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 Altruizine wrote:

Qanon brain.

This isn't' Twitter, and the UK company Games Workshop has nothing to do with American political parties.

Except that a metal castaferrum-pattern dread with an assault cannon was available as early as 1993, which messes up the first edition of your theory.

 Dysartes wrote:
Except that a metal castaferrum-pattern dread with an assault cannon was available as early as 1993, which messes up the first edition of your theory.

If dim memory serves? Dreads were…

Blood Angels (Multi Melta and Powerfist)
Bjorn the Fell Handed
Ultramarines (Assault Cannon and Powerfist)
Dark Angels (Lascannon and Missile Launcher)

Bjorn did come along fairly quickly - but had all sorts of iconography on the Assault Cannon.

As for 3rd? It’s probably more the other weapons were cack. Nothing special about mounting them on your now soft and squishy Dreadnought. Multi-Melta lost its blast, becoming a one die wonder and had to get to half range to bother most stuff. Assault Cannon became a bad joke. 24”, S6, AP4 - oh and could still explode on you. Powerfist remained hitty as it didn’t strike last, but the Dreadnought didn’t really have the attacks to fight its way clear of anything, so you’d just bundle it with whatever chaff unit you might have, and have a character lurking to keep their Ld up. Lascannon and Missile Launcher could mess up vehicle squadrons and indeed blow up some light infantry. So I argue it’s less LC/ML was good, just that Dreadnoughts were crap, with crap weapons, LC/ML merely being the least cack option?

I believe Bjorn came out with the Space Wolf Codex, which was the first Codex both in 2nd Ed and ever (!).

Multi-Melta was definitely first out the gate, as you got the cardboard standee in 2nd Ed Boxed Set, and it’s featured quite heavily in the books.

Hmm... I don't remember the Dread standee in the 2nd Ed box. I remember the Ork Dread, but no Marine Dread.

Maybe I’m going insane again, but I swear there was one.

Checked me books. I am going insane. No pics of the new Dreadnought anywhere in the boxed set.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Hmm... I don't remember the Dread standee in the 2nd Ed box. I remember the Ork Dread, but no Marine Dread.

Orks had access to the cardboard dreadnought in Goff colour scheme.

Breton wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:

Qanon brain.

This isn't' Twitter, and the UK company Games Workshop has nothing to do with American political parties.

You're not entirely wrong, but the Qanon freaks did spread to other countries too. It's not a high amount, but anything greater than zero is pretty bad LOL

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The quick version is 115 for a Dreadnought, plus 45 points for each Assault Cannon. Then 5 for Auto Launchers because you alwats want Auto Launchers. 210 points.

Take four of those in your 2k army. 840

Or, screw it, a Dreadnought with quad Heavy Bolters is (115+30+30+5) 180. So howabouts 3 dual Assault Cannon 'Noughts and two Quad Heavy Bolter 'Noughts for 990 points, just under your 50% Support allotment. Fill the other 1k with approriate supporting assets and make many a 2nd ed player cry with 34 sustained fire dice, ignoring some jams, at BS 6+1.

To do that, one would have to go through considerable effort. I never saw a dual assault-cannon dread, but I knew someone who saw one. (How's that for a reliable source?)

Or play with proxies, which many people do. My group in 2nd certainly did. These days you'd just print 'em. Personally I put in the work to customize a Missile Launcher for the left arm.

Look, the thing about 2nd was always that it was a collaborative game. The "tournament mentality" was in full force with 3rd, and led people to expect balance that simply wasn't there.

It's not like a hyper-competetive mindset didn't exist in 2nd. There are enough stories about arrays of Pulsa Rokkits and armies of 100+ Hormagaunts around. My buddy with the 9-12 Orks in Mega Armor with Lascannons (and other gear), all proxied, attests to that. I encountered the super Wolf Guard squad many times too.

Yes, 20 Space Wolf terminators with assault cannons was legal, but was it actually useful? You have one giant unit that has to stay in cohesion and is incapable of being transported. Same with the Dreadnought variants - throwing that many sustained fire dice means jams - and you only get to ignore one.

Well you just spent a number of posts telling us how awesome Terminators were in 2nd edition. Each of those Terminators has sustained fire dice already. Wolf Guard are the same unit, except able to spam some of the best weapons in the game. Yeah, that was a dangerous unit.

Dreadnoughts were better Ballistic Skill, able to ignore the first Jam on the sustained fire dice, and unlike Wolf Guard didn't have to be deployed as one unit if you took multiple. Spamming Dreadnoughts might leave you with some jammed guns, but if the opposing army is already crippled and can't effectively retaliate, it hardly matters.

BTW, the assault cannon was excellent, but not infallible. There was armor that krak missiles struggled against, which argued against going all-in on them.

The only thing I can think of that an Assault Cannon might struggle against is a Bunker (although I forget the AV of those) Even the most armored vehicles had weak points in tracks and sponsons. Even against heavier armor sections, striking 4-6 times with the Assault Cannon still gave you comparable or better chances than a single [or Twin] Lascannon. The Assault Cannon was excellent against infantry, monstrous creatures and vehicles. It covered all bases except possibly ultra spammy light infantry (which the other 1k of your army and those quad Heavy Bolter 'Noughts could balance for).

 Dysartes wrote:
Except that a metal castaferrum-pattern dread with an assault cannon was available as early as 1993, which messes up the first edition of your theory.

Doesn't matter? In fact, it's more evidence that they didn't and don't care what the most optimal weapon option is when they're cutting kits.

Breton wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:

Qanon brain.

This isn't' Twitter, and the UK company Games Workshop has nothing to do with American political parties.

And describing a theory as "Qanon brained" doesn't depend on a relation to American parties. But thank you for demonstrating your out-of-touchness with culture! I'm sure that isolation and ignorance will give people additional context for your posting.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Checked me books. I am going insane. No pics of the new Dreadnought anywhere in the boxed set.

I know the 2nd Ed book had a few Datafax cards. IIRC, it would have been Land Raider, Rhino, Dreadnought, Predator (?), Ork Dread and Battlewagon. I think the original Dread Datafax just had a quote where the picture should be, and the rest had artwork. Later on they had miniature pictures.

So there's a good chance we had rules for all the various Dread weapons, even if the specific minis weren't around yet. Then Dark Millennium hit and that had additional rules for Dread weaponry (like higher damage chart rolls for TL-Las, and reduced risk of jamming with the Assault Cannon, and so on). It might have had replacement Datafaxes with proper mini pics as well, but it's been a long time since I've look at my 2nd Ed stuff.

The "Blood Angel Dreadnought" certainly could have been the first mini release, even though the Woofs were the first Codex, and the Angels of Death Codex wouldn't come for a few years.

 Altruizine wrote:
And describing a theory as "Qanon brained" doesn't depend on a relation to American parties. But thank you for demonstrating your out-of-touchness with culture! I'm sure that isolation and ignorance will give people additional context for your posting.

You seem like a really nice person.

Anyhow, early GW model production for 2nd was very much a hit-or-miss affair, no question. I don't think they even had Marine models with multi-meltas, though they were in the codex lists.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Checked me books. I am going insane. No pics of the new Dreadnought anywhere in the boxed set.

I know the 2nd Ed book had a few Datafax cards. IIRC, it would have been Land Raider, Rhino, Dreadnought, Predator (?), Ork Dread and Battlewagon. I think the original Dread Datafax just had a quote where the picture should be, and the rest had artwork. Later on they had miniature pictures.

So there's a good chance we had rules for all the various Dread weapons, even if the specific minis weren't around yet. Then Dark Millennium hit and that had additional rules for Dread weaponry (like higher damage chart rolls for TL-Las, and reduced risk of jamming with the Assault Cannon, and so on). It might have had replacement Datafaxes with proper mini pics as well, but it's been a long time since I've look at my 2nd Ed stuff.

The "Blood Angel Dreadnought" certainly could have been the first mini release, even though the Woofs were the first Codex, and the Angels of Death Codex wouldn't come for a few years.

That may well be what I’m thinking of. I know the exact art that’s in my head as well.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Well you just spent a number of posts telling us how awesome Terminators were in 2nd edition. Each of those Terminators has sustained fire dice already. Wolf Guard are the same unit, except able to spam some of the best weapons in the game. Yeah, that was a dangerous unit.

Come now, I was contrasting them with what they later became, I wasn't claiming they were infallibly excellent.

Dreadnoughts were better Ballistic Skill, able to ignore the first Jam on the sustained fire dice, and unlike Wolf Guard didn't have to be deployed as one unit if you took multiple. Spamming Dreadnoughts might leave you with some jammed guns, but if the opposing army is already crippled and can't effectively retaliate, it hardly matters.

Sure, but tactics matter and so do whatever mission is in play. The greatest strength of 2nd was arguably the volume of firepower every army could employ (either from a distance or in person) that balanced out some of the spammy stuff.

The only thing I can think of that an Assault Cannon might struggle against is a Bunker (although I forget the AV of those) Even the most armored vehicles had weak points in tracks and sponsons. Even against heavier armor sections, striking 4-6 times with the Assault Cannon still gave you comparable or better chances than a single [or Twin] Lascannon. The Assault Cannon was excellent against infantry, monstrous creatures and vehicles. It covered all bases except possibly ultra spammy light infantry (which the other 1k of your army and those quad Heavy Bolter 'Noughts could balance for).

The cat has me pinned so I can't reach for my book, but IIRC a krak missile/assault cannon were 8+d10+d6 against armor (strength plus wounds plus d6). That meant it was ineffective against armor of 25 and had low penetration probability against anything over 20, so many tanks could at worst suffer track damage. The lascannon variant with its special targeting rule was a better choice against armor. Like the krak missile, flank shots were the way to go with those.

And yes, there were cheaty jerks in 2nd just like everywhere else, it just didn't seem as mainstream.

Vehicles could still be exploded a-plenty through track and sponson damage.

It also can't be "Cheaty jerks" when there's no cheating involved. We all played perfectly "lawful" lists.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Anyhow, early GW model production for 2nd was very much a hit-or-miss affair, no question. I don't think they even had Marine models with multi-meltas, though they were in the codex lists.

There were the old RT Multimelta marines


I don’t think there were any in the 2nd ed over the shoulder era. I think they next made their appearance in 3rd, but were restricted to Salamanders for a while, at least in tac squads. Not in the Dev box of hybrid metal/plastic, but eventually in blisters.

Getting a supply of MM troopers for my swap shelf took forever. When they re-cut the Dev box to be fully plastic, you only got one of them per box.

^Yah that's right. Limited to Salamanders for 3rd, after the'great culling'. But I do have at least four RT era beakies with Multimeltas!

The math will be hard to figure out, but for yuks I rolled out a twin Assault Cannon dred into a Land Raider. Oh I certainly jammed! But I also scored 9 hits on the LR (4+5 is pretty average), and the Land Raider didn't last past the 6th roll. (It lost half it's crew to fire and was immobilized before that).

 Insectum7 wrote:
Vehicles could still be exploded a-plenty through track and sponson damage.

I wouldn't call needing a six after a penetration "a-plenty," but I guess over time it adds up.

I'm am curious, did you personally use these assault cannon spam armies, or is this all theoretical?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Yah that's right. Limited to Salamanders for 3rd, after the'great culling'. But I do have at least four RT era beakies with Multimeltas!

My housemate had a broken Tarantula with only one multimelta left, so he gave it to me and I made a 2nd ed. multi-melta Marine. I think that was the first weapon swap I ever did. I still have it, too.

I probably maxxed out at 4 Assault Cannons during 2nd, between Dreads, Terminators and a converted Land Speeder. For what it's worth I almost never took Lascannons because they were never needed. Assault Cannons plus Krak Missiles did well enough.

There were definitely range gaps, particularly Dreadnought Weapons. Left Arms were Powerfist and Missile Launcher. Right Arms were TL, AC and MM.

But there were options to double up on each, plus Plasma Cannon and Twin Heavy Bolters, which only ever featured for Chaos Dreadnoughts model wise. As those had a very distinct style difference, I always felt a straight forward transplant to an Imperial Dread looked a bit rubbish, so never bothered.

That's why the FW Dread arms were such a big deal back then, as it was the first time we were getting the remaining arms.

And then there were the "Mortis" arms. Those were cool.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Powerfist remained hitty as it didn’t strike last, but the Dreadnought didn’t really have the attacks to fight its way clear of anything,

Don't forget the Dreadnaught vs Monster problem that I *THINK* was from this edition. They've all melded together a bit. I'm talking about where the Carnifex could open up a Dread like a can of tuna with a pull top because the Carnifex was a Monster, and the Walker was a Vehicle - but the Dread couldn't do anything special to the Carnifex because there wasn't a rule saving the Dread or weaking the Carnifex for what was an easy Rumble In The Jungle matchup.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If dim memory serves? Dreads were…

Blood Angels (Multi Melta and Powerfist)
Bjorn the Fell Handed
Ultramarines (Assault Cannon and Powerfist)
Dark Angels (Lascannon and Missile Launcher)

Bjorn did come along fairly quickly - but had all sorts of iconography on the Assault Cannon.

Memory is sort of serving, Doc, just with a couple of inaccuracies.

- Assuming the SOL scan of the 93 catalogue is accurate, he was the first "walking washing machine" dread to be released - and while his CCW was wolfy, the Assault Cannon arm doesn't appear to be blinged up at all.
- The 1994 Annual doesn't feature any additional SM Dreadnoughts, and it is only in the 1995/6 one that the other three turn up
- You have got the correct combinations of arms for the three, though - I think I've got all bar Bjorn in my "to re-build and paint" pile, somewhere.
- I wonder why the UM Dread got an Assault Cannon as well, instead of introducing another option - this was in the days where you could Mail Order an arm if you wanted to mix & match, after all.
- I'm not 100% sure if Bjorn was released right at the end of Rogue Trader, with the likes of Ragnar, Ulrik & Njal, or whether he was an early 2nd ed release alongside the SM Codex - can anyone recall?

 Altruizine wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Except that a metal castaferrum-pattern dread with an assault cannon was available as early as 1993, which messes up the first edition of your theory.

Doesn't matter? In fact, it's more evidence that they didn't and don't care what the most optimal weapon option is when they're cutting kits.

You're the one who posited a theory based on information that was factually incorrect - isn't a trait of conspiracy theorists that such facts get hand-waved away, like you're doing here? Maybe you shouldn't claim someone else is following such a theory when you exhibit the same thought patterns yourself...

See I swear the Blood Angels one was the first I ever saw. And I got into 2nd Ed more or less day one, to the point I nearly got in for the tail end of Rogue Trader, but they’d stopped selling it.

Then again. The day we bought the boxed set, we also bought a Leman Russ - but I’d definitely seen the Blood Angels Dread before then, and had been well impressed.

Odd I’m struggling with dates. Found out RT was OOP in Brighton. Saw the BA Dread in Edinburgh, bought 40K in Maidstone. That I am 100% on!

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

This is no different than making the Forgeworld variants better than the standard off-the-shelf stuff.

Except in that case they would be making better the stuff that gives lower profit.

There's reason why GW keeps making FW units unplayable. Lower profit rate than plastic. GW wants tournament try hards to buy plastic as it gives better profit.

Breton wrote:
Don't forget the Dreadnaught vs Monster problem that I *THINK* was from this edition. They've all melded together a bit. I'm talking about where the Carnifex could open up a Dread like a can of tuna with a pull top because the Carnifex was a Monster, and the Walker was a Vehicle - but the Dread couldn't do anything special to the Carnifex because there wasn't a rule saving the Dread or weaking the Carnifex for what was an easy Rumble In The Jungle matchup.

It was the change from 2nd ed to 3rd ed that really started the problem. in 2E a carnifex could open a dread like a tin can. they would get at least S7 hits in CC, but you could add biomorphs to them (Sharpened claws, Voltage fields) to boost them to S10. This would give them, 10 + D6 + D20 for penetrating armour, against a dreads AV of 19-21 depending on where it was hit.
Most CC weapons did 1 damage in 2E same as in third, but the big difference was that in 2E close combat was an opposed roll (it was a succession of 1v1's, you would roll a number of d6 equal to your attacks, taking the highest. each addition 6 was +1, each 1 was -1. then add this to your WS, each side did this, and then compared, the difference was the number of hits that were scored), rather than each party getting their full attacks regardless. so a dread that won a CC by a fair margin could pull all the arms and legs off a carnifex, and a Carnifex could do the same to a dreadnought.
The carnifex still had an advantage though, since it could take out the dread in 1 hit, whereas the dread would need multiple hits to kill the carnifex.
As soon as you changed the rules to allow both sides to get their full attacks (if they survived) then a dread would strip 1-2 wounds from a carnifex, and then get smashed since the Carnifex was an MC, and got 2d6 for armour penetration of vehicles rather than 1d6 in CC. It was probably the whole 2d6 thing rather than everyone getting to attack if they were alive that really did in Dreads in 3rd to 7th ed.

As someone disgruntled thoroughly by Dreadnoughts against Monsters?

A single hit had a chance of taking your Dread out of the game. And as it suffered damage, you lost weapons or mobility. Pop my legs off? Im buggered, especially if it’s a HTH build, as there’s nothing it can do.

Carnifex and Wraithlords? No such degradation. Until you dropped it, it kept fighting at full efficiency. And with no multiple wound strikes, that took time or a serious concentration of firepower. And the points costs never reflected that at all.

In 2nd Ed? Sure Carnifex were tough. But when I wounded, I could at least strip multiple wounds at a time.

The balance that was at least attempted, was that MCs were more predictably worn down through wounds (in the early editions before creep settled in) and small arms could also plink away at them in many cases.

T8 was very rare in those days, and anything T7 or below could be wounded with S4, whereas even a Rhino was immune to S4 unless you got around it to the rear.

Later editions really broke it though. When you had MCs with lots of wounds, high toughness and big invuln saves on top of it, a Lascannon being limited to only doing a single point of damage sucked.

The culprit in 2nd in regards to lethality were not the wonderful weapon profiles but rather min-maxing players intent to cram in as many heavy weapons into the list as possible. This made an enjoyable game often hard, if not even impossible. So have a talk with your opponent to tone it down next time you play it.