What to shoot and in what order?

Hey guys, I've been thinking a bit about this in the last few days, and though I'd put something up to see what the consensus of opinion is.

Mainly what I'm talking about here is how we deal with tanks.

Last edition clearly the main options were lances and then haywire in combat. No issues there, you shoot the lances and haywire anything that survives because getting into combat takes longer.

Now I don't think things are quite so clear, and the reason for that is the haywire blaster scourge unit.

I should preface any comments of course with the fact that any of this will be subject to what is on the table and in range of your guns.

So we now have two distinct ways of killing tanks and armour of various kinds. Glancing it to death, or blowing it up. The essence of this post therefore is of course that haywires are highly unlikely to ever actually blow anything up - it needs to be open topped and you need to be good at rolling consecutive 6's.

Mathammer tells us that a 4-man scourge unit will, on average, cause 2.2 glancing hits per turn. On that basis they're not 100% reliable for killing a whole tank on their own, far from it, so their fire needs to be supplemented by other shooting in order to destroy whole vehicles, and with glancing hits having no effect on shooting from the tank, if you're not going to destroy it, what's the point?

So my thinking is boiling down to strategy for using lances.

What's more effective, shooting the lances first, picking a target and concentrating on it until it's either dead or you've got a penetrating hit that restricts them to snap shooting and then moving on to the next, using the haywire blasters to mop up any other vehicles once you're done with the darklight, or the reverse, concentrate on getting vehicle kills, rolling the haywires first to strip down hull points and then potentially lose the effect of the lance's AP2 by blowing something up when only a hull point loss is required?

To some extent, this will be affected by mission (purge the alien, the scouring, big guns etc all reward you for taking down vehicles from certain slots) but setting that aside, I'm leaning towards the first option of using my lances first to either destroy or disable, then follow that up with haywires as those explosion results with dark lances are so precious (1 shot in 27 is statistically likely to produce an explosion on a non open-topped tank with AV12)

What do you all think, am I talking sense, or just babbling?

I think it is almost always better (statistically) to shoot the Lances first. You have no reduced value from Haywires by shooting them second and, as noted, you have the potential to lose your ability to explode or disable the vehicle from the Lance shot.

With that said, I think the more interesting decision and the one that can't really be made here instead of on the ground is when you have multiple Lances and multiple Haywire Scourge units. I think, much of the time, that firing one Lance at a vehicle that is in range of a Haywire squad is the correct opening shot and then finishing it off if necessary with said Haywire squad. Then move on to the next Lance and next Haywire squad, alternating as feasible.

Though I will note that Lances have greater range so there are certainly some circumstances where holding them back to pick off the last hull point all the way across the board like snipers.

This is interesting, but like you said it depends what is on the table. I like to use the scourgewire units (I usually run 2) as a sort of vacuum cleaner unit. The blasters take down what is the biggest threat next turn, any left over shots onto the next etc etc. Its the scourges job to then mop up anything that's left or those with lots of hull points. This way you get to try to blow up a vehicle with the darklight so you don't waste shots. But then you have a safety net of the 2+ to glance. It also utilises the scourges mobility while not commuting them to a suicide squad!

It sort of depends, for me. And, as far as I can tell, it depends on if I'm fighting Eldar

But, basically, i always do the lances/blasters first and use the haywires as cleanup on a vehicle I have damaged but not taken out.

That said, against Eldar I do sometimes use the Haywires as a bully tactic on Wave Serpents to try to get them to jink to avoid the hull point damage - because for me, a jinked Wave Serpent i almost as good as a dead one, and I'd like to weaken the shooting of multiple Serpents - so generally if I can get them snapshotting I'm moving on to the next Serpent. So I find I often try to threaten them with the potential of the haywires ("oh, yeah, i got this awesome 4 man squad with haywire guns, it's like wyches at range!") and if they Jink, great! If not, well, heck, I still did some damage and can pop Raider lances at that one to try to finish it off and/or force the Jink. But against Eldar a lot of it is about minimizing the Serpents.

I find I don't do that against anything else due to either them not having Jink or being less scary than Wave Serpents.

I'd wholeheartedly agree with bully tactics!

Allows me to often scare opponents into jinking that Lance fire often doesn't. If not a mech heavy list I then concentrate lance fire on heavy armour infantry or multiple wound infantry (Terminators, Battlesuits, Tyrannid warriors etc)

But yes, would tend to lance fire first then mop up with HWB scourge if mech heavy as per above reasons (explosions)

I actually think DE handle armour better now than in previous codex (obviously not Mathammer) - feeling that suicide Wyches we're too one dimensional, and that scourges offer that extra something at range.

I'd personally also do as Thor suggests but not just vs Eldar. Making most jink then simply moving on to those that can't (e.g. Rhinos or whatever) to limit movement. Limiting return fire and taking away mobility, plays into our manoeuvring strengths.

Besides Crons though, I can't think of much after Eldar that will be able to jink and is also worth trying to force a Jink on. Though I do advocate the tactic in a general sense.

It can work the other way as well. If you have 1 blaster and you declare shooting on a skimmer, any competant player can talk about the "effectiveness" of a single lance and in some cases may not jink. Its then that you can unleash the haywires on to them. I did that to a necron tesla thing while it had its AV 13 shields. People forget the effective range on scourges is quite high!

We've always played that you get to declare a jink each time a unit targets you (so you could ignore the blaster and jink the scourges in the above example), have we been doing it wrong?

I think it is each time??

Also, Tau are occasionally good to make to jink as well as Crons & Eldar

Hmm we always played it that you declare jink when you are first targeted, so you are either jinking from the start or not at all. My friends interpreted the rule as you are either taking evasive manoeuvres from the start or you are trying to weather the shots. Cant say I'm a rules buff I just do as I'm told by the more competent rule interpreters I play with! Would be nice if this is wrong though!

The wording of Jink is slightly ambiguous but we've always played that you can declare Jink before each shooting attack. Otherwise someone can just declare that they're shooting your flyer with a peashooter that cannot even damage it and you are forced to jink or risk having everything else that fires at you that turn hit you with no save.

Oh no, I meant the exact opposite of what I wrote above! Ha! Too early in the morning, haven't had my coffee

So yeah, jinking after declaring not after each weapon fired. Makes sense Grub

Quote :

When a unit with any models with the Jink special rule is selected as a target for a shooting attack, you may declare that it will Jink.

You can declare a Jink even multiple times if you want. There is no "is seclected as a target for a shooting attack for the first time". Every time your vehicle is selected as a target your can opt to jink.

But surely with a peashooter you wouldn't jink but if a las cannon or whatever then you would.

I play it that after declaring jink, you've jinked. But you can declare a jink at any time not just at the start of the shooting phase. So you can ignore peashooter a but decide to jink if something big's trying to hit you...

OutrunKoil wrote:

But surely with a peashooter you wouldn't jink but if a las cannon or whatever then you would.

I play it that after declaring jink, you've jinked. But you can declare a jink at any time not just at the start of the shooting phase. So you can ignore peashooter a but decide to jink if something big's trying to hit you...

Erm...that's exactly what I'm saying. But Grub is saying (I think?) that if you don't jink the first thing that shoots you that turn then you can't jink anything else that turn.

That is a good point although as one of those players who have had their razorwings brought down by bolters on numerous occasions I would probably jink at a stiff breeze The amount of ignores cover in my meta now though makes jinking a rarity anyway! Thanks for the clarification though! Perhaps if my local gaming group would abandon their Tau, IG and Eldar I can start using this

Edit: Yes my friends told me that I have to declare jink when they target it, maybe something was lost in the description or understanding on my part! But this is good news if I ever get to jink again!

Off topic - I always figured jink should be different to a cover save, it's basically evasive maneouvres rather than the shot hitting intervening obstructions so there's functionally no reason why you couldn't evade it (I could see the argument that you'd have to jink more aggresively perhaps, maybe ignores cover also applies a -1 to jink). After all, a flamer for example still sprays a jet of flame, which you could dodge. The reason it ignores cover is because the flaming liquid splashes off surfaces apparently. A lot of the weapons that ignore cover don't justify it very well in terms of fluff - the stormshard mortar is a perfect example, as the stuff inside the shells would clearly get blocked by any kind of wall etc.

Yeah its a blanket rule. I was actually thinking earlier that most of the ignores cover stuff should just modify an existing save but I guess its for simplicity, I mean, GW know that everyone plays casually and the game doesn't really matter right.

On topic, what is the general order in which you shoot your AT weapons? Lances before haywires is a given. But blasters/heatlances/darklances? I tend to go for the shorter range first as the longer the range the greater the versatility, any thoughts?

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

Off topic - I always figured jink should be different to a cover save, it's basically evasive maneouvres rather than the shot hitting intervening obstructions so there's functionally no reason why you couldn't evade it

I agree. In fact long before 7e came out I was proposing that Jink should be a separate category of save which was treated similarly to a cover save but would be circumvented by different things. So you could create a bit of diversity between races and different items of wargear etc by having weapons that ignore one save but not the other. A Dark Reaper rangefinder for example would ignore Jink but not Cover, whereas a Flamer would ignore cover but not Jink. Tau Markerlights could perhaps have to be used separately to ignore Jink and Cover (2 markerlight hits for each).

Sorry Count! I was agreeing with you implicitly

And yes, shooter ranges first to see what blows up! But then again, I don't tend to field heat lances but blasters first if in range I'd say.

Again off topic, modifying saves is a nightmare. I remember the days of earlier editions where this was done and it always was a head scratcher to figure out (and took ages!)

@OutrunKoil - Modifying saves can be long winded, but if it's a standard modifier (like stealth or shrouding) it's not too bad. The older editions where strength modified armour saves were a real pain, though I maintain that terminators really suffered from making their save on a single die instead of two dice.

@Count - I like that idea a lot - perhaps we should send it to GW as an idea for 8th edition...

You could just say jink is another type of save, then I guess you could use it in assault (always got me how you could dodge something like a laser but a guy with a powerfist is too rapid!). Anything with ignores cover you could say subtracts 1 from the Jink save rolls. Oh wishlisting.

I forget where it is, but there was an excellent article on shooting priority from one of the big names on the Dark City a few years back; one of the important factors was about recognising multiple potential targets per unit.
If after the movement phase you have a Ravager with all 3 guns bearing on a Rhino to your left,  another Ravager trained on a Razorback to your right, and a squad of marines running up the middle towards your squad of HayScourges, who are in the middle, and able to see both enemy vehicles and the Marines.

If you fire the Scourges first at the Rhino, and you successfully destroy it, the Ravager on the left has now lost its planned target, so can only shoot its right gun at the Marines, a waste of firepower.

If you fire the Ravagers full bore, if one tank is left, the Scourges can finish it off; if both Ravagers do their jobs, the Scourges can instead target the third option.

This way you maximise your shooting, by ensuring no shot is wasted.

Can anyone remember who wrote the article, or even better link to it? Plastikente? Mushkilla?

I was just digging that up to post the same thing. It would be Thor's article on threat bubbles.

mmm an excellent article. I read that when I was new here, as it was useful considering I was returning to 40k in general.

I am pretty certain that its still pretty much indate, as it was more about the philosophy of threat selection than out and out rules. Think i'll have to give it a re-read.