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How do!

As you may recall from other threads, it’s been a long old while since I played 40k, due to commute and lack of time on my hands. But the situation has now changed massively.

Something I’m struggling to get a grip on, in terms of theoryhammer, is what level of anti-tank I might want to build into a standardised, “all comers” list. Infantry and big monsters, not so much because they’ve not changed so much.

I’m also hampered as I don’t have a full suite of Codecies, as I had for past editions.

So I’m really looking for all sorts of pointers. Can vehicles be largely defined as light, medium and heavy? Is it worth factoring in the degradation profiles? Are certain types of vehicles common enough to the point I should plan for them as being par for the course?

Help me, Dakka.

Well, anti tank is just as useful against big monsters, so much so that there isn't any point in differentiating the two.

As for infantry, I'd argue that infantry has changed the most, to the point that a large chunk of infantry can be folded into legit targets for antitank; alongside bikes, light skimmers and etc. AT has basically become one size fits all, except maybe 5-10 point hordes armies.

Not sure what you mean by 'factoring in' degrading profiles. Some people have strats that can ignore it, others can repair.

Common vehicles would be local meta dependent. 9th does encourage more transports than 8th, just because of the objective race. (Primaries and position for some secondaries).

Categorizing vehicles isn't really important. Same weapons kill regardless of 'light' or 'heavy.' The more multi damage shots, the better, to the point that lots of S6 or S7 d2 shots matter more than a lascannon. Which partly why categorizing the tanks doesn't matter and infantry and bikes are just as valid targets.

You definitely don't want to overdo it. For all the talk of 6 man Eradicator units you'd be hard pressed to find a lot of people taking more than 2x3 ( could change when COVID is over ).

These days I aim to bracket problem vehicles instead of taking them out unless I can get secondaries. Being able to down a knight in a turn with shooting is not necessary, I think, but you should be able to threaten a tank or severely damage two and also have something really punchy in melee.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You definitely don't want to overdo it. For all the talk of 6 man Eradicator units you'd be hard pressed to find a lot of people taking more than 2x3 ( could change when COVID is over ).

These days I aim to bracket problem vehicles instead of taking them out unless I can get secondaries. Being able to down a knight in a turn with shooting is not necessary, I think, but you should be able to threaten a tank or severely damage two and also have something really punchy in melee.

I'd wait until the standalone kits are out before declaring that spamming eradicators isn't a thing. And why would anyone take 2×3 instead of 1×6 and just combat squading them to free up the HS slots? What are the numbers you're seeing taking the heavy meltas instead of the standard guns?

That would be an ecumenical matter, and thus suited to its own thread.

In terms of the topic at hand, I seem to remember my own realisation that S6, Ap? D2 being a pretty sweet spot for weapons, increased by number of shots.

If I’m right in thinking (and it’s such a big if, if it was a but, Sir Mixalot would be terribly fond of it), it’s a profile which can reliably tickle anything. Failed saves drop Primaris, and does a decent wedge of damage to tanks.

What I think I’m really missing in my thought process is knowledge of vehicle wounds. Are we talking 12, 14, 16 etc as the ‘average’. Perhaps looking for an average is the wrong approach, and I instead want to consider extremes of wound count (Knights, Land Raiders and that?)

What factions are you planning on playing against? Most marine tanks are 11W+, a Leman Russ is 12W, knights are 24W except for Castellan/Tyrants that are 28W, Land Raiders are 16W.

D2 will suffer against loyalist dreadnoughts, any Death Guard daemon engines, and CSM fw dreads because all of those reduce all damage by 1 to a minimum of 1. If your planning on facing Necrons, then high strength (8+) is generally wasted because Quantam Shielding means nothing is wounding on less than a 4+.

That's the new stuff, everything else is still the same as 8th. (To my knowledge).

S6 can be rough unless you have tons of volume and good AP. 5s to wound on most vehicles can be quite swingy and you don't want to be spending spells/cp to wound better.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
S6 can be rough unless you have tons of volume and good AP. 5s to wound on most vehicles can be quite swingy and you don't want to be spending spells/cp to wound better.

That depends on the number of shots Damage and CP cost.

Watching intercessors wound anything on a 4+ effectively making them T4 is kinda bonkers when they throw a 10 mand squad with 31 attacks.

Same goes for getting +1 to wound on a something with say 40 shots at S5.

Ice_can wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
S6 can be rough unless you have tons of volume and good AP. 5s to wound on most vehicles can be quite swingy and you don't want to be spending spells/cp to wound better.

That depends on the number of shots Damage and CP cost.

Watching intercessors wound anything on a 4+ effectively making them T4 is kinda bonkers when they throw a 10 mand squad with 31 attacks.

Same goes for getting +1 to wound on a something with say 40 shots at S5.

40 S5 buffable shots isn't easy to achieve for most armies.

In the best case scenario where 10 of them get 40 shots (2CP) on turn 2 and +1 to wound (1CP, Salamanders) and a Captain and Lieutenant you would score 11 wounds on a T7 3+ vehicle, but then you've spent 1/4 your CP and used 355+ points to kill something that is 150 to 200. You'd have to stand still since you would be Salamanders and most people don't take 10 man marine squads. Not to mention sacrificing board control with your obsec to pull off vehicle killing. Aggressors would fare better, but you have to be a lot closer.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You definitely don't want to overdo it. For all the talk of 6 man Eradicator units you'd be hard pressed to find a lot of people taking more than 2x3 ( could change when COVID is over ).

These days I aim to bracket problem vehicles instead of taking them out unless I can get secondaries. Being able to down a knight in a turn with shooting is not necessary, I think, but you should be able to threaten a tank or severely damage two and also have something really punchy in melee.

I'd wait until the standalone kits are out before declaring that spamming eradicators isn't a thing. And why would anyone take 2×3 instead of 1×6 and just combat squading them to free up the HS slots? What are the numbers you're seeing taking the heavy meltas instead of the standard guns?

Army size? And the fact that running attack bikes is more efficient. You really don't need them and two 6 man unit of eradictors.

And it’s still an ecumenical matter deserving of its own thread.

Thanks for the input so far folks. Definitely getting a better idea of what level of AT I want to be playing with.

Id say you need enough to take about 20 wounds on a t8 with 4+iv save on any given turn. But this is cause i dealt with a lot of knight lists.

For example
Choose a weapon, lets say lascannons. 20 wounds before saves is 40, before wound roll is 60, hit roll thats 90 @bs3+. Now divide by avarage dmg (3.5)=> 28 lascannons

Then acount for taking casualties so you double that. This give you a need of about 56 lascannons. This number can be decreased with buff auras or more efficient weapons.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
S6 can be rough unless you have tons of volume and good AP. 5s to wound on most vehicles can be quite swingy and you don't want to be spending spells/cp to wound better.

That depends on the number of shots Damage and CP cost.

Watching intercessors wound anything on a 4+ effectively making them T4 is kinda bonkers when they throw a 10 mand squad with 31 attacks.

Same goes for getting +1 to wound on a something with say 40 shots at S5.

40 S5 buffable shots isn't easy to achieve for most armies.

In the best case scenario where 10 of them get 40 shots (2CP) on turn 2 and +1 to wound (1CP, Salamanders) and a Captain and Lieutenant you would score 11 wounds on a T7 3+ vehicle, but then you've spent 1/4 your CP and used 355+ points to kill something that is 150 to 200. You'd have to stand still since you would be Salamanders and most people don't take 10 man marine squads. Not to mention sacrificing board control with your obsec to pull off vehicle killing. Aggressors would fare better, but you have to be a lot closer.

Think you mis ubderstood.

40 S5 shots isn't that challenging for Guard And to some extend marines plenty of heavy bolters at 3 shots S5 D2.

Also why are you using shooting, take 10 man intercessors and charge something and for a single strategum your bolter intercessors are wounding anything on a 4+ with gene rought might or something of that nature. And depending upon doctrines etc they can be doing +1D, could be assualt intercessors for 40 attacks from 10. Add in some rerolls hit & rerolls wounds and a litany and a seeming innocuous unit is beating down vehicals like they are all packing thinderhammers.

It's not maybe the best for all your anti tank but it can come in handy as a way to increase your anti tank on the fly.

It's more that each army has it's own ways to buff results via traits strategums chapter tactics etc.

Also FYI 3 CP isn't 1/4 of your CP in 9th its 17% which could easily be worth it for some factions.

You should be able to one-round the following profile in melee or shooting:

T8 3+/4++ 24W.

It is not worth factoring in degradation, many factions have ways to avoid this or solid enough BS/WS it doesn't matter.

It is not worth classifying vehicles as light/medium/heavy. Yes, those categories do exist, but you should always be prepared to annihilate heavy. You can just harvest light/medium with the anti-heavy weapons.

You want to have both extremes in a TAC list: something to annihilate T4 3+ 2W and something to annihilate T8 3+/4++ 24W. Anything weaker than the Primaris statline will fold to the anti-Primaris weapons. Anything weaker than the Knight statline will fold to the anti-Knight weapons.

Audustum wrote:
You should be able to one-round the following profile in melee or shooting:

T8 3+/4++ 24W.

I don't think that is practical unless you're Harlequins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:
Then acount for taking casualties so you double that. This give you a need of about 56 lascannons. This number can be decreased with buff auras or more efficient weapons.

This would be fine in 8th edition. I believe this is also incredibly impractical now.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
You should be able to one-round the following profile in melee or shooting:

T8 3+/4++ 24W.

I don't think that is practical unless you're Harlequins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:
Then acount for taking casualties so you double that. This give you a need of about 56 lascannons. This number can be decreased with buff auras or more efficient weapons.

This would be fine in 8th edition. I believe this is also incredibly impractical now.

Reckon the Silent King, his Menhirs and the Void Dragon could probably get near it? Got to love high flat damage, and bonuses against Vehicles.

I’d almost certainly choke horribly in the real world though!

It's what, 1000+ points just for the lascannons, without the infantry or vehicles they're on? Impractical seems like an understatement.

Also, lascannons are kind of indifferent weapons in the current state of play. 1 shot, d6 damage? Bah.

My Mathhammer target is T8, 12 Wounds, 3+ save, for medium to heavy vehicles.

That covers things like Russes, and half of a Knight... though the Knight has an invulnerable to worry about.

I prefer looking at S8/9 to do the heavy lifting. S5/6 will leave you wounding on 5's. Even light vehicles are T6 or 7. Tau Missile Pods are S7, 2 shots, and d3 damage. That's on the weak side of AT, in my opinion, but you can take a LOT of them in 1500 points, so it's pretty effective.

For Imperial / Chaos, ML are good but LC are always just straight up better. Melta, of course, is an order of magnitude better still but can have delivery problems.

I'd say the closer you can get to multi-shot, S8,multi-damage, -3 AP the better, with better stats (like a multi-shot lascannon, somehow) being icing on the cake. Most of the really tough things have an invul anyway, like Knights, so a "big" AP modifier isn't usually that important. -2 is probably the cost-efficient modifier, to move the save to Invul territory.

(I break vehicles up into Light (T 6/7, 3+ save, 6-11 wounds) Medium (T 8, 2+ save, 12 to 16 wounds) and Heavy (T8, 3+ / 5++, 24 wounds) though "heavies" are generally Knights, and they have a strat to boost their Invul to 3++... I think, been a little bit. Only one knight at a time, but it can be tough to put reliable damage output on two knights at a time.

The reason I consider even "Russ" tanks to be medium these days, is I've regularly had a Knight Castellan (the Biggest Bois) wipe out a pair of Russes in a single round of shooting. Or dropped to low brackets where they hit on 6's sort of thing. My experience is that Castellans *really* warp a Medium vehicle list. Like... feels really unfun playing into it sort of thing. Check out the stats on a Volcano Cannon.

Oh, I forgot! The Thundercoil Harpoon! Although it only has a 12" range... It hits 89%, wounds T8 83%, -6 AP, so inv only, and then does 10 +d3 Mortal Wounds (67% to flat-out kill a Russ from full) is a 50% one-shot kill, with an additional 7% to leave it at 1 wound. (1 gun out of 4 it carries that threaten a Russ, and 2x single use missiles on top) A Russ on 1 wound is practically immobile and hits on 6's with shooting, 5's if you're an HQ version. It's really, painfully common to have a pair of Russes single-rounded by a lone Dominus class Knight.

Ice_can wrote:

Think you mis ubderstood.

40 S5 shots isn't that challenging for Guard And to some extend marines plenty of heavy bolters at 3 shots S5 D2.

Also why are you using shooting, take 10 man intercessors and charge something and for a single strategum your bolter intercessors are wounding anything on a 4+ with gene rought might or something of that nature. And depending upon doctrines etc they can be doing +1D, could be assualt intercessors for 40 attacks from 10. Add in some rerolls hit & rerolls wounds and a litany and a seeming innocuous unit is beating down vehicals like they are all packing thinderhammers.

It's not maybe the best for all your anti tank but it can come in handy as a way to increase your anti tank on the fly.

It's more that each army has it's own ways to buff results via traits strategums chapter tactics etc.

Also FYI 3 CP isn't 1/4 of your CP in 9th its 17% which could easily be worth it for some factions.

Guard won't generally have + to wound. My particular sticking point is that shooting with S5/6 isn't always going to net you a good result without heavy investment and you don't want to invest too heavily, because you need to be mid-board contesting.

Your thoughts lean a bit more into the melee end, which is way more practical since it places you near mid-board anyway. White Scars VV with LC are bonkers, but you need to take care that your D2 weapons don't land themselves in front of dreadnoughts or death guard.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
You should be able to one-round the following profile in melee or shooting:

T8 3+/4++ 24W.

I don't think that is practical unless you're Harlequins.

Sure it is!

Space Marines
Shooting: 11-12 Eradicators (with Lieutenant(or Deathwatch)+Captain) one round it, as do 12ish Plasma Inceptors, as do
Melee: Smash Captains of all stripes can usually strip 50% or so off with a fight twice strat, Smash Chaplains too (Blood Angel and Salamander variants do even better). Even a squad of 6 Bladeguard rips 24% of the wound count off.

Now, most lists aren't packing 11-12 Eradicators or 12 Plasma Inceptors, but having 6 of each isn't exactly a crazy proposition. Smash Captains coming in from deep strike for a reliable hit (think of it like a tactical missile) are also still around. Don't think of it as 'one ATTACK must one-round this target', but think of it as 'one ARMY must one-round this target'.

So with just these Space Marine examples, have your 6 Eradicators (2x3) deal 50% of its life. Have a Smash Captain/Chaplain do another 25%. Finish it off with plink damage from the lest of the list there (we've only used like 25% of your points).

In the name of speed I'm going to simplify the other analysis.

Craftworld
Doom + target it with basically anything you want. Fire Prisms, Lynx's, War Walkers, Wasps, Hemlocks and Crimson Hunters will all get your there.

Drukhari / Harlequins
Haywire, haywire, haywire. If it's not a vehicle, poison plus Blitz.

AdMech
Onager Dunecrawlers, Skorpius Disintegrators, Ironstrider Ballistarii, Kastellan Robots (Wrath of Mars for these guys) and Kataphrons. You should be running good numbers of these regardless.

Grey Knights + Thousand Sons
GK: First to the Fray + most of their melee should be fine. Shooting is where they'd really struggle to hit this target.
Thousand Sons: Magnus, MW spam, same as it ever is for them. These guys can dish 25-30 MW a turn.

Necrons
Silent King, his Menhirs, Nightbringer and the Void Dragon among other options.

Death Guard
Mortarion, a big squad of cleaver+flail marines or terminators. They're gonna have a hard time doing it with just shooting so melee is a needed element. Possessed fit in here too.

Chaos Marines
In addition to chain weapons, Lords Discordant, Butcher Cannon Leviathans can do some surprising work.

Imperial Knights
Krast Crusaders and Raven Castellan primarily.


Anyway, going through every faction is a lot of work, but I think this gets the point across.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
You should be able to one-round the following profile in melee or shooting:

T8 3+/4++ 24W.

I don't think that is practical unless you're Harlequins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:
Then acount for taking casualties so you double that. This give you a need of about 56 lascannons. This number can be decreased with buff auras or more efficient weapons.

This would be fine in 8th edition. I believe this is also incredibly impractical now.

Reckon the Silent King, his Menhirs and the Void Dragon could probably get near it? Got to love high flat damage, and bonuses against Vehicles.

I’d almost certainly choke horribly in the real world though!

Yes, they should.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Reckon the Silent King, his Menhirs and the Void Dragon could probably get near it? Got to love high flat damage, and bonuses against Vehicles.

I’d almost certainly choke horribly in the real world though!

If you take SK and ND in single list with tons of warriors you'll be sure to knock out wins. Both of those models are very hard to kill while also pushing some great damage. Toss in how hard warriors are to kill and you'll give people headaches. A C'tan on its own is a challenge for armies without damage in multiple phases.

My list is legit those two, 60 Warriors, and assorted “funsies”.

I may not know what I’m doing, but it seems my knack for really nasty lists remains!