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I have a problem to figure out which is the most versatile Leman Russ.

for versatility, its very hard to beat the standard LRBT with the battle canon. it kills anthing bar terminators, can put hurt on vehicles with strength eight ordenance and with a huge rang can do this from anywhere on the board. The new rules have hurt it by making sponsons snapshot if fired with the main gun....but it is still very good.

other good variants are the Demolisher, Executioner and i feel that these days a Punisher with 3 heavy bolters can also lay down a lot of hurt. But these variants are a lot more specialized and i dont think they will give you an as good a allround performance as the standard battle tank.

Why would you take a Punisher?


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One thing i know is that I dont like to face LRBTs

LRBT I would say. Cheap, scary, dishes out a lot of punishment, and a pain in the ass to deal with.

2nd to that I like to bring the Executioner, 3-5 plasma cannon blasts is nothing to sniff at. Pretty much anything it shoots at will disappear. However the large amounts of points it takes to bring it, means you should build a list around it, instead of slapping it on last.

Does anyone use demolishers?

They arn't exactly versitile, almost exclusivly because of the 24" range.

If it was 36" you would see them taken all the time.

Still its a S10 Ap2 Large blast

The most versatile russ loadout is a punisher with a hull lascannon and sponsons multimeltas.

Heavy vehicles are handled by the hull weapons, while light vehicles, terminators, monstrous creatures and marines are handled by the hull weapons and turret combined, while hordes are brutally thinned by 20 S5 shots per turn from the main gun.

It's also good against fliers, what with the sheer volume of fire, and you've also got a roughly 50-50 shot of one of the hull weapons hitting. Given that they all have good Ap and good strength (especially within melta range), you've got a decent chance of downing even the heavier fliers.

There's nothing that this loadout can't handle, making it the most versatile.

Following behind this is probably the eradicator with the same hull loadout (isn't as good against light vehicles or fliers, but better against infantry) followed by the exterminator with the same hull loadout (not as good against infantry).

As for the LRBT, don't bother. It can't shoot fliers at all, doesn't have the volume of fire for light vehicles or monstrous creatures, and doesn't have the Ap for heavier vehicles or terminators. In order to be versatile it has to be GOOD against a bunch of different things in my book, and the battlecannon suffers from being pretty crappy against most of the stuff it targets. Think of it as the grenade launcher of the russ world.

you kill terminators and tanks with it.

Before GW changed Lumbering Behemoth to "Heavy", I'd have said the bog standard LRBT.

Now however, since that change now effectively means that secondary weaponry is always firing snapshops and Plasma Cannon sponsons can't fire in conjunction with the main gun. The Demolisher also suffers painfully as a result of this change.


Personally, in 6th, I'm liking the Exterminator sporting a Lascannon and dual Heavy Bolters. Not cheap but neither is it overly expensive, can present a threat to anything, can move and fire to full effect, and with the advent of HP's (and the fact that the hydra, which otherwise fills a similar role, lacks interceptor and thus is oddly bad at it's secondary fluff role of engaging infantry and light ground vehicles) makes it a mean light vehicle/medium tank hunter and infantry killer with enough shots to make MC's feel the hurt as well.


With regards to other configurations, the basic LRBT is still useful if taken naked. The Vanquisher is even less relevant in 6th with the advent of Hull Points. Punishers are still too expensive for what they do especially after you start sinking points into them. Eradicators...I'd like to think they have a place, but killing non-MEQ infantry isn't something IG need a 165pt+ battle tank for. Demolishers are probably hurt the worst by the Lumbering-Heavy change which really discourages their use this edition. Executioners aren't awful but are *VERY* expensive and can now hurt themselves with Gets Hot!

gets hot a 1 then you roll again then maybe you lose a hullpoint.

LRBTs are an interesting breed. I would say they really shine when taken in combination to off-set one another's weaknesses. That said I would take both the Demolisher and Punisher as my tanks to cover most of my bases. I generally like to run a basic bolter-boat punisher, which just loads up the wounds on infantry or chews through AV10 and sometimes 11. The demolisher is nice as it can focus on either armor or TEQs which is where the demolisher and punisher overlap you could say (the TEQs that is).
Depending on what you are facing, the exterminator could be handy too. 4 TL autocannon shots aren't the greatest against larger squads of infantry but against some mech lists I find it handy. Throw on plasma cannon sponsons and it can handle the squads of larger infantry. It's a weird combination, but against eldar, orks, and guard, I've found it works pretty well.

Even with the Heavy Rule, I prefer LRBT and Demolishers. You're also saving some points since you don't want to take any sponsons. Executioners are pretty brutal too. Of course, none of these are good vs flyers, but you shouldn't be worried about that - chances are you have 2+ Vendettas in your list anyway.

Why do you take punishers?

Honestly the main battle tank never lets me down. Amazing range, doubles out T4 for instant death and feel no pain denial, has AP 3, and is decent at handling AV 12 because it's ordnance. Can't go wrong with it.

But the problem with the LRBT is that you have to shoot your other weapons as snapshoots.

 Tomten wrote:
But the problem with the LRBT is that you have to shoot your other weapons as snapshoots.

That's why you don't throw sponsons on it. Keep'em cheap. If you're looking for the shootiest tank then you asked the wrong question with your thread title.

 Tomten wrote:
But the problem with the LRBT is that you have to shoot your other weapons as snapshoots.

Good thing those other weapons are optional then.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Tomten wrote:
But the problem with the LRBT is that you have to shoot your other weapons as snapshoots.

That's why you don't throw sponsons on it. Keep'em cheap. If you're looking for the shootiest tank then you asked the wrong question with your thread title.

If you suffer a weappon destroyed then yor battlecannon is gone.

 Tomten wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Tomten wrote:
But the problem with the LRBT is that you have to shoot your other weapons as snapshoots.

That's why you don't throw sponsons on it. Keep'em cheap. If you're looking for the shootiest tank then you asked the wrong question with your thread title.

If you suffer a weappon destroyed then yor battlecannon is gone.

50% of the time - you still have the hull weapon.

Also, if you're worried about a single damage result (16% chance) on the chart on an AV14 vehicle (which can only be penned 33% of the time by the best gun in the game with comparable range) then I fear for your sanity.

its nice to have additional weapons

 Ailaros wrote:
A Punisher with hull lascannon and sponson multimeltas is...good against fliers, what with the sheer volume of fire.

...Alright, I'll humor you. Let's do some math and see what this 225 point vehicle can do. I'll assume we're hitting on front or side armor and I'll even assume you can get those pathetic 24" turrets into range with the 6" movement available to you.

Let's start with a vendetta, what is considered the premier flier in vanilla 6th edition 40k. Your main turret is only S5, so we can already discount that. After that, we've got two S8 AP1 shots and an S9 AP2. Neither of these weapons are twin-linked, so all they can do is snap fire. You'll only strip about 0.28 hull points, and you'll be lucky to roll on the damage table more than 19% of the time. That's not just bad, that's astoundingly bad.

So let's look at something a little less potent and a little more ubiquitous, the night scythe. Your hull/sponson weapons are marginally more effective here, managing to strip 0.36 hull points, but you're still not getting to the damage table even 26% of the time. Your turret finally gets to do something, but it's not rolling on the damage table either. It will average about 0.55 hull points. So your 225 point vehicle managed to strip a single hull point from an AV11 transport. Disappointing.

For reference, 225 points of orks will get you 15 lootas. Those lootas will average thirty S7 shots on that night scythe from 12" farther away. Those shots will strip an average of 2.5 hull points from a night scythe, with 2/3 of those results penetrating. That's over twice as effective (and lootas hardly count as "first-choice" in bringing down fliers).

The Leman Russ Punisher is bad. It's astoundingly bad. If you want S5 firepower, take an allied contingent of long fangs. They'll get the same number of shots on the target as your punisher turret, but they'll do so from 12" farther with the decency to be AP4 while doing so.

how can you strip 0.28 hullpoint?


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You can take a lot of Heavy weapon teams with HB

 Tomten wrote:
how can you strip 0.28 hullpoint?

It's a mathematical average, functionally it means you're likely to do squat to that vehicle.

 Tomten wrote:
its nice to have additional weapons

It's also nice to be a millionaire. What's your point?

You cant do a 0,28 hullpoint. You take off a hullpoint or you dont, there is no between.

 Tomten wrote:
You cant do a 0,28 hullpoint. You take off a hullpoint or you dont, there is no between.

Obviously. And in the language of averages that I chose to employ in that post, it means that you're going to do nothing to it more 72% of the time. Excuse me for thinking this didn't need to be explained.

Sry man


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If you shoot at fliers use vendettas with 3 twinlinked Lascannons

 Tomten wrote:
You cant do a 0,28 hullpoint. You take off a hullpoint or you dont, there is no between.

What that 0.28 Hull Points means is that, on average, you'll inflict 1 HP damage roughly every 4 turns with that vehicle loadout. It's telling you "hey, I'd need to do this 4 times to knock off a single HP". It's not saying that you can somehow knock off .28 of a hull point.

How do you pronounce Lascannon?


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Why do you always compare to MEQs?