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 Insectum7 wrote:

I agree with johnjones that there's a pretty impressive contradiction here. The stated desire to avoid skew while simultaneously claiming the ineffectiveness of small arms is pretty funny to see.

How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

I guess a more proper term would be "inefficency".

Small arms can be effective, they are just inefficient in 99% of the cases.

 Insectum7 wrote:

If the lasgun did the last wound, then yeah it did kill it.

It killed it according to the english language, but in "game language", it's the 20 lasgun shots you sent in a barely scraping together wreck that managed to hit something important and finish it

 Insectum7 wrote:

I agree with johnjones that there's a pretty impressive contradiction here. The stated desire to avoid skew while simultaneously claiming the ineffectiveness of small arms is pretty funny to see.

How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

johnpjones1775 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
A lasgun and a bunch of lascannons.

You cannot ignore the lascannons that made it possible in the first place.

no one is ignoring anything. A lasgun should not be able to kill a repulsor period.

Again y’all claim ya want to have every unit be able to interact with every other unit, but then say that half the interactions are effectively meaningless to justify keeping a stupid mechanic, then you try to down play how meaningful those interactions can be when a real world example of such mechanics being able to change the whole flow of the game.

I feel like you're perhaps being a little ungenerous with how you interpret that lasgun attack. It seems like you're picturing the lasgun bolt bouncing off of a metal plate, and then the vehicle randomly explodes. As I mentioned above, a vehicle with one wound remaining can be a sputtering, smoking death trap. I'm sure you agree that prometheum spilling from the thruster engines into the main compartment of the tank would probably ignite if hit by a lasbolt, right? And we probably agree that computer banks and electric wires would probably be destroyed by hits from lasbolts, right?

So if we agree on that, then it sounds like you're just refusing to believe that all the anti-tank weapons that shot the repulsor previously might have left some parts of the tank damaged or exposed.

Or is this more of an abstract "on principle" thing? As in you can absolutely picture a lasbolt finishing off a damaged vehicle, but you just don't want that to happen in the game because you think it's bad for gameplay for some reason?

johnpjones1775 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
A lasgun and a bunch of lascannons.

You cannot ignore the lascannons that made it possible in the first place.

no one is ignoring anything. A lasgun should not be able to kill a repulsor period.

Again y’all claim ya want to have every unit be able to interact with every other unit, but then say that half the interactions are effectively meaningless to justify keeping a stupid mechanic, then you try to down play how meaningful those interactions can be when a real world example of such mechanics being able to change the whole flow of the game.

I don't think you'd be here complaining over something as small as an interaction that barely has an impact if your tank and lived.

Don't forget in 7th catachans were capable of bare knuckle punching most ATV's to death, which apparently isn't a problem, but their laser rifle potting a vital component on a battered vehicle is.

If the straw that breaks the camels back is the idea of a laser rifle damaging a battered tank with a multitude of:
- Exposed munitions
- Exposed sensors
- Visible turbines
- Easily reachable comms gear on the cupola
- lots of external vents/intakes (see the death star)
- and yes, a view port for the driver

Then I don't know what to say really.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

I agree with johnjones that there's a pretty impressive contradiction here. The stated desire to avoid skew while simultaneously claiming the ineffectiveness of small arms is pretty funny to see.

How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

Because if, as is argued, laagun fire is still so ineffective, then heavy skew via armor within the game is still very possible.

Regarding "lasguns should not kill tanks" especially in combination with very short distances...
Have you looked at some real life and WH40k tank models?

The Leman Russ tank has a big view-port in the front plate that is literally open on the model. And from its position it is not a perriscope but a straight up window. On the back it has a large hatch with a grid like structure that definitly does not look armored and lasguns seem to at least have enough penetration to get through a flak vest on short distance, so that thing should not be a problem. Even more so the huge fuel barrels that lot of imperial tanks drive around with.

Then there is the imperial love for open, unshielded missiles (see Hunter Killer Missiles, Manticores, Death strikes etc.) that reeaaaaly don't want to be shot at.

And for Repulsors and the like I don't really believe that the antigrav plates underneath (that one can easily target from up close) or the exhausts/boosters at the back love it if someone shoots inside or wrangles a frag grenade into them.


And even looking at modern tanks: the necessity to somehow cool the engine or access it for repairs usually still lets them have very weak armored tops behind/under the turret. Not really an issue in a fight on distance, but you can get a lucky shot in there from up close.



Mind you, I don't want to argue that killing tanks with S3 weapons should be a common thing, but tanks are not invulnerable metal boxes.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

I agree with johnjones that there's a pretty impressive contradiction here. The stated desire to avoid skew while simultaneously claiming the ineffectiveness of small arms is pretty funny to see.

How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

Because if, as is argued, laagun fire is still so ineffective, then heavy skew via armor within the game is still very possible.

Heavy skew via armour is very possible, but at least those guardsmen aren't wound counters with an OC value this way.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

I agree with johnjones that there's a pretty impressive contradiction here. The stated desire to avoid skew while simultaneously claiming the ineffectiveness of small arms is pretty funny to see.

How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

Because if, as is argued, laagun fire is still so ineffective, then heavy skew via armor within the game is still very possible.

It's possible, but it has nothing to do with lasgun spam (which is by itself another form of skew : horde).

Dudeface wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

I agree with johnjones that there's a pretty impressive contradiction here. The stated desire to avoid skew while simultaneously claiming the ineffectiveness of small arms is pretty funny to see.

How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

Because if, as is argued, laagun fire is still so ineffective, then heavy skew via armor within the game is still very possible.

Heavy skew via armour is very possible, but at least those guardsmen aren't wound counters with an OC value this way.

This. Skew *is* a problem with or without immunity to small arms fire. But it's a problem that is even worse with that immunity than without it. See: previous discussion about being able to finish off wounded vehicles once your real anti-tank is all/mostly dead.

Having to pile a bunch of strength 3 and 4 attacks into one place for relatively little effect is far from efficient, but at least it can potentially accomplish something. As opposed to just shoving your models onto objectives and standing around until your opponent tells you to pick them up.

Dudeface wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

I agree with johnjones that there's a pretty impressive contradiction here. The stated desire to avoid skew while simultaneously claiming the ineffectiveness of small arms is pretty funny to see.

How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

Because if, as is argued, laagun fire is still so ineffective, then heavy skew via armor within the game is still very possible.

Heavy skew via armour is very possible, but at least those guardsmen aren't wound counters with an OC value this way.

Right, so the anti-skew argument is not a great argument for lasguns being able to hurt every target.

Conversely, if you gave them krak grenades and made them as effective as they were in earlier editions of the game, the skew is reduced far more, the guardsmen just have to maneuvre to take the appropriate action, and the reward for successfully making the atrack is far greater.

Heavy armor skew these days has more to do with stuff like Knights, C'tan and other super-high durability stuff.

Krak grenades were never particulalry effective against those and were meant more against transports, and transports are mostly dead in 10th (which admittedly is another issue I have no idea how to fix).

 Tyran wrote:
Heavy armor skew these days has more to do with stuff like Knights, C'tan and other super-high durability stuff.

Krak grenades were never particulalry effective against those and were meant more against transports, and transports are mostly dead in 10th (which admittedly is another issue I have no idea how to fix).

Have i not been playing 10th?

Transports are more present in games than they've been for the past 3 editions....

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Heavy skew via armour is very possible, but at least those guardsmen aren't wound counters with an OC value this way.

This. Skew *is* a problem with or without immunity to small arms fire. But it's a problem that is even worse with that immunity than without it. See: previous discussion about being able to finish off wounded vehicles once your real anti-tank is all/mostly dead.

Having to pile a bunch of strength 3 and 4 attacks into one place for relatively little effect is far from efficient, but at least it can potentially accomplish something. As opposed to just shoving your models onto objectives and standing around until your opponent tells you to pick them up.

Honestly? My counter argument would be to not build a list with such glaring weaknesses, unless of course there was some macro counter-skew strategy you were going for.

Or the question, "are you happy/is it a good gameplay experience to roll 100s of dice on a hope and a prayer?"

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Heavy skew via armour is very possible, but at least those guardsmen aren't wound counters with an OC value this way.

This. Skew *is* a problem with or without immunity to small arms fire. But it's a problem that is even worse with that immunity than without it. See: previous discussion about being able to finish off wounded vehicles once your real anti-tank is all/mostly dead.

Having to pile a bunch of strength 3 and 4 attacks into one place for relatively little effect is far from efficient, but at least it can potentially accomplish something. As opposed to just shoving your models onto objectives and standing around until your opponent tells you to pick them up.

Honestly? My counter argument would be to not build a list with such glaring weaknesses, unless of course there was some macro counter-skew strategy you were going for.

Or the question, "are you happy/is it a good gameplay experience to roll 100s of dice on a hope and a prayer?"

And for armies who don’t have access to anything above S8?

 Tyran wrote:
Heavy armor skew these days has more to do with stuff like Knights, C'tan and other super-high durability stuff.

Krak grenades were never particulalry effective against those and were meant more against transports, and transports are mostly dead in 10th (which admittedly is another issue I have no idea how to fix).

Imo not a great counter argiment, as you could shift the rules a bit to make them work better. In RT and 2nd, for example, every model in a unit could throw a grenade, so every Marine in a squad could lob Krak at a nearby bloodthirster if that was the best move.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
And for armies who don’t have access to anything above S8?

What army is that?

 Tyran wrote:
Heavy armor skew these days has more to do with stuff like Knights, C'tan and other super-high durability stuff.

Krak grenades were never particulalry effective against those and were meant more against transports, and transports are mostly dead in 10th (which admittedly is another issue I have no idea how to fix).

Tbf, nothing would force us to make krak grenades ineffective against knights if we brought them back.

I do feel like it's worth noting that skew lists are kind of a problem even if they aren't "good" or a meta pick. If a valid army-building option can result in a game where one player is just fishing for sixes all game with half their army, that's still a bad time even if the non-skew player wins the game. Something like giving krak grenade and similar to every unit could help with that.

"Oh. You brought a tank skew list? My rifles won't do anything, but I can get close and take you out with grenades!"

Changes tank durability from being a source non-interactivity to a source of different interactivity instead. My rangers or fire warriors might not be able to hurt the tanks from a distance, instead having to sneak up close and become short-ranged units instead.

 Tyran wrote:
The thing is that while I agree that lasguns alone shouldn't be able to kill a fully intact Repulsor, a lucky lasgun managing to finish off the last wound of a Repulsor provides a highly "cinematic" fun moment.

If nothing else there is a considerable difference regarding vibes when that wound is removed by a very lucky lasgun.

And if we are bringing "real world examples", tanks should outright die to penetrating/wounding hits from AT weaponry and lascannons should be Damage 3D6 or some nonsense to reflect that (or alternatively halve everyone's wound count).

Real world tank warfare is absurdly lethal* to the point it makes a very poor game, which is why pretty much every game depiction of tanks has unrealistically inflated their survivality.

*Which is also why modern tanks come with countless reactive defense systems as passive armor alone is insufficient.

there’s nothing cinematic about a basic rifle doing anything beyond superficial damage to a tank. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo not a great counter argiment, as you could shift the rules a bit to make them work better. In RT and 2nd, for example, every model in a unit could throw a grenade, so every Marine in a squad could lob Krak at a nearby bloodthirster if that was the best move.

You could, but I would worry about potential lethality spikes against softer vehicles.

We don't want a tactical squad being able to reliable delete Dreadnoughts in melee just so they have a chance to inconvenience a Knight.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Heavy skew via armour is very possible, but at least those guardsmen aren't wound counters with an OC value this way.

This. Skew *is* a problem with or without immunity to small arms fire. But it's a problem that is even worse with that immunity than without it. See: previous discussion about being able to finish off wounded vehicles once your real anti-tank is all/mostly dead.

Having to pile a bunch of strength 3 and 4 attacks into one place for relatively little effect is far from efficient, but at least it can potentially accomplish something. As opposed to just shoving your models onto objectives and standing around until your opponent tells you to pick them up.

Honestly? My counter argument would be to not build a list with such glaring weaknesses, unless of course there was some macro counter-skew strategy you were going for.

Friendly reminder that no one is advocating for lists with zero anti-tank. The concern is that a "normal" moderate amount of anti-tank is insufficient in a matchup against a skew list and that said matchups can quickly turn into one-sided beatdowns with the non-skew list quickly running out of ways to hurt the tanks at all. Which in turn means that everyone feels obligated to field a boat-load of anti-tank at the cost of limited list diversity because they don't want to end up in that situation. Which is a bad thing.

Again, I'm okay with the concept of making tanks immune to small arms if the vast majority of units in the game have other ways of meaningfully hurting tanks.

Or the question, "are you happy/is it a good gameplay experience to roll 100s of dice on a hope and a prayer?"

I prefer it to not being allowed to hurt my opponent at all.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

'Small arms being able to hurt tanks isn't a problem because they don't actually inflict enough damage for it to matter'

vs

'Small arms need to be able to hurt tanks, otherwise infantry don't matter in a tank fight'

It can't be both. If shooting lasguns at tanks is ineffective and irrelevant, then it isn't doing anything to combat skew. If it's effective enough to actually be relevant to gameplay, then clearly lasguns are meaningfully contributing to anti-tank and there's some validity to OP's dislike of this mechanic.

I'm gonna assert that it's the former, and that nothing of value would be lost by just making things like Knights and Land Raiders outright immune to small arms fire. If that leaves infantry without a way to participate, then 1. that reflects a deeper issue of how limited the game is in its opportunities for interaction, and 2. if all they can currently do is roll buckets of dice to maybe chip off a single wound then they aren't contributing anyways. The experience already sucks.

johnpjones1775 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

johnpjones1775 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
A lasgun and a bunch of lascannons.

You cannot ignore the lascannons that made it possible in the first place.

no one is ignoring anything. A lasgun should not be able to kill a repulsor period.

Again y’all claim ya want to have every unit be able to interact with every other unit, but then say that half the interactions are effectively meaningless to justify keeping a stupid mechanic, then you try to down play how meaningful those interactions can be when a real world example of such mechanics being able to change the whole flow of the game.

You're coming across as a salty loser at this point tbh. I don't think you'd be here complaining over something as small as an interaction that barely has an impact if your tank and lived.

Don't forget in 7th catachans were capable of bare knuckle punching most ATV's to death, which apparently isn't a problem, but their laser rifle potting a vital component on a battered vehicle is.

If the straw that breaks the camels back is the idea of a laser rifle damaging a battered tank with a multitude of:
- Exposed munitions
- Exposed sensors
- Visible turbines
- Easily reachable comms gear on the cupola
- lots of external vents/intakes (see the death star)
- and yes, a view port for the driver

Then I don't know what to say really.

how am I coming off as a salty loser when I killed the tank, and I won the game?

You’d rather just throw ad hominem instead of actually addressing the point

I think they may have meant that you're coming across as digging your heels in because you don't want to acknowledge you may have been wrong in this discussion, but I don't want to put words in their mouth.

I *do* want to hear what you have to say about lasguns hitting damaged/exposed areas though. As I asked in my earlier post and Dudeface addresses here, lascannons and other AT weapons can probably leave parts of a repulsor damaged or tear off armor and leave vulnerable areas exposed, right? Do you feel that it's unreasonable for a bunch of lasgun shots to sometimes hit those exposed, damaged areas/ To ignite leaking fuel lines or hit exposed electronics?

I'm trying to pin down whether you think that a lasgun putting the nail in a vehicle's coffin is "unfluffy" or if you're coming at this from more of a gameplay perspective. If the former, what about the examples provided for how a lasbolt could do major damage to an already damaged vehicle? If the latter, can you explain your reasoning?

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo not a great counter argiment, as you could shift the rules a bit to make them work better. In RT and 2nd, for example, every model in a unit could throw a grenade, so every Marine in a squad could lob Krak at a nearby bloodthirster if that was the best move.

You could, but I would worry about potential lethality spikes against softer vehicles.

We don't want a tactical squad being able to reliable delete Dreadnoughts in melee just so they have a chance to inconvenience a Knight.

There's so much room to make adjustments that I don't think this is enough of a issue to fuss about in the broad conceptual stage of the argument. It's also an easy rule to make: Normal size walkers can defend themselves against infantry models in CC, while Superheavies are too cumbersome, and cannot.

 catbarf wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
How is there a contradiction? Avoiding skew is not linked to the effectiveness of a lasgun against heavy armor?

'Small arms being able to hurt tanks isn't a problem because they don't actually inflict enough damage for it to matter'

vs

'Small arms need to be able to hurt tanks, otherwise infantry don't matter in a tank fight'

It can't be both. If shooting lasguns at tanks is ineffective and irrelevant, then it isn't doing anything to combat skew. If it's effective enough to actually be relevant to gameplay, then clearly lasguns are meaningfully contributing to anti-tank and there's some validity to OP's dislike of this mechanic.

Having had this conversation a lot, I've found that the first statement is usually in response to claims that vehicle immunity is necessary to keep lasguns and bolters from taking down tanks on their own. There's a tendency in these conversations for a proponent of small-arms-immunity to suggest that land raiders are being whittled down by small arms fire because if you just shoot a billion lasguns at point blank range into a land raider, they'll totally take it out in a single volley. At which point opponents of small-arms immunity will generally point out that lasguns aren't going around solo'ing land raiders. They might be finishing them off (per the ongoing repulsor example), but that's very different.

Similarly, small-arms being able to attack en masse to inefficiently drag down one or two vehicles over the course of the game isn't nothing, and preserving that ability is very preferable to not being able to do anything with those units at all, but small arms aren't regularly killing off vehicles often enough for us to need to make tanks immune to bolters as a way of preserving vehicles' relevance or whatever.

But ultimately, some sort of better solution is probably preferable to either rolling a bunch of dice for minimal effect or not rolling dice at all because vehicles are immune and skew lists shape the meta.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Heavy armor skew these days has more to do with stuff like Knights, C'tan and other super-high durability stuff.

Krak grenades were never particulalry effective against those and were meant more against transports, and transports are mostly dead in 10th (which admittedly is another issue I have no idea how to fix).

Have i not been playing 10th?

Transports are more present in games than they've been for the past 3 editions....

right?
With my guard I always bring 2 chimeras and 2 tauroxes. I typically have at least 3 of my transports still when T3 starts.
Granted I don’t do tournaments and only some of the people I’ve played have any interest in tournaments, but transports have been plenty survivable for me in 10th

 Insectum7 wrote:
There's so much room to make adjustments that I don't think this is enough of a issue to fuss about in the broad conceptual stage of the argument. It's also an easy rule to make: Normal size walkers can defend themselves against infantry models in CC, while Superheavies are too cumbersome, and cannot.

That seem weirdly arbitary and potentially creates an issue for big walkers/MC that aren't big enough to be superheavy, like Daemon Primarchs, Norn Emissaries and C'tan shards.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Heavy skew via armour is very possible, but at least those guardsmen aren't wound counters with an OC value this way.

This. Skew *is* a problem with or without immunity to small arms fire. But it's a problem that is even worse with that immunity than without it. See: previous discussion about being able to finish off wounded vehicles once your real anti-tank is all/mostly dead.

Having to pile a bunch of strength 3 and 4 attacks into one place for relatively little effect is far from efficient, but at least it can potentially accomplish something. As opposed to just shoving your models onto objectives and standing around until your opponent tells you to pick them up.

Honestly? My counter argument would be to not build a list with such glaring weaknesses, unless of course there was some macro counter-skew strategy you were going for.

Or the question, "are you happy/is it a good gameplay experience to roll 100s of dice on a hope and a prayer?"

And for armies who don’t have access to anything above S8?

what armies don’t have anything over S8?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also keep in mind, just because dedicated AT gets killed off, doesn’t mean an army is left with only S3/4 weapons and tbh if it does you’re so bad at list building you deserve to lose regardless.

Kill my lascannon HWS, all my russes, and I still 2 twin linked autocannons available, hvy bolter, 2 multilasers, 3 autocannons, 2 GLs, plasma guns, etc.

Point being if all my dedicated AT is killed off T1 a properly built army should still have multiple options that are at least S5 with D2 in their profiles.

I had a demon skew list sprung on me with my marines an army I have very little dedicated AT, and it wasn’t any more fun to be spraying bolters and plasma pistols into 4 greater deamons/deamon princes.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
If the former, what about the examples provided for how a lasbolt could do major damage to an already damaged vehicle?

I apologize if I've missed it, but has anyone posted examples of this happening in the lore, rather than just thought experiments?

I've read a decent amount of 40K fiction at this point, and I can't think of any examples of characters going full cyclic with lasguns to knock out optics on Land Raiders or finish off a Leman Russ already damaged from a meltagun or whatever.

Those explanations strike me as an attempt to rationalize an unintuitive mechanic, rather than something that actually reflects the setting.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
There's so much room to make adjustments that I don't think this is enough of a issue to fuss about in the broad conceptual stage of the argument. It's also an easy rule to make: Normal size walkers can defend themselves against infantry models in CC, while Superheavies are too cumbersome, and cannot.

That seem weirdly arbitary and potentially creates an issue for big walkers/MC that aren't big enough to be superheavy, like Daemon Primarchs, Norn Emissaries and C'tan shards.

Makes perfect sense to me, a giant walker is not going to be able to be as attentive towards infantry slapping bombs on its feet, while a living, supernatural thing like a C'tan shard can be more aware and nimbly avoid it.

What I want is allies detatchments let's have a mechanicus/iron hands or mechanicus/knights or a guard/spacemarine

Because let's face a lot of the new detatchments and concequently points make most units non viable outside their detatchments just look at repentia/arcos so why not have some themed ones with elect units cross army.