Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey,

After reading through the forum several times, I noticed that a lot of people now tend to go for hullpoints removal, rather than outright blow up the vehicle.
Now I'm not saying that it isn't useful, but sometimes I think that it's better to just have your target eliminated, rather than weakened.

I'm not asking which one is better or why it's better, because both have their uses. What 'm wondering is if you build your list, do you take your anti-tank units based on the fact that they can remove hullpoints or do you take them because they destroy the vehicle.

I don't care about glancing it to death. I just try to kill armor anyway I can.

well seeing that i span obliderators and use lascannons and meltas, i prefer blowing things up outright bye bye ghost arch, bye bye tesla bs and assault cannons and multi meltas will rip tanks apart

Hull points. I'll take a lucky "explodes" result, but I'd rather build my list for consistent HP removal and be happily surprised by destroying it early (and then shoot the remaining guns at something else) than build around "average" results on the damage table and find myself with too little volume of fire to get the job done with HP removal when my few AP 1 shots roll nothing but 1s on the damage table.

I'm a fan of "Reliable HP Stripping with good odds to blow up."

Never liked banking on the explosion; but if I bring enough AP2 guns that will reliably pen; then I'll have 1/3 chance to explode, and even if I don't, the HP's will at least be stripped.

Lascannons, baby. Big fan.

The way I prefer is the way that happens first. If I blow it up with 1 or 2 shots, I prefer that. If I ping 3 HP off rather than getting an explode, I prefer that.

I tend to go for consistent stripping with the blowing it up as a nice bonus

When you roll 1's as well as I do you need to factor that into your army building :-)

Destroying a transport is great, as the contents take hits and then have to group up, so if you have any large or small blasts, they have a field day.

Lucky hits are always good, and doesn't waste fire power, but it's nice to be able to glance things like predators out of the picture.

I go for the kill. To me, stripping hull points is a consolation prize for failing to blow up a vehicle. Plus, glancing doesn't get to take advantage of things like Ap, open-topped status of target, non-explosion damage on the pen chart, or vehicle explosions, which kill bad guys and causes them to take pinning and morale tests. And glancing does have to deal with things like squad shenanigans, techpriest repairs, and caring how many HP the target has. Anyone who has ever tried to glance a necron lord on a barge to death will know what I mean by that last one.

Also, there's a more holistic thing about it, in my particular case. Weapons that are good at stripping hull points are usually crappy against everything else. Meanwhile, if those lascannons and meltaguns I pack don't have a vehicular target, they're still going to bring the hurt to monstrous creatures and terminators and a whole host of other scary stuff. Paladins laugh at autocannons. They don't against meltaguns.

Plus, there's also the qualitative thing I've noticed. Back when I ran autocannons, nobody (other than DE players) ever complained about my support choices. Now that I run lascannon spam, everyone at my FLGS is atwitter about my lascannon spam.

I've narrowed my weapon choices to mostly meltas and flamers for special weapons. I dropped all the lascannons and autocannons from my IG and have never looked back.

For me, I pretty much just use AP 1 for anti tank.

-Matt

Since i'm generally either beating the vehicle down with a mob of folk wearing beercans instead of armour (Orks) OR wearing armor-plated bikinis (Wyches) i generally prefer it not to explode.

That said i do enjoy it when a Tankbusta unit blows a vehicle sky-high and goes up with it. That's comedy, right there

Depends on the army I am playing. For IG I like to get it done and out of the way. Blow it up in one go and move on. Generally don't take lascannons so I go for that turn 2 kill with vendettas, stormies, and SWS. The only stuff that could possible do it turn one are the russes, but that's completely dependent on deployment, line of sight, and distance (and a bit of luck).

For necrons, I go for the glance. Might as well since the basic gun (blob of 15-20) can gut a land raider in a turn if I am lucky, and two turns pretty reliably.

 Ailaros wrote:
Plus, glancing doesn't get to take advantage of things like Ap, open-topped status of target, non-explosion damage on the pen chart, or vehicle explosions, which kill bad guys and causes them to take pinning and morale tests. And glancing does have to deal with things like squad shenanigans, techpriest repairs, and caring how many HP the target has. Anyone who has ever tried to glance a necron lord on a barge to death will know what I mean by that last one.

Err, what? Why are you assuming that death by HP removal only involves glancing hits? Nobody is deliberately trying to get glancing hits instead of penetrating hits, they're just trying to maximize the number of HP removed. Sure, the math on it sometimes favors weapons that put out a large volume of both glances and penetrating hits in an even mix (for example, ACs vs. AV 12), but penetrating hits remove HP just as well and many units that are good at HP removal (Vendettas, Manticores, etc) do so through inflicting penetrating hits.

It seems like, once again, you're stuck in the 5th edition mindset of glancing to death and missing the point in 6th.

I prefer to go for wrecked or explosion, because if you dont quite get it, you still get a hull point off and you also are likely to get a weapon destroyed or something

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
Plus, glancing doesn't get to take advantage of things like Ap, open-topped status of target, non-explosion damage on the pen chart, or vehicle explosions, which kill bad guys and causes them to take pinning and morale tests. And glancing does have to deal with things like squad shenanigans, techpriest repairs, and caring how many HP the target has. Anyone who has ever tried to glance a necron lord on a barge to death will know what I mean by that last one.

Err, what? Why are you assuming that death by HP removal only involves glancing hits? Nobody is deliberately trying to get glancing hits instead of penetrating hits, they're just trying to maximize the number of HP removed. Sure, the math on it sometimes favors weapons that put out a large volume of both glances and penetrating hits in an even mix (for example, ACs vs. AV 12), but penetrating hits remove HP just as well and many units that are good at HP removal (Vendettas, Manticores, etc) do so through inflicting penetrating hits.

It seems like, once again, you're stuck in the 5th edition mindset of glancing to death and missing the point in 6th.

I guess Silver Tide would want to glance you to death, and be happy doing so.

Peregrine wrote: Why are you assuming that death by HP removal only involves glancing hits? Nobody is deliberately trying to get glancing hits instead of penetrating hits, they're just trying to maximize the number of HP removed.

It's pretty hard to find weapons that get both do a good job racking up penetrating hits AND aren't very good at wrecking vehicles. There are a few, like manticores and power fists, but most things that get penetrations, like S9 and S10, and things like melta come with Ap2 or better. If you're taking these kinds of guns, you're going for the kill, and removing hull points is just an added bonus if your dice don't roll well on the damage table.

I mean, yes, you could make the argument that because lascannons remove hull points that the reason I'm taking lascannons is to slowly peel hull points off, but that's really just not going to be true. If you're taking stuff for the purpose of beating things up by HP, then you're going to be taking things like autocannons and multilasers and grenade launchers and heavy bolters. Things that happen to be poor at penetrating armor. Not to say you would pass up a penetrating hit, but most of your killing is going to happen by glancing things to death.

Peregrine wrote: It seems like, once again, you're stuck in the 5th edition mindset of glancing to death and missing the point in 6th.

It seems like 6th dangled some shiny baubles in front of your eyes that has made you forget what was and still is the best way to handle vehicles.

It depends on the target and how quickly I can apply a counter. For example, melta sternguard in a drop pod are one of the most reliable and affordable ways of countering AV14 in the SM codex. 5 Sternguard with combi-meltas and a pod are about 185ish points, I believe, and offer about a 97% chance of destroying an AV14 target from melta range. However, with SW, due to the cheapness of ML Longfangs you are often better trying to glance low and medium targets to death, and with Necrons most of our AT comes from the form of repeated glances (scoring 1 glance for every 9 gauss shots fired at ANY target is fairly nice).

I don't understand the difference. Every weapon that's good at stripping hull points, is also good at destroying vehicles outright.

How do you 'aim' to remove hullpoints rather than blowing something up? Refuse to take any weapons over S8?

I find it depends on vehicles. Armour 10-11, go for outright kill. Armour 13-14, strip away. Armour 12 is in a weird in-between limbo zone.

Because as an Ork player, I have little other choice ;P

Kaldor wrote:I don't understand the difference. Every weapon that's good at stripping hull points, is also good at destroying vehicles outright.

How do you 'aim' to remove hullpoints rather than blowing something up? Refuse to take any weapons over S8?

Right. Every weapon that's good at destroying vehicles outright is good at stripping hull points, but not every weapon that's good at stripping hull points is good at destroying vehicles outright.

There are some weapons where you reduce your chances of wrecking, to increase your chances of stripping HP off.

For example, an autocannon is going to be much crummier than a lascannon at blowing up vehicles, because it's going to struggle to get penetrating hits. It has more shots, though, which means you can score up to two glances in a single round of shooting.

Of course, this debate IS a little bit silly, I'd agree, exactly because things that blow up vehicles also strip HP. Against an AV12 armor face, a single lascannon hit throws off exactly the same number of hull points as two autocannon hits. The lascannon is invariably going to be more expensive, but that's in part because it also comes with a 1/6 chance of blowing the vehicle up straight away, while the two autocannon hits combined only manage this same feat about 1/20th of the time (well, and lascannons are also better for a lot of other reasons too, but we'll stick to this).

 Kaldor wrote:
I don't understand the difference. Every weapon that's good at stripping hull points, is also good at destroying vehicles outright.

How do you 'aim' to remove hullpoints rather than blowing something up? Refuse to take any weapons over S8?

You don't aim to remove HP without rolling on the damage table like "explodes" results are some kind of horrible thing you're desperate to avoid. The relevant question is how you value HP loss vs. damage table results. For example, autocannons are great at efficiently removing HP on AV 10-12, but poor at getting "explodes" results because they're only AP 4. On the other hand, lascannons are expensive and less effective at HP removal, but more likely to roll "explodes". So the question is how highly do you value each weapon if your primary target is transports?

In my opinion you take the AC because it's cheap and HP removal by ACs is often faster at killing a tank than a LC. If you happen to get lucky and roll "explodes" with your first shot you just point the rest of your ACs at the next target. And since you went for volume of fire and HP removal you can expect a fairly predictable minimum performance and you're well shielded from disappointing rolls on the damage table.

If you're Ailaros you take the LC because you only care about "explodes" results, and you pay extra points for something that is often slower at killing the target and vulnerable to poor dice.

 Ailaros wrote:
It's pretty hard to find weapons that get both do a good job racking up penetrating hits AND aren't very good at wrecking vehicles. There are a few, like manticores and power fists, but most things that get penetrations, like S9 and S10, and things like melta come with Ap2 or better. If you're taking these kinds of guns, you're going for the kill, and removing hull points is just an added bonus if your dice don't roll well on the damage table.

Now look outside IG. Marine missile spam is good at stripping hull points efficiently but poor at generating "explodes" results thanks to AP 3, for example. And even AP 2 weapons only get "explodes" 1/3 of the time, which means that often the vehicle still dies to HP removal. Or, for example, you roll two penetrating hits and a glance with your lascannons and the only reason you even bother rolling on the damage table is to see if you get to kill some extra models in the explosion. This last scenario is especially common in my experience in 6th, a large percentage of damage table rolls from weapons of all AP values are on vehicles that have already been wrecked, making paying extra points for better AP redundant.

I mean, yes, you could make the argument that because lascannons remove hull points that the reason I'm taking lascannons is to slowly peel hull points off, but that's really just not going to be true. If you're taking stuff for the purpose of beating things up by HP, then you're going to be taking things like autocannons and multilasers and grenade launchers and heavy bolters. Things that happen to be poor at penetrating armor. Not to say you would pass up a penetrating hit, but most of your killing is going to happen by glancing things to death.

Except even in the worst-case scenario of AC vs. AV 12 half your hull points are being lost to penetrating hits. It isn't "glancing to death" anymore.

It seems like 6th dangled some shiny baubles in front of your eyes that has made you forget what was and still is the best way to handle vehicles.

You mean 6th edition completely changed the mechanics of vehicle killing. This is not 5th edition glancing to death anymore, "shiny baubles" is a laughably wrong description of the situation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
Right. Every weapon that's good at destroying vehicles outright is good at stripping hull points, but not every weapon that's good at stripping hull points is good at destroying vehicles outright.

Again with this misleading definition of "destroying outright". A vehicle is destroyed outright if it dies to a given amount of shooting (instead of suffering damage and having to be finished off later). Dead is dead, it doesn't matter whether you kill it outright by rolling a 6 on the damage table, or by getting three penetrating hits and not even bothering to roll on the damage table because the only things within 6" are other vehicles.

The lascannon is invariably going to be more expensive

And this is exactly the problem. An equal point value of ACs has a high chance of killing AV 12 faster than the LCs, so if you want AV 12 dead you bring ACs.

Would this not depend on the army? If you can take gause warriors your chanches of removing hullpoints is easier then with a good army with acces to meltaweapons en mass like chaos or space wolves.

Removing hullpoints would be S6 and 7 spam (eldar and IG codex, A plasma heavy Chaos with autocannon backup (or any space marine that can take weapons withouth a full 10 man squad) hawyvire (eldar, necrons and dark eldar) S4 attacks (tyranids AG glands) gause weapons (necrons)

Hull points glancing with anything rolled on the pen table a nice little extra. For IG as described at: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/490608.page#5008421

 Peregrine wrote:
Or, for example, you roll two penetrating hits and a glance with your lascannons and the only reason you even bother rolling on the damage table is to see if you get to kill some extra models in the explosion.

I think this is missing one of the main benefits of explodes results, which is removing LoS blocking wrecks. Wrecks are useful for giving the enemy's other vehicles cover saves, whereas craters can't.

Unless they drive into said craters.

 Blaggard wrote:
Unless they drive into said craters.

What kind of craters can cover 25% of a model? Are you using some kind of super-craters?

I cant remember the last tank I destroyed by rolling on the damage chart lol and I have destroyed many tanks, just yesterday I played a guard mech list.

though that's probably because i'm a cron player and glancing is just what we do.

 Trickstick wrote:

 Blaggard wrote:
Unless they drive into said craters.

What kind of craters can cover 25% of a model? Are you using some kind of super-craters?

Aren't they classed as area terrain?

 Blaggard wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:

 Blaggard wrote:
Unless they drive into said craters.

What kind of craters can cover 25% of a model? Are you using some kind of super-craters?

Aren't they classed as area terrain?

Page 75, top bullet point states that vehicles are not obscured for being in area terrain.

Yay, learnings!