for themselves, increasing flank shot opportunities. I'm just relating how I use my HWS.

didn't see the date. please disregard.

Dead thread? Sorry

It was a gooder, though...

Might as well lock this one up then. Mods?