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Hello,

Having some spare time and not enough motivation to actually do anything related to converting my "Grey Pile o' Bits" that's supposed to be my army I spend it by theory crafting.

My friend borrowed me his Cult mechanicus codex and I noticed something very cool - Heavy Arc Rifle. Although Heavy 2, that gun can be literally treated as 36" Assault 2 due to the special rules of Breachers unit, which made me wonder - what is better? You can have up to 3 Arc Rifles in a squad of skitarii (most likely vanguard as they tend to prefer being closer to target) and have 7 "Generic Guys" to soak up some wounds for special weapons carriers, while Breachers have advantage of being long range (blowing up ANY vehicle in game due to haywire rule from 36" is no small feat) and having 3+ armour save.

The question is which is better? To further expand the question, this is a part of my army:

2x Dragoons with Radium Jezzails
3x Ironstriders with Autocannons
2x 10-Vanguard with 3 Arc rifles
1x 5-Rangers with 2 Arquebuses

vs.

1x Techpriest with Macrostubber and Eradication Beamer
2x 3-Breachers with Heavy Arc Rifles
2x 5-Rangers with 2 Arquebuses
1x 10-Vanguards (bare)

My thought process was to take some anti-tank power further down the line and get them in specialised units doing only tank duty, while compensating that with sending more of my premium meat/steel into the grinder, while
further improving MEQ hunting with Arquebuses and giving myself a mini-Onager in form of techpriest (Seriously, that dude just won't die, I though about converting centurion model to look like brain in a jar connected to massive robot - hilarity ensured ).

So I personally love arc rifle breachers! My meta is filled with vehicles and they are a really fun unit. That said, they sometimes under-perform. See they might be 6 shots for 3 guys, but they're BS3. Skitarii can buff their BS for 3 turns to insane levels, but breachers can only get one turn or so of semi average rerolls. In your case, they could reroll 1's for a turn. It's anecdotal, but I've had breachers wreck a monolith in one turn, and fail to kill a scout sentinel.

In my usual lists I run piles of haywire because I love it. I have 2x3 arc breachers and 2x5 man vanguard units with 2 arc rifles.

Another note, don't mistake the breachers as something that wants to be in CC. They really don't. There's piles of AP3 these days, so it's hard to say which is best. In small point games, I might just leave the breachers at home and run the haywire in vanguard squads.

Hope this helps!

The range on the Heavy Arc got my respect at Wargames. I didn't realize how far they could shoot. I definitely think it's worth taking a gander at.

I think I will give them a shot. They could be more than sufficient to replace all those Dragoons and Ironstriders I thought about earlier (smaller model, 3+ amrour, Arc Rifles in exchange for autocannons while being similar in point value)

If you want I posted my army list on Dakka - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/702041.page#8893715 Feel free to give some advice.

I like the vanguard loadout more, though they are super squishy if you go with your gut and have them scout forward all at once with little cover. Still, even at range the arc rifles can strip hullpoints like no tommorow, and their standard guns hurt things no matter what the toughness is, and the arc rifle always helps with that.

Also, Arquebus's are pretty crap. excellent models but just... just crap.