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 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Wow, 1 plasma gunner is only 21% more effective than 4 guardsmen with lasguns against a marine.

I think you'll find that 1 plasma gunner has 21% more chance of killing a marine than 4 lasguns. It's literally 100% more effective.

... than a single guardsmen. Not its points in guardsmen.

 Ailaros wrote:
... than a single guardsmen. Not its points in guardsmen.

Read the math again. Going from a 21% chance to kill to a 42% chance to kill is a 100% increase. And that's comparing it to its points in guardsmen.

wat
To Hit * To Wound * Save = Chance
0.5*0.167*0.33=2.75% per LG Shot
0.5*0.83=41.5% in no cover per PG Shot.
0.5*0.83*0.337=13.99% in 3+ Cover per PG Shot.

The hell did 21% come from?

 Blaggard wrote:
The hell did 21% come from?

By doing the math correctly. A lasgun has a 2/6 chance to wound T4, not 1/6, for a total of a 5.5% chance to wound. Firing four shots (the same cost as a guardsman with a plasma gun) you have a 21% chance to inflict at least one wound.

Ah yeah, gak knows why I was thinking 1/6.

 Ailaros wrote:
The problem with all hellhound models is that they present a pretty big threat, but they need to get close to their targets (often out of cover), and have flimsy armor. It's not going to be tough for your opponent to take them down before they can get a proper hit in, or at best, only until after they get a single hit in before dying.

The hellhound proper isn't SO bad, but it's still not great, especially since only a certain class of targets really fears it, and even then there's still things your opponent can do (last time I was up against a torrent weapon, I spread my guys out in such a way where only 4 could be hit at a time). As for the devil dog, you're paying a LOT of points for what basically equates to a single melta shot, and a banewolf is an absurd waste of points, what with the fact that it has a gun that has a range of 0". If you're up against really dumb opponents, it could work fine, but good luck getting many hits in with it, even assuming it survives...

Fair enough, I just wanted a reason outside of just 'it's bad; do not take' as listed elsewhere in this thread. I agree on the Banewolf and Devil dog. Why would I take these? My other units do the same roles better and/or cheaper.

The thing with a Hellhound is, you don't just run it by itself if you actually expect results. It's the same reason you don't just take 1 Rhino/Chimera/Raider/etc. You run multiple Chimeras, Tanks, Artillery and a Hellhound. The greatness of Guard is that you can usually afford to put most if not all of these in one list. Use orders to pop enemy transports, then flame the bunched up units with your HH. If it survives, you can go burn more things with it. If the enemy shoots at it, they're not shooting at my Vets, Russes, Artillery, Vendettas, blob squads... With the increasing number of foot lists at least where I play, burning large numbers of Cultists/Zombies, Blob squads, Scouts, Boyz, and Foot Eldar (or both kinds to an extent) is becoming more and more important, especially since everyone and their mother seems to have an ADL nowadays for dat 4+/2+ cover save. Maybe that's just my local meta though.

Yeah, and if that was true for me, I'd be more likely. Well, I'd still rather take artillery or russes, but still...

As for me, basically all of my opponents are CSM, GK and Necron. The hellhound is, in theory, okay against necron, but it has to survive long enough for me to break open an ark and get the hellhound into the right place for it to be terribly useful, which seems somewhat unlikely.

At my FLGS, it's still all mech. I've been finding myself sliding more and more towards things like meltaguns and lascannons as the only way of coping with my foot guard.

Well, it seems I might be the only one who enjoys missile launchers and uses them, combined with grenade lanuchers. It's not only an AV weapon, but it's a small blast as well. You can center the blast on the models that you see, no longer the closet one, so even with scatter you can limit you chances of going wild.

And for vehicles, it glances AV12 on 4, penetrates on 5+. Penetrating and exploding it would be better, but a hull point's a hull point. AV10 get penetrated on 3+.

So yeah the dice and all, but from my experience since now, it was always useful and rather reliably hit and wounded as well.

In 3rd ed, I regularly carried grenade launchers and missile launcher, because I thought they looked cool, and honestly, they didn't seem to work well then either. I still think they look cool, and Valhallans don't have a plasma gun model, but whatevs. I have my Kovnian 9 Elite Gharkas (old school stormtroopers) for that. Since everyone here uses either space marines or ork with umpteen number of force fields, those GL's and ML's don't seem to do much. I really do like the Valhallan melta-gunner model, though.

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
Well, it seems I might be the only one who enjoys missile launchers and uses them, combined with grenade lanuchers. It's not only an AV weapon, but it's a small blast as well. You can center the blast on the models that you see, no longer the closet one, so even with scatter you can limit you chances of going wild.

And for vehicles, it glances AV12 on 4, penetrates on 5+. Penetrating and exploding it would be better, but a hull point's a hull point. AV10 get penetrated on 3+.

So yeah the dice and all, but from my experience since now, it was always useful and rather reliably hit and wounded as well.

But for 5 points more you can get a lascannon. Guard units and weapons are generally quite cheap and so you can afford to specialise. There's no need to make an infantry unit a jack of all trades with a ML and GL. Yeah they can do anything you want them to, but they can't do anything well. Instead considering you will take multiple units, you can give each a specific role. With redundancy you can rack up units the enemy has to be scared of, rather than a ML, GL unit which isn't much of a threat to anything.

I have 4-5 people who would be far from agreeing with you. Against Tau, Dark Eldar, Orks and Tyranids, they proved their worth to me. Of course, all depends on the local scene. It seems there is a rather high number of mob armies, making a missile launcher more of a boon than a 1 shot lascannon.

I'll kill (almost) everything with a lascannon, got to hit it first of course, wounding is generally a done deal, so you still got half the chance of hitting what you're shooting at. It's gonna be dead for sure, but I'd rather drop a blast on a mob and run around hitting 3-4 of them than overkill a single model.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
Yeah. I had a servitor already painted up for him, too. The old Skeleton Astronaut model. I just love the idea of a skeleton astronaut.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Valhalla130 wrote:
Yeah. I had a servitor already painted up for him, too. The old Skeleton Astronaut model. I just love the idea of a skeleton astronaut.

EDIT: Here's a question... any of you Guard players with older models... do you base your heavy weapons, or leave them free like they originally were made? I have a ton of Valhallan and a few Praetorian and Mordian heavy weapons that I need to do something with and basing them is sounding like a good idea just to make everything look uniform.

I wound up putting them on 60mm round bases just for consistency of game mechanics. For the oldest of them, which were lone Guardsmen with lascannons on their shoulders, I built a spotter to go with them using stray Cadian parts.

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
but I'd rather drop a blast on a mob and run around hitting 3-4 of them than overkill a single model.

You're missing the point entirely. I did say more than a lascannon costs only 5pts more, the codex handles that part pretty well.

The point I was trying to make, is that instead of taking 2 squads with MLs, both of which are now average at two jobs, you can take two squads that are good at two jobs. For example, you could grab a lascannon in one squad, and a flamer SWS. The reason MLs suck for guard is because they have the points and unit redundancy to specialise, unlike Marines, which need to be able to do everything decently because they can't afford to specialise.

 Griddlelol wrote:

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
but I'd rather drop a blast on a mob and run around hitting 3-4 of them than overkill a single model.

You're missing the point entirely. I did say more than a lascannon costs only 5pts more, the codex handles that part pretty well.

The point I was trying to make, is that instead of taking 2 squads with MLs, both of which are now average at two jobs, you can take two squads that are good at two jobs. For example, you could grab a lascannon in one squad, and a flamer SWS. The reason MLs suck for guard is because they have the points and unit redundancy to specialise, unlike Marines, which need to be able to do everything decently because they can't afford to specialise.

Dont forget for pretty cheap you can also take 3 mortars and 3 lascannons. giving you some nice armor busters and some nice horde killing, and you can hide the mortars behind stuff!

 Griddlelol wrote:
The reason MLs suck for guard is because they have the points and unit redundancy to specialise, unlike Marines, which need to be able to do everything decently because they can't afford to specialise.

Actually the reason marine missile launchers are awesome is because they're cheap, while IG missile launchers are almost as expensive as lascannons. Long Fangs pay 10 points per missile launcher instead of 15, and 25 for a lacannon instead of 20. Add those up for a whole squad and the missile squad is substantially cheaper than the LC squad, compared to an IG squad where the missiles are so close in price to LCs that you might as well just buy the better weapon.

But with an IS with lascannon and a SWS with flamers, I do not have my minimum 2 troops choice. Neither can I have it with a mortar HWS and a lascannon HWS. I still need a minimum of 2 platoons, which means 2 PCS and 4 IS.

Besides, I have *do* have a lascannon HWS and a mortar HWS alongside my IS, so I can allow my IS to be generalist as I have the heavy guns besides them.

The greatness of Guard is that you can usually afford to put most if not all of these in one list.

I own 3 hellhounds and I'd LOVE to field them. The main problem is they are still to expensive for what they are and to few opponents really fear them. It's a power armored world and woe is to me if I show with an ap4 weapon to an ap3 party.


As for squad weapons, I go plasma/autocannon. I'd debated the heavy bolter, but the autocannon feels like the right points vs utility for me. Anyway, I feel like a squad should have a focus. I give all my heavy and command squads lascannons for AT work. I give all my normal squads plasma/autocannon for anti-troop. I don't want to setup a situation whereby I'm being pulled towards firing my squad heavy weapons at things the other 8 models can't hurt...thus wasting their fire. I just want to dedicate squads to their intended purpose. It makes guessing the enemies targeting priorities easier and I really need that.

I've found giving my squad multi shot heavy weapons removed some of my tendancy to plant troop squads and never move them. Snap shots aren't great but getting 2 of them is definately better then 1. So for me, weapons choice was as much about my own physcology as it was about what it does to the enemy.

Vhaine wrote:
I've found giving my squad multi shot heavy weapons removed some of my tendancy to plant troop squads and never move them. Snap shots aren't great but getting 2 of them is definately better then 1. So for me, weapons choice was as much about my own physcology as it was about what it does to the enemy.

This is bad math. Two low-BS shots aren't necessarily better than one because weapons with multiple shots tend to be weaker than single-shot weapons, therefore each of the multiple shots has a smaller chance of doing anything when it does hit. Relative effectiveness between weapons is entirely independent of BS, and adding snap shots doesn't change this at all.

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
But with an IS with lascannon and a SWS with flamers, I do not have my minimum 2 troops choice. Neither can I have it with a mortar HWS and a lascannon HWS. I still need a minimum of 2 platoons, which means 2 PCS and 4 IS.

Besides, I have *do* have a lascannon HWS and a mortar HWS alongside my IS, so I can allow my IS to be generalist as I have the heavy guns besides them.

Do you look at everything in a vacuum? Examples are examples. Guess what, two IS with MLs won't fill your minimum requirement either, but you didn't have a problem with that part. My point that specialisation is better than the jack of all trades approach for guard still stands.

You don't need two platoons, in fact you don't even need one... But I'll run with the idea of a foot horde. 2 PCS and 4 IS. Ok so thats 4 LCs along with 8 Flamers. Nice and specialised. Now you can shoot vehicles and hordes. Both are better at their job than the ML.

HWS are garbage. Ld 7 with no ability to take a vox (seriously, why can't they take a vox?!) and 3, 2 wound T3 models with a giant "shoot me" sign on them don't last long. No ablative wounds either. Better to keep those weapons in your ISes.

 Griddlelol wrote:
Better to keep those weapons in your ISes.

And then you run into the problem that you're paying too many points for too little firepower and have no chance against opponents who bring maximum-firepower spam lists. See http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/492433.page for the perfect example of what happens when you spend too many points on 70+ point squads with a single LC.


(Of course HWS are still pretty bad, but putting the heavy weapons in infantry squads is even worse. Take Vendettas.)

Vhaine wrote: Snap shots aren't great but getting 2 of them is definately better then 1.

Snap shooting effects all weapons equally. Multi-shot weapons don't suddenly become better or worse as your BS changes.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vhaine wrote: Snap shots aren't great but getting 2 of them is definately better then 1.

Snap shooting effects all weapons equally. Multi-shot weapons don't suddenly become better or worse as your BS changes.

However, multiple shot weapons have the edge when firing snap shots.

Anyways, how are peoples mech vet lists looking these days?

 Griddlelol wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Wow, 1 plasma gunner is only 21% more effective than 4 guardsmen with lasguns against a marine.

I think you'll find that 1 plasma gunner has 21% more chance of killing a marine than 4 lasguns. It's literally 100% more effective.

And 25% less durable. Wounds per kill the lasguns win.

Afrodactyl wrote:However, multiple shot weapons have the edge when firing snap shots.

No, they don't.

If you have a BS3 plasma gun and a BS3 melta gun, being forced to fire them BS1 will make both weapons 33% as effective as they usually are.

The number of shots doesn't matter.

 Ailaros wrote:

Afrodactyl wrote:However, multiple shot weapons have the edge when firing snap shots.

No, they don't.

If you have a BS3 plasma gun and a BS3 melta gun, being forced to fire them BS1 will make both weapons 33% as effective as they usually are.

The number of shots doesn't matter.

I meant that with more shots, you are more likely to get one to hit whilst snap firing. Admittedly, I did word that poorly for what I meant, for which I apologise.

Yes, but that doesn't matter per-se. I mean, if you fire a million lasguns at something, your chances of getting at least one hit are pretty high.

Scale is irrelevant here, though. By-gun, their chances of killing something drops equally.

For what you're saying to be true, only the number of hits would matter, which means that there would never be a reason to take a melta gun over a plasma gun, or a plasma gun over a heavy bolter. You have to look at things holistically to get a sense of the kind of damage that it does.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
However, multiple shot weapons have the edge when firing snap shots.

No they don't. Weapon effectiveness relative to other weapons is entirely independent of BS, and that includes ALL BS, including BS 1 snap shots.

Peregrine: So 1 shot at BS1 is the same as 2 Shots at BS1?

No.

What he's saying is that the carrier is irrelevent to the performance of the weapon so long as any carrier you're comparing to has the same stats.

A model shooting a meltagun at BS3 will shoot better than a model with a meltagun at BS1, but a model with a meltagun at BS1 will shoot the same as another model shooting a meltagun at BS1.

It's called a "controlled variable". When a variable is controlled, you ignore it.

If you need a specific example, look at this. Let's say that you have an AV12 vehicle that you're shooting at, and it only has one hull point left. You have an autocannon and a lascannon, and both are firing at BS3. Both the lascannon and the autocannon are likely to wreck the vehicle 1/3rd of the time.

Now, let's say you're snap firing both of them. In the case of a lascannon, that drops down to 1/6 hits multiplied by 2/3ds damage for a 1/9ths chance to wreck. Now look at the autocannon. Two shots times a 1 in 6 yields 1/3rd of a hit, times 1/3rd chance to damage, and you get 1/9th.

As you can see, weapons that do equal damage at one ballistic skill also do equal damage at any other ballistic skill, including snap firing.

Or, to bring it back to the topic, weapons that have a higher rate of fire are not better than weapons with a lower rate of fire when it comes to snap firing.