Super Heavies Scalped by Sixth?

Having played my first apocalypse game of sixth edition on Sunday (with no str D weapons in any army, so no chance to test the idea of making D less the auto win gun) I have discovered that super heavies are not all they once were...

Sure, they're still durable as hell. You can still chain reaction one to death if you're lucky, but the odds aren't good. Being able to whittle them down a little by gradually glancing away the structure points makes them easier to deal with (slightly) though you can of course use techs and meks to repair some of those hull points. No what I found was that they were far easier to effectively take out of the game.

Assuming you aren't snap-firing...

For the uninitiated, super heavies used to have their own damage table. low results would stun a gun or the driver. mid table would knock off a gun or give a half-immobilised result. And the high results would take off structure points. The big guns, your primary weapons, had a 4+ save against stunning and damaging. The enemy would generally shoot at the big thing and when you failed a 4+ on the big gun they may think "ok that will do that's a lot less damage it can do to me next turn, I can finally shoot something else"

Move forward to sixth, and they use the same damage table as basic 40k. The only difference being immobilised is drive damaged (so half immobilised, takes two to stop it) and that explodes is remove a structure point and roll again, without modifiers. For killing the things it seems to be on a par with before. A succession of 6s can instant kill, but it's unlikely. But for shutting the super heavy out of the game, all it takes is one penetrating hit. You roll and get a crew shaken or stunned result, and your job is effectively done! Why? Because it effects ALL the guns at once. You still get a 4+ save for primary weapons, but taking the baneblade as an example, you've just lost your demolisher cannon, your two lascannons are hitting on 6s, the 3 twin linked heavy bolters likewise (though weight of shots and twin linked means they aren't as effected as the lascannons) and you're one bad dice roll from losing your mega cannon. Statistically two hits and all you have is a bunch of heavy bolters for 450 points. The enemy doesn't have to chuck masses of firepower at them anymore... as soon as it's shaken they can move on to other targets. Part of the benefit of super heavies would be their nature as bullet magnets, allowing the rest of your forces to advance unmolested. Will this still be the case? It also puts more of an onus on the first turn - if you go second you may never get chance to fire your super heavies... at least going first you have chance to fire them at least once!

I have no solution to this issue, and I am not looking for one. I can just see the nature of apocalypse mutating to make super heavies far less effective than they once were. Are Games Workshop going to rely on people rarely playing apocalypse and thus not noticing? It seems unprecedented for them to make a massive kit like the baneblade less effective than it used to be, unless they are relying on people just simply wanting one without thinking about when or if they will ever field it...

Do note, that this does not affect my previous article on Str D weapons. That was about balancing the warhound options out to make viable choices of all weapons and I stand by it. If anything this issue makes the new rules for Str D better as they'd still be able to fire while snap firing - a titan armed with plenty of old str D and nothing else may find itself easy to shut out of a game.

The Problem with Strength D

The gun that can do anything...

With an apocalypse game approaching I was discussing the subject with the local GW manager, and he expressed a bit of a dislike for apoc (I consider him a friend so won't be grassing him up :oP) as he says it's too easy to break the game just by taking lot's of Strength D weapons. And he does have a point. I have made the claim before that the amount of super heavies you have isn't nearly as telling as the amount of Str D you have. I once played a game where my five super heavies took on my opponents two... however when it came to Str D he was putting out 5 shots per turn to my 1, and with him holding his supers in reserve and walking them on turn 1 (careful planning strategum) he killed my Str D before it could fire. From then on he was ripping through me with Str D while my Str 8 or 9 shots just bounced off his tanks, or barely scratched them. The combination of Auto Penetrate and the +1 on vehicle damage meant that he was taking structure points off with half his shots, and tearing through my tanks. Now this is what they are for fair enough, but once he'd finished those off, he found they were equally good at annihalating infantry. And THAT I think is the problem with Str D - there is no downside. They're good at everything, the jack of all trade weapon. Why would you take any other gun when this one does everything anyway?

An unfamiliar titan... one with a variety of guns!

This has lead to some rather boring titan loadouts where someone brings out a forgeworld reaver that has two laser destroyer arms and a laser destroyer shoulder weapon, putting out a formidable 8 Str D shots per turn. Now from what I remember of the fluff the titans were usually armed with a variety of weapons to deal with a variety of foes, cos let's face it they aren't the easiest things to swap a gun on. The turbo lasers were for killing enemy titans, but they'd have maybe an apoc launcher for dealing with enemy infantry and a plasma blastgun for tagets that are classed as "in-between." But how often are such varietous loadouts seen on titans? Why bother, when Str D does everything better than the rest anyway?


In discussion, we thought that it might be best to take away the blast rule to make the weapon less effective against infantry. My friend said that in his opinion, the only reason it was blast in the first place was so that it would be better at hitting larger vehicles than small ones - a large blast can feasibly miss an ork truk, a land raider is a harder thing to miss, and a baneblade damn near impossible to miss! So to try to keep that effect in place, I suggested increasing the BS when shooting at larger targets. After all, you can't say that a solitary guardsmen would be as easy to hit as a baneblade. So perhaps +1 BS against vehicles (and monstrous creatures too?) with a further +1 (that stacks) against super heavies and gargantuans. Meaning a Baneblade is still practically impossible to miss, a land raider the odds are you're gonna hit it, while a guardsmen you just fire in roughly the right direction and hope to hit near enough to fry the guy.

Consulting with a friend who actually uses titans (and therefore my theoretical hard sell on this issue) he said that he wouldn't want to see the Str D completely useless against infantry, but could see we had something of a point. He agreed that having to make a tactical decision between the different guns would be more interesting than just taking Str D as it does everything. He came up with the rather good suggestion of two fire modes - focused or dispersed, similar to the Tau Hammerhead shooting mode.

After haggling between the three of us I decided the following would be a good new profile for Str D weapons

focused mode - Str D, NO BLAST, +1 BS against vehicles, +2 against super heavies/gargantuan
dispersed mode - Str7, AP2, Large Blast.

The dispersed mode would still wound most things on 2s, but allows cover saves. It doesn't instant death T4, or disregard FNP for T4. Basically, it'll still kill marines in the open, but if it's a tough unit (Paladins, nob bikers) it won't brutalise them.

I need to look into it a little more to be sure - I believe there may be one or two Str D weapons out there that currently don't have blast (the daemon shell strategic asset springs to mind, though don't quote me on that I need to check) and I don't want to GIVE them an anti infantry capability they aren't designed to have, they can stay as they are. But I may try experimenting with it as a house rule to see how it takes.


There is an upside for the titan lovers... with it no longer being blast, you can potentially snap fire. Those pesky flyers you've been unable to touch? sure they'll be tough to hit... but if you do hit them, bye bye...

Remembering The Mission

I managed to get a couple of games in today after a far too long interlude from gaming (and blogging... and socialising... and sleeping) due to work commitments. I pulled off a win in both cases despite a bad start, and in both my opponent made the same basic mistake - they forgot about the mission. They got focused on killing a target or rampaging through my army and missed the fact that I was in a position to win the game when turn 5 rolled around.


Game 1 - Orks vs Orks

The first game was orks vs orks. Now the bad start in this was when my opponents lootas (10) opened up on wazzdakka and his biker boyz. Now he got 3 shots each, fair enough, lucky him. 30 shots should be 10 hits, about 8 wounds and 4 dead bikers. He got 20 hits. 17 wounds. I passed two 4+ cover saves. Squad and character dead, or a quarter of my army (and first blood) before I'd even had a turn!

At this point I decided to focus on killing his scoring units. Now this was Big Guns Never Tire so he had 3 looted wagons, a unit of grots, two 30 strong unit of boyz and a 10 strong unit of meganobz. I figured it'd be best to try to avoid the mega nobz and take out the rest, and I managed quite well. Picked off two of the wagons, my burnas took out one of the squads and the grots, one of my ork mobs (20 strong from a battlewagon) took out his other squad. At one point though it got to the stage that I could no longer ignore the meganobz. Now his warboss had broken away to deal with one of my grot squads, so I took the opportunity to charge. I'd picked off a couple during the game to this point. Now the attacks put out by 19 boyz on the charge should put 3 wounds on nobs. I was lucky, I put on 5. My nob fluffed his attacks though only adding an extra 1. In return though the nobz only killed 3 of mine, giving me the win, and leaving them on an Ld 4 test which they failed, and were run down. Hence why I struck when the warboss was away. This swung it in my favour as by this point I still had three scoring units (plus 2 remnants if some fleeing units rolled snakes for me) to my opponents one. I kept trying to pick off his last one while hunkering down on two objectives. In the end I had a unit gone to ground on an objective (so not claimed this turn) and a scoring unit in a scoring battlewagon on another, with a unit contesting the solitary hull point looted wagon on his. With both warlords slain, and my linebreaker making up for his first blood, victory was mine. I think further turns he could have perhaps clawed me off his objective and off the central one, but he was very unlikely to get better than a draw.

Where did my opponent go wrong? He didn't seem to notice that I was systematically targetting his scoring units. He left the grot squad to get slaughtered by the burnas and laughed that his tankbustas were safe. Sure... except you can't win with the tankbustas buddy. If you'd kept those grots back behind your other units to move up for objective grabbing late on, I'd never have got to them. Was I lucky in beating his meganobz? A little. By the odds I did about one wound more than I should, though the fact that the wounds came earlier in the initiative steps than averages say they should probably saved a few more boyz. But I gambled at that time because I could afford to get locked in that combat and finish both our scoring units on the next turn - I still had a scoring unit safe on my right flank.

Ironically I may have made similar mistakes if I hadn't received such a drubbing on turn one. Losing such a large part of my army in spectacular fashion made me focus my attention swiftly, and become lean and aggressive. Without that I may well have gone for the ultimate showdown in the middle of the field and potentially lost badly while doing so. I'd like to think I'd have still kept my eye on the mission, but perhaps overconfidence from such early success weakened my opponent in that game.

Game 2 - Necrons vs Space Marines

The overconfidence is not a cause in this second game. My opponent feared my necrons before a die was rolled. Now he got a bit of a lucky break in that a solitary lascannon shot managed to kill my Doomsday Barge before it had even got warmed up, but that didn't fill him with confidence. Neither did my utterly unsuccessful attempt to get a first blood point by teleporting next to a couple of "easy" transports inspire my opponent either (a single hull point from 20 Gauss shots, on each. Even if I'd combined fire I'd have failed! This was the start of a bad game for Gauss, as I managed to do only 8 hull points from Gauss shots throughout an entire 5 turn game!) No with this opponent it was a lucky streak from some lychguard that was his undoing - it became a personal mission to kill them, to the exclusion of most other things. He didn't seem to notice the unit that had so spectacularly failed to kill a razorback then had a lucky escape from a vindicator as they retreated into cover... then slowly scaled a building towards an objective. The immortals that took up a good firing position that just happened to be near a second. In this mission the objectives were worth different values and my opponent had the 4 pointer right in his deployment zone... but I'd started on a 3 and crept into position on a 2 and a 3 giving me a solid lead despite his first blood point. He realised his mistake late on and made a rush for some extra points, and in the end I had an 8-7 advantage - his first blood point being countered by my linebreaker point. However if his squad that sat camped in a rhino waiting for turn 5 to claim a 1 point objective had advanced the 12" to my position, they could have booted me off my 3 point objective quite easily. However most of his attention was focused on my lychguard, and that proved to be his undoing.

Admittedly, they were remarkably tenacious. He should have had them early on. They killed a few assault terminators (thunder hammers and storm shields) but then braced themselves for the reprisal - he fluffed all 6 attacks. His men then fled and while I couldn't catch them, the immortals did sterling work in finishing the termies off and wounding his captain. The lychguard meanwhile chewed up his tactical squad, and then while there were only 3 of them and a lord left, they proved to be incredibly annoying. The highlight for me was bouncing the landspeeders missiles into the dread, killing it. Then bouncing the hits from the vindicator into the wounded captain, killing him. And to finish off splitting up with the lychguard finishing off the squad and the overlord killing the vindicator. Those guys carved a hole through the centre of the enemy lines and more than made up for the rest of the army doing sweet fa apart from sitting on objectives and yelling "hey we count!"

If my opponent had concentrated less on the lychguard, and perhaps moved the tactical squad in to claim the objective I sneaked on to. If he'd made more use of his scoring landspeeders, beyond providing fire support to the "kill the lychguard mission" If the land raider had been used more aggressively to purge me off objectives. He could have got the win. But he bent all his will to killing that unit, and not only did he fail, he lost the game.

So remember, it's good to have a fun game, and both my opponents enjoyed these games, as did I. But keep the mission in sight. My second opponent realised in turn 5 he was heading for a loss and reacted late but couldn't stop me getting the win, though he did bring it close. My opponent from game 1 had been barrelling along killing stuff so much that when I pointed out I'd won he just looked shocked and baffled. If you don't have any idea if you are winning or not, then you're probably not.

Dogfight Fail

So the other day I took the opportunity offered by Forge World units and the new dual FOC list at 2k to play something I've always wanted to try - an aircav guard army. I had one vet squad to act as forward spotters, the rest of the army was a command squad and vets riding valkyries and vendettas, with two twl punisher cannon vultures plus a thunderbolt and lightning (very very frightning galileo galileo figaro) as heavy support. It didn't go as well as I'd hoped, due to me not spotting one small rule in the aircraft section - ALL aircraft can choose to use skyfire if they wish.

Now in the old apoc rules for flyers everything hit them on 6s, even other flyers. This made sense - if a ground based gun struggles to hit me as I zoom by at 200mph then how the hell are two fighters passing each other at a combined speed of 400mph gonna be more likely to get a better shot off? Unless of course they are dedicated air superiority fighters. As such the thunderbolt, a ground attack fighter, laden with bombs plus some autocannons and a lascannon, could barely touch other aircraft. The air superiority fighter lightning had the AA rule for it's guns, meaning it hit on normal BS and was good at taking out other flyers. This all made sense. Of course, with ALL flyers having the ability to have skyfire if they choose to, air superiority fighters become useless. The bigger and heavier the plane the better - it's less likely to get taken in one, and more likely to have the firepower to punch you out in one. Which is what happened to me. A solitary stormraven took out most of my airforce. It would boost up to one and multimelta plus two missiles to the face... while the assault cannon would be machine spirited at a separate target. The head on attack usually got the job done, while the assault cannon would certainly clip the wings of the other target.

Disagree? Take the following example.

In todays world, putting the following two against each other with equally skilled pilots should have a clear winner.

The apache will kick arse out of ground targets, but the fighter should nail it easily enough. I consider the 40k equivalent to these to be the Vulture and the Lightning.

Now my vulture with twin linked punisher cannon comes in at 155. My lightning, including 6 skystrike missiles for true anti air prowess, comes in at 205. I'll even give the lightning first shot. Now i'm not normally one to math-hammer, but just run the averages here. Assuming head on, as we will have entered from own table edge.

Lightning fires autocannon, twin linked lascannon, and two missiles. Hitting on 4s. So one autocannon hit, the reroll should see the lascannon hit 75% of the time, and you'd certainly have one missile hit with a 50% chance for a second. I'll round up and say they both hit. That's 3 str 7 and 1 str 9 hits. Front armour of vulture - 12. So a 3+ to damage with the lascannon - let's call that a pen. a 5 to damage with the rest. Call that 1 glance. Then of course there's the possibility of a jink save which might get rid of one of them. Even if we choose to ignore that, unless we get a good roll on the pen hit, that's still a live opponent.

Vultures turn, with it's anti infantry gun. 20 shots, hitting on 4s, twin linked. So 15 hits. Glancing on 5s. That's 5 hp. Even with the jink save, 3 should still go through. Which is one more hp than the lightning has even before any penetrating hits are rolled.

I consider the vulture to be ground attack. The stormraven likewise, and my vultures and vendettas. They're the helicopter equivalent, for fire support and troop carrying in support of ground operations. They should fear the dedicated flyer. Not swat it like an annoying insect. This is the first thing I have not liked about sixth edition so I'm not gonna toss my toys from the pram over it. But while it seems to be encouraging us all to take flyers, it seems which flyers you take could be key... and the stormraven seems like a rock solid top choice so far. Oh joy, Grey Knights have yet another of the best toys.

*Cross Posted From Need More Tanks*

Drop Complete!

It has been long in the coming but Dropzone Commander is here at last!  I've just taken a detour on my way home from work to pick it up and I now can't wait to start building, painting, playing and collecting a second army!

After I had dug through all the packing peanuts and disposed of the cardboard I was able to reveal this little collection:

My order consisted of: The rulebook, a UCM premium starter army, a pair of Archangel Interceptors and a pair of Falcon Gunships. First impressions are excellent, the models look to be well cast and the book looks good quality.

I chose the premium edition army to get the KR mini-case and I'm glad I did as it will allow me to keep everything somewhere together and safe.  The internal foam liner is the standard pick and pluck type with a nice little DZC cut out on the top layer.  There are three layers to the box, the bottom of which has cut outs for the removed flying stands.   The KR case itself is the standard that is to be expected from KR and hard to fault.  I must admit at the time of ordering I thought it would be slightly larger than it is, not that this is a problem or a reason to not buy one!

The rulebook is not overly hefty but Hawk have managed to fit a good deal of background and rules into its 152 pages.  In a move I find slightly strange the book starts off with the background to the game world before starting on the rules and then the scenarios.  It finishes off nicely with the source material for the four races the UCM, the Scourge, the PHR and the Shaltari.  As Ken has said in his posts there are no prizes for guessing at who is who when comparing to the 40k universe.  Having all four races listed together, I think, is a stroke of genius as firstly it means you don't have to buy expensive extra codex books (although I'm sure before long there will be some source books) and non-collectors of the different races can get some intel on how they will perform on the battlefield.  Some may argue this will make the game purely revolve around the luck of dice roles but I think it will actually improve the level of competitiveness in games and make you rely more on winning strategy to overcome your foe.

The rules look to be a mix of those that we are already used to plus some variations on a theme, for example wounds in shooting are calculated using weapon energy and target armour value.  I am sure we will have some discussion over the rules in the coming days as we get chance to read them!  The book is colour throughout which is nice, and something that GW only seem to have cottoned on to recently.  In some places the text looked a little fuzzy to me, possibly as a result of textured backgrounds rather than bad printing, but otherwise it is good quality print and paper.  

Onto the models now - In the starter army you seem to get a good mixture of units with some AA vehicles, some main battle tanks, some infantry and transport and the all important drop ships.  The models look great and I can't wait to start putting them together and cracking on with the painting.

The models are an interesting mix of resin and white metal.  The infantry, shown on the right here are resin bases with metal soldiers whilst the vehicles and aircraft shown below are all made of resin with, in the case of aircraft, plastic bases.  

The two other items that I ordered make up a small fleet of aircraft, a pair of fighters and a pair of light ground attack aircraft.  I chose these, not realising that with the limitations of units (similar to force organisations for WFB where you are limited on special units depending on the size of force) I legally wouldn't be able to fit them into armies.  Hopefully however, and given that Ken has some aircraft in his proto-collection, we will be able to come to an amicable agreement and start using them straight away!


All in all I'm very happy with this as a starter collection although I can immediately see how I plan to extend by including a command vehicle and drop ship, some Praetorians and possibly a couple of heavy tanks.  After that I think I will probably get a PHR force because the photos in the book look really cool and have given me serious army jealousy towards Ken!  I could quite easily see me ending up with one of each of the four armies in the future however!


Now all that I need to do is decide on a paint scheme, hmm...urban, desert, winter or woodland, decisions decisions...

Black Templar allies: a quick idea

<p>Although my copy of the 6th edition rulebook has arrived, I haven't had chance to fully read it yet. Though have been having a think about allies for my existing armies. One idea with my black templars is to take a space wolf detachment with a small grey hunter squad, a rune priest and a few squads of long fangs, this covers the templars weaknesses of heavy firepower and psychic protection, while allowing the templars to do what they do best (ram initiated down the opponents throat).<br>
with a black templar force consisting of chaplains (reroll to hit rolls on charge, auto pass zeal tests) attached to large initiate squads, with the emperors champ granting rage (+2 attacks on the charge), transported in landraiders for the ability to charge out of transport. Any additional points could be spent on assault cannon / missile venerable dreads with preferred enemy.

any thoughts?

I think I just had a geekgasm...