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Its fair to say that this unit is probably one of the most broken and over powered. You have indirect fire weapon that can kill swathes of marines a turn, does enough wounds to kill terminators and has a direct fire gun for dealing with tanks. All on a very cheap and extremely durable delivery system. Even if you insist that the siege master for access to Phosphex is part of the cost of the unit, which is really debatable this unit can easily make its points back two or three times over; if not more. They also made it an elites choice rather than a heavy support choice meaning it doesn't have to compete with other tanks in a gunline army.

The problem is that there isn't a counter to it. It ignores cover. It ignores intervening terrain as a barrage weapon. It has silly bonuses no other barrage weapons get like 2 inch free movement. Since it has an obscenely good range, the only way to seriously deal with them is with outflank shenanigans, dreadclaws or planes. Not every Heresy player can afford to flippantly buy a £100 model. Even then, its extremely points heavy to use such options to kill a unit that could only be a third of its cost.

Possible solutions:

1) Triple the cost of this unit. This would brings its points cost into line with how effective it actually is. One of these units is more destructive than any super heavy battle tank or Primarch.

2) Make it a heavy support choice. Because it clearly is a heavy support choice. Why do terminator squads with heavy weapons go in heavy support but pieces of field artillery are deemed elite choice? Players who do pick this option should be penalized by being unable to take other powerful options in the HS slot.

3) Change the artillery rules so that the crew are toughness 4 and can be precision shot. This way the survivability of the unit is vastly diminished. In theory, if a tactical squad shows up behind the thud guns and bolters them then they should rightly get killed. If a sniper is using precision shot and he wants to pick off the crew that should be allowed. What we have right now is a system that makes the unit impossible to remove with most counterfire.

4) Reduce the number of shots when using phosphex shells or the anti tank shell to only 1 or 2 per gun. What is the justification for one of these light field pieces being more powerful than a Basilisk or Medusa which costs 4 times the price in points?


I mean its irritating because the club I go to love to preach about "don't take Primarchs", "don't take artificer sergents", "don't take deathstars", "don't take Primus Medicae", "don't use lords of war" and focus on big thematic and fluffy armies. But then a guy rocks up with phosphex quad launchers in his Death Guard army and sure its thematic but then my ultramarines have no counter to that. I mean for me, the Horus Heresy should be about masses of legion infantry fighting masses of legion infantry. It should not be possible to destroy a 4k army in 3 turns from the firepower of only 2k of stuff. I mean its ironic because I would rather fight a Primarch and 10 Terminators in a Spartan with Primus than a quad mortar squad. That can only kill three to four units if its lucky and I can actually shoot at that. But the phosphex is deleting a unit a turn from turn 1 and I can't shoot back. Its stuff like that which is definitely killing my enthusiasm for the game. I mean I have already heard horror stories about some of the Thousand Sons armies showing up and frankly I am beginning to get sick of setting my guys only to get tabled on turn three.

Agreed, phospex is broken.

I am also pleasantly surprised that your local group restricts artificer sergeants. My complaints about artificer sergeants was shot down in another thread by few people because they arent problem.

Also as you have many threads going on related to similar stuff, it looks like your style is army list building style is just out of meta. Basic marines are nearly useless in 30k, very nice and balanced game, basic troops are useless. So dont use them. Leaving them out is also kind of soft counter to phosphex spam.
One other option would be taking the RoW that allows termies as troops, that is also soft counter for phosphex.

Phosphex should lose poison, and only become AP 2 on a wound roll of a 6. In addition is should count at lower strength, because as it stands, they cannot fail to wound marines with the weapon due to the poison re-rolls.

Yes, it is the most powerful unit ever created for 40k.

It is complete nonsense.

Another option is to limit each team to a single shell type chosen at the start of the game.

Poison 2+ AP5 ignores cover would be good enough for phospex, imo. The volume of shots is enough for it to force its way through armor saves but without being overbearing.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I mean its irritating because the club I go to love to preach about "don't take Primarchs", "don't take artificer sergents", "don't take deathstars", "don't take Primus Medicae", "don't use lords of war" and focus on big thematic and fluffy armies.

IOW, "ignore the fluff and cool units/models and design your lists to, above all, be very weak in power level or I won't approve of how you have fun".

What's so unfluffy and unthematic about any of those?

Especially artificer sergeants. Really? That is what people complain about?

tbh Quad mortar phosphex is only AP3 and doesnt ignore cover. standing in a ruins will still give you +4 cover.

If you are restricting LOW, Primarch, AA, why dont you just ban phosphex too? or just don't play the guy bringing it.

 Togusa wrote:
Phosphex should lose poison, and only become AP 2 on a wound roll of a 6. In addition is should count at lower strength, because as it stands, they cannot fail to wound marines with the weapon due to the poison re-rolls.

Phosphex does not reroll to wound. Any ranged shooting which is poison does not reroll to wound if the str is higher than the toughness. Only in CC do you reroll to wound if you have poison AND your str is higher than the toughness.

Also, as an Iron Warriors player who uses lots of artillery and quad guns all I can say is find a way around it. People should not be bringing power gaming net lists with 9 quad guns of course, but 1 or 2 should be perfectly fine to deal with. Stay in cover, put your artificer sergeant in a good position (seriously, what gaming club restricts artificer on sergeants??), or kill them from range.

I do admit that phosphex is undercosted, but you also have the siege breaker tax. Typically if I bring quad guns they are kitted out with frag, shatter, and phosphex which comes to 90pts. The quad gun itself should be bumped by 10pts as well as the shatter and phosphex bringing the total cost of the unit to 120pts for a single gun kitted out with 3 ammos. Nerfing the unit into oblivion by tripling the points cost because you don't like it is not the solution.

 Ashiraya wrote:
What's so unfluffy and unthematic about any of those?

Especially artificer sergeants. Really? That is what people complain about?

In the case of sergeants with Artificer Armour, I don't understand why some gold plating and filigree makes the armour more resilient than everyone else's (especially when I've never seen a sergeant model look more decorated than the rest of the unit), but that was a mistake made 20 years ago; not really Forge World's fault.

As for the other, the Heresy formations have always been as much about massed formations of Land Raiders, batteries of Whirlwinds and titans striding across the battlefield as it ever was about huge mobs of infantry on foot.

The idea is that artificer armor is ancient armor that incorporates powerfields and materials that are too rare to use in standard armor, increasing durability, but not as much as Terminator armor does.

I've only played against the phosphex launchers once. My opponent had three of them, and, yes, they deleted a 20-man tactical squad in one round. But you know what was actually the most annoying part for me? Resolving the damn templates. Scatter, reposition, rinse, repeat, and try to keep count. Makes me appreciate 8th's removal of templates.

But, yeah, there does need to be something done about the quad mortars, but what that is, I don't know.

I think i may have the answer?

Resolve everything the way it is template/scatter wise but you only get extra hits if you roll a 'hit' or the scattering template covers a model not already covered by previous templates.

It could still produce over 20 hits if you rolled 4 hits on the scatter dice on a bunched up unit per gun, but scattering phosphex wouldn't be as nasty without having to change weapon profiles or points costs again.

I'd also say that artillery models cant fire overwatch but it's crew can.

Normal quad guns are fine, phosphex is broken however.

Danit wrote:
Normal quad guns are fine, phosphex is broken however.

Not at all.

For less than a hundred points you can put out 4 Str5 AP5 barrage shots. A heavy weapon squad with 5 weaker frag missiles costs 3-4 times as much. Plus they don't have barrage. If you add the anti tank gun then each gun pumps out 4 Str8 shots almost as much fire as a krak missile team and they basically get tank hunters; all for a fraction of the cost.

Added to that, due to the broken artillery rules a single gun effectively has 4 T7 wounds with 3 plus armor. This is significantly more resilient than 5 T4 3 plus saves.

Quad guns are:

* Undercosted
* Too powerful
* Too resilient

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Danit wrote:
Normal quad guns are fine, phosphex is broken however.

Not at all.

For less than a hundred points you can put out 4 Str5 AP5 barrage shots. A heavy weapon squad with 5 weaker frag missiles costs 3-4 times as much. Plus they don't have barrage. If you add the anti tank gun then each gun pumps out 4 Str8 shots almost as much fire as a krak missile team and they basically get tank hunters; all for a fraction of the cost.

Added to that, due to the broken artillery rules a single gun effectively has 4 T7 wounds with 3 plus armor. This is significantly more resilient than 5 T4 3 plus saves.

Quad guns are:

* Undercosted
* Too powerful
* Too resilient

Nice to meet another great mind.

 Verviedi wrote:
The idea is that artificer armor is ancient armor that incorporates powerfields and materials that are too rare to use in standard armor, increasing durability, but not as much as Terminator armor does.

No its not, its a high grade armour mass produced during the heresy from the well known STC for power armour, in 40k its all that.


Also, phosphex is fine, it just need limiting, its supposed to be a horrific weapon, lets keep it that way and just limit access to it, make it like it used to be, for siege breaker, moritat, destroyers and medusa only, nothing else, ever ever.

Artificer armour was originally just any armour that had been specially modified or customised - usually as a mark of honour or a reward. Then 3rd edition 40k came along and decided every little bit of fiddly detail needed rules, so it got a +1 save compared to power armour. And now we're where we are now. If they'd just made it more akin to the Imperial Guard's Trademark Item (a Ld re-roll or boost), we wouldn't have this argument.

 Formosa wrote:



Also, phosphex is fine, it just need limiting, its supposed to be a horrific weapon, lets keep it that way and just limit access to it, make it like it used to be, for siege breaker, moritat, destroyers and medusa only, nothing else, ever ever.

And legion specific things. The one or two phosphex bombs I often give my Ashen Circle have hardly been game breaking so far.