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Part of the problem is blasts are horrifically implemented at the moment.
They're functionally indistinguishable from automatic weapons, which means there's not really any middle ground between "powerful explosive" and "effective anti-tank weapon".
Incidentally, this is also why the Vanquisher is struggling so much.

Additionally, changing the Leman Russ's firepower in a vacuum is difficult because the turret weapons are already shared by a number of different units in a number of different armies.
You can't noticably buff the Battle Cannon without running into Defilers or Knights. You can't buff the Demolisher Cannon without running into Vindicators. Which then limits the scope to change other guns as well.
Grinding Advance seems to have been an attempt to increase the firepower of the Leman Russ whilst avoiding this issue. But thematically I don't really like it, it doesn't feel quite right.

I like the idea of Grinding Advance being +1 to-hit instead.
I like the idea of Leman Russes getting -1 damage. It seems this is a patch GW is implementing more to overcome the abundance of damage 2 light/medium arms fire that's being flung around.
Vanquishers used to be just like a melta weapon, but at much longer range. Of course that's when a single penetration could reliably knock out a tank. The ability to reroll hits and wounds makes sense. But you can't go too far, the Volcano Cannon is only Damage 2d6.

The fix is pretty straightforward, imho:
- make regular LRBT slightly more point-efficient than Tank Commanders
- make Tank Commanders 0-1 per detachment and give them some good buffing abilities that you actually want to have in your tank army. Whether these buffs works on them as well or not, the important thing is that even when buffed the Tank Commander is not more efficient than a regular, buffed LRBT.

Result: you get at least 1 Tank Commander for the buffs and the rest of points you dedicate to tanks go to regular LRBT because they are more efficient.

They should do the same with Tau Commanders and XV8 Crisis suits.

 Aenar wrote:
The fix is pretty straightforward, imho:
- make regular LRBT slightly more point-efficient than Tank Commanders
- make Tank Commanders 0-1 per detachment and give them some good buffing abilities that you actually want to have in your tank army. Whether these buffs works on them as well or not, the important thing is that even when buffed the Tank Commander is not more efficient than a regular, buffed LRBT.

Result: you get at least 1 Tank Commander for the buffs and the rest of points you dedicate to tanks go to regular LRBT because they are more efficient.

They should do the same with Tau Commanders and XV8 Crisis suits.

Commander's are already 0-1 per detachment and guess what has a once per battle buff only. Xv8's suck becuase GW has them cost more than gravis bodies yet having worse stats.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The reason I keep questioning what people are planning for Russes is a number of people seem to have ideas that while in isolation seem fine have these massive knock on impacts as the weapons and defensive profiles trip over each other.

I suspect the vanquisher will go to Heavy 2 s10 damage d3/d6 +X
Similar to the changes I am expecting for railguns based on the FW index.

Really not sure if the -1 damage is actually a great answer or not. It's either going to become so common everyone will have it or it's not and a lot of people are going to feel cheated.

Hoqever grinding advance does 100% need to change to make balancong their weapons possible.

Ice_can wrote:

 Aenar wrote:
The fix is pretty straightforward, imho:
- make regular LRBT slightly more point-efficient than Tank Commanders
- make Tank Commanders 0-1 per detachment and give them some good buffing abilities that you actually want to have in your tank army. Whether these buffs works on them as well or not, the important thing is that even when buffed the Tank Commander is not more efficient than a regular, buffed LRBT.

Result: you get at least 1 Tank Commander for the buffs and the rest of points you dedicate to tanks go to regular LRBT because they are more efficient.

They should do the same with Tau Commanders and XV8 Crisis suits.

Commander's are already 0-1 per detachment and guess what has a once per battle buff only. Xv8's suck becuase GW has them cost more than gravis bodies yet having worse stats.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The reason I keep questioning what people are planning for Russes is a number of people seem to have ideas that while in isolation seem fine have these massive knock on impacts as the weapons and defensive profiles trip over each other.

I suspect the vanquisher will go to Heavy 2 s10 damage d3/d6 +X
Similar to the changes I am expecting for railguns based on the FW index.

Really not sure if the -1 damage is actually a great answer or not. It's either going to become so common everyone will have it or it's not and a lot of people are going to feel cheated.

Hoqever grinding advance does 100% need to change to make balancong their weapons possible.

-1 damage is a boring and kind of band aid fix to the issue of toughness. It makes dedicated weaponry vs the target worse at its job while doing nothing to stop chip damage.

Its why my suggested fix for durability was 2+ save, +3 hit points, and reducing the ap of incoming ap -1/-2 fire by 1. It still gains a bit of durability vs anti tank (more wounds, and actually getting a 5+/6+ to its save when hit by ap -3/4 fire), but it gains a lot of durability vs medium and low strength weapons with worse ap values.

This too is a baind aid fix considering the issue is more that GW for some reason refuses to use toughness values higher than 8. If toughness for vehicles ranged from 14 on up, there is much more room for both anti tank weapons and anti heavy infantry weapons while making it harder for them to fill the same niche.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Part of the problem is blasts are horrifically implemented at the moment.
They're functionally indistinguishable from automatic weapons, which means there's not really any middle ground between "powerful explosive" and "effective anti-tank weapon".
Incidentally, this is also why the Vanquisher is struggling so much.

Additionally, changing the Leman Russ's firepower in a vacuum is difficult because the turret weapons are already shared by a number of different units in a number of different armies.
You can't noticably buff the Battle Cannon without running into Defilers or Knights. You can't buff the Demolisher Cannon without running into Vindicators. Which then limits the scope to change other guns as well.
Grinding Advance seems to have been an attempt to increase the firepower of the Leman Russ whilst avoiding this issue. But thematically I don't really like it, it doesn't feel quite right.

I like the idea of Grinding Advance being +1 to-hit instead.
I like the idea of Leman Russes getting -1 damage. It seems this is a patch GW is implementing more to overcome the abundance of damage 2 light/medium arms fire that's being flung around.
Vanquishers used to be just like a melta weapon, but at much longer range. Of course that's when a single penetration could reliably knock out a tank. The ability to reroll hits and wounds makes sense. But you can't go too far, the Volcano Cannon is only Damage 2d6.

I don't think we have to worry about changes to the Leman Russes battle cannon crossing over to other platforms. Knights have a Rapid Fire Battle Cannon, while as of the new Death Guard codex Defilers are armed with a DEFILER CANNON, instead of a battle cannon (heavy d6, S8, AP-2 D3, for the record). Demolisher Cannons are still: Heavy d6, S10, AP-3, Dd6 for Vindicators in the loyalist codex, so I'd say that isn't changing.

The Macharius Twin Battle Cannon is now: Heavy 2d6, S8, AP-2, Dd6 in the Compendium. So maybe that's what they're going to do with Battle Cannons? Only with half the shots?

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Part of the problem is blasts are horrifically implemented at the moment.
They're functionally indistinguishable from automatic weapons, which means there's not really any middle ground between "powerful explosive" and "effective anti-tank weapon".
Incidentally, this is also why the Vanquisher is struggling so much.

Additionally, changing the Leman Russ's firepower in a vacuum is difficult because the turret weapons are already shared by a number of different units in a number of different armies.
You can't noticably buff the Battle Cannon without running into Defilers or Knights. You can't buff the Demolisher Cannon without running into Vindicators. Which then limits the scope to change other guns as well.
Grinding Advance seems to have been an attempt to increase the firepower of the Leman Russ whilst avoiding this issue. But thematically I don't really like it, it doesn't feel quite right.

I like the idea of Grinding Advance being +1 to-hit instead.
I like the idea of Leman Russes getting -1 damage. It seems this is a patch GW is implementing more to overcome the abundance of damage 2 light/medium arms fire that's being flung around.
Vanquishers used to be just like a melta weapon, but at much longer range. Of course that's when a single penetration could reliably knock out a tank. The ability to reroll hits and wounds makes sense. But you can't go too far, the Volcano Cannon is only Damage 2d6.

Volcano cannon is a while 3d3 shots, 6 average, at 2d6. A vanquisher gun doing a single shot at 2d6+6 or something wouldn't be close to stepping on a shadowswords toes. After all, 1 shot for 2d6+4 would be literally just having a multimelta


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kurhanik wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Aenar wrote:
The fix is pretty straightforward, imho:
- make regular LRBT slightly more point-efficient than Tank Commanders
- make Tank Commanders 0-1 per detachment and give them some good buffing abilities that you actually want to have in your tank army. Whether these buffs works on them as well or not, the important thing is that even when buffed the Tank Commander is not more efficient than a regular, buffed LRBT.

Result: you get at least 1 Tank Commander for the buffs and the rest of points you dedicate to tanks go to regular LRBT because they are more efficient.

They should do the same with Tau Commanders and XV8 Crisis suits.

Commander's are already 0-1 per detachment and guess what has a once per battle buff only. Xv8's suck becuase GW has them cost more than gravis bodies yet having worse stats.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The reason I keep questioning what people are planning for Russes is a number of people seem to have ideas that while in isolation seem fine have these massive knock on impacts as the weapons and defensive profiles trip over each other.

I suspect the vanquisher will go to Heavy 2 s10 damage d3/d6 +X
Similar to the changes I am expecting for railguns based on the FW index.

Really not sure if the -1 damage is actually a great answer or not. It's either going to become so common everyone will have it or it's not and a lot of people are going to feel cheated.

Hoqever grinding advance does 100% need to change to make balancong their weapons possible.

-1 damage is a boring and kind of band aid fix to the issue of toughness. It makes dedicated weaponry vs the target worse at its job while doing nothing to stop chip damage.

Its why my suggested fix for durability was 2+ save, +3 hit points, and reducing the ap of incoming ap -1/-2 fire by 1. It still gains a bit of durability vs anti tank (more wounds, and actually getting a 5+/6+ to its save when hit by ap -3/4 fire), but it gains a lot of durability vs medium and low strength weapons with worse ap values.

This too is a baind aid fix considering the issue is more that GW for some reason refuses to use toughness values higher than 8. If toughness for vehicles ranged from 14 on up, there is much more room for both anti tank weapons and anti heavy infantry weapons while making it harder for them to fill the same niche.

I would say it is actually a really good solution, because it inhibits chip damage far more efficiently than it inhibits big hits.

Cutting the slew of D2 and D3 to being 1 and 2 effectively doubles the survivability of the tank against things that shouldn't be killing it, like heavy bolters; without seriously impacting more significant hits like those from a meltagun.

 Aenar wrote:

...- make regular LRBT slightly more point-efficient than Tank Commanders...

Given the discussion thus far, I think this might be less straightforward than you imply. How would you plan to do this?

I really like the -1 damage rule, because I dont want to hurt new players with an absolute onslaught of rules, they can be like "oh hey it has the deathguard/space marine dreadnought buff" I really dont like this whole new approach where models like mortarion have a literal 2 dozen rules all to it self, that being said I would like to see the battle cannon go to flat 3 damage, maybe make the demolisher cannon d6+1 damage, and then various other buffs to other turret weapons, like reduced points for punisher gattling cannon

bat702 wrote:
I really like the -1 damage rule, because I dont want to hurt new players with an absolute onslaught of rules, they can be like "oh hey it has the deathguard/space marine dreadnought buff" I really dont like this whole new approach where models like mortarion have a literal 2 dozen rules all to it self, that being said I would like to see the battle cannon go to flat 3 damage, maybe make the demolisher cannon d6+1 damage, and then various other buffs to other turret weapons, like reduced points for punisher gattling cannon

Simply put the demolisher cannons stats can't change without having massive knock on impacts to even 9th edition codex's.

It's pretty much a given IMHO that a battle cannon is going to be Heavy d6 S8 AP-2, D3 to mirror the defiler cannon.

There's enough scope in the weapon profiles to have them significantly different from one another to make them specialised and fulfilling of a more specific role which isn't the case currently.

Demolishers could be 24" D6, S12, -3Ap, D6 damage with a +2D at under half range (like a melta in ways) but fluffy due to them being a close range tank.

Battlecannons could stay at 48" D6, S8, -2Ap, D3 blast (and also with a special overspill damage rule against infantry if you really wanted it to be good, but not necessary, or this could be a rule for the conquerer cannon etc)

Vanquishers could be 72" D6, S9, -4AP, D3+3 damage against a vehicle (-4AP to represent it is a dedicated anti-tank shell, and extra damage vs vehicles for the same reason)

Like I said, loads of scope for variation if they stretched weapon profiles more and included more special rules for each cannon.

These suggestions may not even be enough or too much but you get the idea, GW needs to be more adventurous with weapon profile variations of battle cannons rather than just adjusting 1x of the stats and expecting it to be fine.

In regards to invalidating weapons from other codex's, you can just state that the lemun russ demolisher cannon is the lemun russ patter D cannon and thus a different weapon.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


The initial proposal of the thread was "how do we change the IG paradigm of using only Tank Commanders and no regular tanks?" It's not because the TC is too good; it's because the regular Leman Russ is hilariously bad.

I think you are combining the two issues in the thread to the point of conflation. People take Tank Commanders because if they were only going to take a couple of Leman Russ anyway, for a small bump in points they get a better Leman Russ, especially the BS 3+. Just making Leman Russes "better" will leave the same issue of players taking only TCs, assuming those TCs also get the LR buffs and retain a Ballistic Skill advantage.

Yes, the baseline Leman Russ could use help, but the issue of the "simply better" TC will remain. I think we could look at having TC's unlocked by taking a Sqn of normal Russes. That is a separate problem than the weakness of the Leman Russ.

I will say again that there is nothing stopping someone taking a Leman Russ Company with the current lists. It will not be very effective, but they can absolutely do so. Should we expect an all-Leman Russ list to do well competitively? I would argue that an all-tank list should expect to run into some terrible matchups!

We are deep into Proposed Rules sub-forum territory. The Leman Russ might be helped by ignoring AP-1. It might be helped by reigning-in Melta and Haywire. At my next tourney (once our latest lockdown lifts) one of the Harlies will be running 15 Skyweavers...

I don't like Guard armies where the only tanks are Tank Commanders. Thematically it doesn't make any sense.

That said, I figure GW will fix that in the next Guard Codex. Hopefully they'll fix it in the way they fixed Marine Captains, and not in the way that they fethed over the Death Guard.

 Mmmpi wrote:
I was under the impression that the problem with TCs/LRs was that they died too fast.

That's a problem with vehicles in general.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:There's enough scope in the weapon profiles to have them significantly different from one another to make them specialised and fulfilling of a more specific role which isn't the case currently.

Demolishers could be 24" D6, S12, -3Ap, D6 damage with a +2D at under half range (like a melta in ways) but fluffy due to them being a close range tank.

Battlecannons could stay at 48" D6, S8, -2Ap, D3 blast (and also with a special overspill damage rule against infantry if you really wanted it to be good, but not necessary, or this could be a rule for the conquerer cannon etc)

Vanquishers could be 72" D6, S9, -4AP, D3+3 damage against a vehicle (-4AP to represent it is a dedicated anti-tank shell, and extra damage vs vehicles for the same reason)

Like I said, loads of scope for variation if they stretched weapon profiles more and included more special rules for each cannon.

These suggestions may not even be enough or too much but you get the idea, GW needs to be more adventurous with weapon profile variations of battle cannons rather than just adjusting 1x of the stats and expecting it to be fine.

In regards to invalidating weapons from other codex's, you can just state that the lemun russ demolisher cannon is the lemun russ patter D cannon and thus a different weapon.

Battle Cannons are currently 1d6 R72" S8 Ap2 D1d3 firing twice. So if we want to clear GA, it would be 2d6 R72" S8 Ap2 D1d3; though I think moving to D3 would be a needed improvement if only to reduce the amount of rolling.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


The initial proposal of the thread was "how do we change the IG paradigm of using only Tank Commanders and no regular tanks?" It's not because the TC is too good; it's because the regular Leman Russ is hilariously bad.

I think you are combining the two issues in the thread to the point of conflation. People take Tank Commanders because if they were only going to take a couple of Leman Russ anyway, for a small bump in points they get a better Leman Russ, especially the BS 3+. Just making Leman Russes "better" will leave the same issue of players taking only TCs, assuming those TCs also get the LR buffs and retain a Ballistic Skill advantage.

Yes, the baseline Leman Russ could use help, but the issue of the "simply better" TC will remain. I think we could look at having TC's unlocked by taking a Sqn of normal Russes. That is a separate problem than the weakness of the Leman Russ.

I will say again that there is nothing stopping someone taking a Leman Russ Company with the current lists. It will not be very effective, but they can absolutely do so. Should we expect an all-Leman Russ list to do well competitively? I would argue that an all-tank list should expect to run into some terrible matchups!

We are deep into Proposed Rules sub-forum territory. The Leman Russ might be helped by ignoring AP-1. It might be helped by reigning-in Melta and Haywire. At my next tourney (once our latest lockdown lifts) one of the Harlies will be running 15 Skyweavers...

If Leman Russ tanks weren't terrible, and TC's only efficient if they had Leman Russ tanks to buff, I think that would solve the problem. And for Guard, a list with 8 tanks still has more than 100 infantry!

There are some other design spaces that are not used at the moment. To increase the toughness of the Leman Russ, there could be something like Big Block of Iron and Steel: Reroll failed Armor Saves.
This would increase the toughness against smaller calibres while doing nothing against anything with ap4.
Or there could be "Reroll successfull wound rolls against this modell.", also increasing the resilience of the tank.
Both come, of course, at the price of increasing the numbers of rolls and, thus, slowing the game.

For increased output of the gun, I just wished, they had made "Blast"-weapons overflow their damage. So no wasted rolls of 3 against 2 wound marines, as another marine would los one HP too. Surely, there would be some adjustments needed for other blast weapons, but for the battle cannon, it would slightly increase the damage potential against light and heavy infantry.

I find the armor save to be slightly under-powered in the current melta/eradicator meta which basically denies all armor saves, I think either add more wounds or give them the dreadnoughts -1 damage rule to make them more durable, and ofc giving them an invuln is very unfluffy

bat702 wrote:
I find the armor save to be slightly under-powered in the current melta/eradicator meta which basically denies all armor saves, I think either add more wounds or give them the dreadnoughts -1 damage rule to make them more durable, and ofc giving them an invuln is very unfluffy

Infantry armor isn't underpowered [if anything its pretty strong right now], but vehicle armor is highly underpowered. This is essentially because any weapon designed to kill tanks also has good AP and is good at killing infantry-the armor of even a light armored vehicle is reasonably tougher than power armor. So while a lasguns is ap-0, its antitank-equivalent, something like a missile launcher [which might be an overstatement considering that a missile launcher basically couldn't kill a Leman Russ and could only mildly annoy it before], still punches mostly right through tank armor and vehicles wind up with a 5+ or worse.

This is why I've proposed expanding the toughness scale for vehicles and monsters. Something like plasma can remain decent against elite infantry but falls off in effectiveness when facing medium to heavy vehicles. Meanwhile, things like Lascannons and melta would receive a strength buff to go up against these heavy vehicles. While these weapons would still be decent on a per shot basis against elite infantry (like they should), they would ideally be priced so they aren't as efficient.

On the other end of things when considering weak high rate of fire weapons against the heavy stuff, you could add other bonuses. Like if the toughness is twice the Strength of the incoming attack, add to the armor save or perhaps even an a reroll on the save.

I want to reiterate that while there are some units that may blue the line here, this change is not intended to apply to infantry. I not looking for space gravis or termis to go up in toughness or anything.

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kurhanik wrote:

-1 damage is a boring and kind of band aid fix to the issue of toughness. It makes dedicated weaponry vs the target worse at its job while doing nothing to stop chip damage.

Its why my suggested fix for durability was 2+ save, +3 hit points, and reducing the ap of incoming ap -1/-2 fire by 1. It still gains a bit of durability vs anti tank (more wounds, and actually getting a 5+/6+ to its save when hit by ap -3/4 fire), but it gains a lot of durability vs medium and low strength weapons with worse ap values.

This too is a baind aid fix considering the issue is more that GW for some reason refuses to use toughness values higher than 8. If toughness for vehicles ranged from 14 on up, there is much more room for both anti tank weapons and anti heavy infantry weapons while making it harder for them to fill the same niche.

I would say it is actually a really good solution, because it inhibits chip damage far more efficiently than it inhibits big hits.

Cutting the slew of D2 and D3 to being 1 and 2 effectively doubles the survivability of the tank against things that shouldn't be killing it, like heavy bolters; without seriously impacting more significant hits like those from a meltagun.

I dunno, a lot of anti tank weapons never got the nice melta buffs - lascannons still do 1d6, and hunter killer missiles are d6 and just got their strength bumped up. -1 damage means that dedicated anti tank weaponry such as these deal 1-5 damage, with 1/3 chance of dealing 1. Its why I personally would go for just making it harder for non dedicated anti tank weaponry from hurting it in general via a better save and ap reduction.

bat702 wrote:I find the armor save to be slightly under-powered in the current melta/eradicator meta which basically denies all armor saves, I think either add more wounds or give them the dreadnoughts -1 damage rule to make them more durable, and ofc giving them an invuln is very unfluffy

One note here is that balancing something against eradicators, which are one of the more out there units, seems like a terrible idea. Eradicators should be nudged down while things underperforming should be bumped up. More wounds only works to an extent as well - if the Russ gets bumped up to 18 wounds, it then hits the arbitrary wound limit for not being able to stay behind cover.

A few extra wounds + a boost to its defenses in general though combined would definitely help.

Chris521 wrote:This is why I've proposed expanding the toughness scale for vehicles and monsters. Something like plasma can remain decent against elite infantry but falls off in effectiveness when facing medium to heavy vehicles. Meanwhile, things like Lascannons and melta would receive a strength buff to go up against these heavy vehicles. While these weapons would still be decent on a per shot basis against elite infantry (like they should), they would ideally be priced so they aren't as efficient.

On the other end of things when considering weak high rate of fire weapons against the heavy stuff, you could add other bonuses. Like if the toughness is twice the Strength of the incoming attack, add to the armor save or perhaps even an a reroll on the save.

I want to reiterate that while there are some units that may blue the line here, this change is not intended to apply to infantry. I not looking for space gravis or termis to go up in toughness or anything.

I mean yes, this is true, but the soonest we'll see anything like this will be in 10th edition.

Really toughness 10 should be the bottom line low end for vehicles and it should scale up from there with like T16 Russ and Land Raiders, T18 Baneblades, and like T20 Stompas, with anti tank weaponry given boosts to match (S20 melta, s30 lascannon, etc). Make vehicles and monstrous creatures have decent sized wound pools so that heavy weapons with their high strength and damage are the primary means of taking them down efficiently. Unless GW decides to make a rapid fire sniper lascannon (which to be fair, they probably would in this case...), its not like anti tank weapons would suddenly become the premier anti infantry / character weapons.

Would a Leman Russ in plural be, Leman Russi?

Beardedragon wrote:Would a Leman Russ in plural be, Leman Russi?

kurhanik wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kurhanik wrote:

-1 damage is a boring and kind of band aid fix to the issue of toughness. It makes dedicated weaponry vs the target worse at its job while doing nothing to stop chip damage.

Its why my suggested fix for durability was 2+ save, +3 hit points, and reducing the ap of incoming ap -1/-2 fire by 1. It still gains a bit of durability vs anti tank (more wounds, and actually getting a 5+/6+ to its save when hit by ap -3/4 fire), but it gains a lot of durability vs medium and low strength weapons with worse ap values.

This too is a baind aid fix considering the issue is more that GW for some reason refuses to use toughness values higher than 8. If toughness for vehicles ranged from 14 on up, there is much more room for both anti tank weapons and anti heavy infantry weapons while making it harder for them to fill the same niche.

I would say it is actually a really good solution, because it inhibits chip damage far more efficiently than it inhibits big hits.

Cutting the slew of D2 and D3 to being 1 and 2 effectively doubles the survivability of the tank against things that shouldn't be killing it, like heavy bolters; without seriously impacting more significant hits like those from a meltagun.

I dunno, a lot of anti tank weapons never got the nice melta buffs - lascannons still do 1d6, and hunter killer missiles are d6 and just got their strength bumped up. -1 damage means that dedicated anti tank weaponry such as these deal 1-5 damage, with 1/3 chance of dealing 1. Its why I personally would go for just making it harder for non dedicated anti tank weaponry from hurting it in general via a better save and ap reduction.

A Plasgun or Heavy Bolters suffers a 50% loss of power against DR1, a Lascannon suffers an average of 25%. That's already a significant bias towards desiring a Lascannon over repeatedly shooting it with plasguns, and would be even better if Railcannons and Vanquishers could be pushed beyond the dismal 1d6 damage paradigm to a reasonable number; which would make heavy AT weapons definitively desirable.

Tanks are not really particularly vulnerable to being chipped away by Lasgun fire; it's the anti-marine D2 weapons with moderate AP and Strength that are upsetting the balance, which a DR1 would help to alleviate in lieu of expanded armor save ranges.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

kurhanik wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kurhanik wrote:

-1 damage is a boring and kind of band aid fix to the issue of toughness. It makes dedicated weaponry vs the target worse at its job while doing nothing to stop chip damage.

Its why my suggested fix for durability was 2+ save, +3 hit points, and reducing the ap of incoming ap -1/-2 fire by 1. It still gains a bit of durability vs anti tank (more wounds, and actually getting a 5+/6+ to its save when hit by ap -3/4 fire), but it gains a lot of durability vs medium and low strength weapons with worse ap values.

This too is a baind aid fix considering the issue is more that GW for some reason refuses to use toughness values higher than 8. If toughness for vehicles ranged from 14 on up, there is much more room for both anti tank weapons and anti heavy infantry weapons while making it harder for them to fill the same niche.

I would say it is actually a really good solution, because it inhibits chip damage far more efficiently than it inhibits big hits.

Cutting the slew of D2 and D3 to being 1 and 2 effectively doubles the survivability of the tank against things that shouldn't be killing it, like heavy bolters; without seriously impacting more significant hits like those from a meltagun.

I dunno, a lot of anti tank weapons never got the nice melta buffs - lascannons still do 1d6, and hunter killer missiles are d6 and just got their strength bumped up. -1 damage means that dedicated anti tank weaponry such as these deal 1-5 damage, with 1/3 chance of dealing 1. Its why I personally would go for just making it harder for non dedicated anti tank weaponry from hurting it in general via a better save and ap reduction.

A Plasgun or Heavy Bolters suffers a 50% loss of power against DR1, a Lascannon suffers an average of 25%. That's already a significant bias towards desiring a Lascannon over repeatedly shooting it with plasguns, and would be even better if Railcannons and Vanquishers could be pushed beyond the dismal 1d6 damage paradigm to a reasonable number; which would make heavy AT weapons definitively desirable.

Tanks are not really particularly vulnerable to being chipped away by Lasgun fire; it's the anti-marine D2 weapons with moderate AP and Strength that are upsetting the balance, which a DR1 would help to alleviate in lieu of expanded armor save ranges.

I see where you are coming from, I was actually thinking more autocannon and heavy bolters over plasma myself.

Looking at the math (via a mathhammer app since I would be far slower at math), my solution would only increase number of plasma hits needed from 15 on average to 18, but on the flip side, things like heavy bolters and autocannons would have a far larger deduction in damage, going from 36 hits on average to down up to 108 for both. Weapons like missile launchers would go from an average of 10/11 hits to 20/21. Meanwhile, melta (at half range for the +2) would go from 5 hits on average to 6 to kill.

Noting the above still assumes 12 hit points.

Still, that said, I see where you are coming from, and I'll admit I didn't factor in high ap, low damage weapons like plasma in my thought process, instead focusing on low ap weapons with mid to high strength. I guess my perspective is that the game would be a bit more interesting if durability were measured in slightly different fashions, instead of just every faction getting a -1 to wound unit or two. You've at least turned me around that I won't be disappointed if that is the fix GW uses.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Infantry armor isn't underpowered [if anything its pretty strong right now], but vehicle armor is highly underpowered. This is essentially because any weapon designed to kill tanks also has good AP and is good at killing infantry-the armor of even a light armored vehicle is reasonably tougher than power armor.

I think the issue with vehicle durability compared to infantry is pretty basic: Vehicles have the same armor save as the most common infantry profile in the game, and the toughness table/system means that having high toughness generally only cuts incoming damage in half compared to something with very low toughness.

So anything with the AP to kill Marines can also beat the armor on tanks, and they don't have enough wounds for the toughness system to matter.

Against a T8/3+ vehicle, a heavy bolter currently gets 3 hits, 1 wound, 2 damage, while a lascannon gets 1 hit, 0.67 wounds, 2.35 damage. The basic heavy bolter costs about half as much and is dramatically better against infantry, so not much point spamming lascannons when heavy bolters do the job.

GW saw people not using dedicated AT weapons and decided the solution was to buff melta, and now those poor tanks die to anti-infantry weapons and melta extraordinarily quickly.

 catbarf wrote:
Against a T8/3+ vehicle, a heavy bolter currently gets 3
hits, 1 wound, 2 damage, while a lascannon gets 1 hit, 0.67 wounds, 2.35 damage.

=3/6*4/6*2/6*3*2=0,67
=1/6*4/6*4/6*5*3,5=1,3

94% more damage on average with a lascannon vs a T8 3+ vehicle.

It's like you read his math and stopped reading.

Adjust some tanks toughness, too T9 for example, and reintroduce the rule that if a targets toughness is over double the weapons strength, it cannot damage it, however make that rule vehicle only. However, with an adjustment to T9, I'd argue some weapon profile will need to go up in strength also.

It gives a nice little buff to vehicles over monstrous creatures that on the whole should be able to be harmed by mass bolter fire etc due to fleshy soft bits.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's like you read his math and stopped reading.

I don't understand what you mean or in what context his math was not wrong. I read the entire thing I just chose to correct the math because I thought that might change his opinion on the matter.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Adjust some tanks toughness, too T9 for example, and reintroduce the rule that if a targets toughness is over double the weapons strength, it cannot damage it, however make that rule vehicle only. However, with an adjustment to T9, I'd argue some weapon profile will need to go up in strength also.

It makes melta into an anti-light weapon which it shouldn't be and doesn't help curb S5-7 AP-1/-2 weapons. If anything should be changed it is Sv in my opinion. You could change melta to S10 and then nerf multi-meltas back down to Heavy 1, what does T9 Leman Russes solve other than making their own gun worse in a mirror match? T9 is a breakpoint for S8 and 9, it has no impact on infantry weapons.

What about giving it -1 to wound against ranged weapons with a Strength lower than the vehicle's Toughness?

Pushing D2 weapons like S5 HBs and S7 ACs from 5+ to wound to 6+ to wound is generally the same as giving it a -1D reduction, it works equally well on 1D weapons and it won't affect the actual anti-tank guns.


As for Tank Commanders, I'd also like to see them being spammed less and require taking regular LRs, but I get that 1 TC simply becomes a priority target and dies. I don't like the idea of a bodyguard rule for tanks, it's crude and leads to unfun situations.

But what about giving the TC a chance to escape his knocked out vehicle and on say 4+ take over a nearby regular tank? That would give his player a decent chance to get more out of his precious commander, and there could also be an epic deed stratagem boosting it to 2+.

Kitane wrote:
As for Tank Commanders, I'd also like to see them being spammed less and require taking regular LRs, but I get that 1 TC simply becomes a priority target and dies. I don't like the idea of a bodyguard rule for tanks, it's crude and leads to unfun situations.

But what about giving the TC a chance to escape his knocked out vehicle and on say 4+ take over a nearby regular tank? That would give his player a decent chance to get more out of his precious commander, and there could also be an epic deed stratagem boosting it to 2+.

Moving the Tank Commander to a new tank is a unique and fluffy idea, I am not sure how fun or confusing it would be in practice, as far as I understand Tank Commanders have the little guy popping out of the hatch to make them easier to identify, I also think that perhaps it should just be a Stratagem on a 4+ similar to the Necron Stratagem Resurrection Protocols, jumping from one tank to the next to the next in the same phase seems a little extreme.

It could also be something as simple as a 6+ FNP while within 6" of a Core Astra Militarum Vehicle, I think that is small enough of a bodyguard rule that it isn't going to be unfun although it certainly is crude. Just a small incentive to focus down the regular tanks first, depending on how many are within 6". If you made Tank Commander orders (or their Aura buff if you prefer) 18" to represent them using voxes there would then be the choice of whether you want to move in a tight formation to protect the Tank Commander or a loose formation for better sightlines and board presence or perhaps even keeping the Tank Commander safe out of sight to provide buffs in a Company Commander style.

vict0988 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Against a T8/3+ vehicle, a heavy bolter currently gets 3
hits, 1 wound, 2 damage, while a lascannon gets 1 hit, 0.67 wounds, 2.35 damage.

=3/6*4/6*2/6*3*2=0,67
=1/6*4/6*4/6*5*3,5=1,3

94% more damage on average with a lascannon vs a T8 3+ vehicle.

H.B.M.C. wrote:It's like you read his math and stopped reading.

Well my math was wrong because I omitted armor saves (oops), but I don't quite understand Vict0988's either.

Heavy Bolter- 3 shots, wounds on 5+, target takes 4+ save, 2 damage- 3 * 0.33 * 0.5 * 2 = 1 damage average per hit.

Lascannon- 1 shot, wounds on 3+, target takes 6+ save, 3.5 ave damage- 1 * 0.67 * 0.83 * 3.5 = 1.95 damage average per hit.

So the relative damage (95% more for lascannon) is right but I'm not clear on the 2/3 conversion factor. Assuming BS3+, I guess?

Anyways, when the lascannon costs 50% more than a heavy bolter but does less than twice as much damage, I stand by my statement- it's not sufficiently better than the heavy bolter to be worth the difference in price, when the heavy bolter is far better against infantry. Accounting for the weapon cost, it's only 30% better against a T8/3+ vehicle- that's not what I expect from a dedicated anti-tank weapon.

Which is why I said what I said to him. Wrong math or not, the overall point (that the Lascannon isn't significantly more effective as an AT weapon) stands.

I'd also add that the Heavy Bolter isn't too powerful either. It's that tanks are too squishy.