To Kill a Rhino

Why should Splinter cannons on venoms not be got?
Better toughness than scourges. -1 to hit. Great nobility too.
Maybe some dudes inside.

Dang, I like that edition. So much more option (atm).

CptMetal wrote:

Dang, I like that edition. So much more option (atm).

Hehe. I find it exceedingly refreshing too - that I cannot decide between the options available. :-D

Splinter cannons are not worth it on Scourge. They're one shot more than the base carbine they come with at the same range (18"). You're not taking cannons for the 36" so I wouldn't even factor that into the equation. Just buy more Scourge instead. Carbine Scourge are going to want to charge into combat, particularly from turn 3 onwards where they're hitting on 2's. With weight of fire and hitting first a carbine squad could massacre a unit of regular troops by themselves.

Scourge vs Ravager as a chassis for the DL will come down to how you want to field your anti-tank. Ravagers jobs are now to float around your deployment zone, popping any vehicles (likely transports) that try to get into your own zone, or that threaten your first wave units. Scourge on the other hand are there to threaten vehicles that are tucked away out of sight of your main force, things like Whirlwinds, Basselisks etc. In terms of table control your Ravagers cover your own table half up to the centre whilst the Scourge cover your opponents zone or and entire flank. They both do the same job but they operate in different theatres.

Trueborn with lances can be taken if you need more weight of anti-tank fire, and would be good to camp an objective in your half of the table (with their extra attacks and solid anti-tank they'd be a threat to anything trying to take that objective casually). Warriors with lances are probably a no-go. You need a 10 strong unit to take one and 20 strong to take two. That's too much of a points investment and too many bodies on the table that can eat anti-infantry fire, just to fire a shot or two per turn. A single good anti-infantry weapon with a good round of shooting can force such a unit to take battleshock casualties rather easily.

Gimmers wrote:

Imateria wrote:

aurynn wrote:

Lances - Scourges IMO.
Speaking in terms of "points per lance" 5 scourges with 4 DLs are almost 30% cheaper than lances on Ravagers and 21% cheaper than 5 Trueborn with 2 Lances. In addition, you do not have to deploy them, keeping them safe from any shooting and assault and DS them anywhere on tabletop in safety and in range. That -1 you will get to hit when they DS is easily offset by their cost. Simply take a bit more of them. :-)

We will need a bit better spread of weaponry now... AI is our main concern I think as poison is not what it used to be against GEQ, but we do have melee to deal with that. Or I should say full-all-out-carnage to deal with that.

Your maths are way off, 5 Scourge with 4 DL are 150pts, only 5 less than a tripple Lance Ravager at 155 and 5 Trueborn with 2 DL are all of 95pts (heck, throw in a pair of Blasters to make it 125).

Frankly, this isn't even a question worth asking, a tripple lance Ravager is better than DL Scourge as it's double the toughness, has a better invuln and doesn't suffer the -1 to hit when moving with a heavy weapon. When it comes to anti tank it seems clear that the Voidraven is the closest challenger the Ravager has for that role now.

Personally I'm looking at arming Scourge with Splinter Cannons to make up for the fact they are actually better on infantry now than they used to be (will not be sorry to see Salvo is gone) whilst being worse on Venoms (which are also much more expensive so I'll have less of them) to cover anti infantry duty or give them Blasters to go after heavier targets.

Do you consider the Splinter Cannon a worthwhile investment? For the same price (-1pt) and rapid fire range you can just buy another scourge for another wound.

I get the feeling that naked (Shardcarbine) scourges are the best anti-infantry we have point for point against naked warriors and splinter cannon trueborn.

It's definitely something I'm going to try, Scourge aren't known for their resiliance so the option to out range their targets until it's worth moving into rapid fire range seems like a good one. Thankfully I have enough Scourge to try out almost any combination of them.

Let's not forget that our Scourges also have access to str 6 guns at a relatively low price. These guns would wound more reliably than their standard Carbine.

But you can place 10 scourges with 8 Lances in a raider. Or in a Bastion. And there is resilence.

Would you guys take Dissis or Lances on a Ravager?

My Ravagers I'm thinking of taking two lance, 1 dissie on two them and on the third taking 1 lance and 2 dissies. I really think spreading around your firepower and not overly specialising is going to pay off in this edition. I don't think you really want 3 lances hitting one target unless it's a land raider or super heavy type that you really have to remove asap. I think tossing 1 or 2 lances on each vehicle in range is best, seeing which ones you merely glance (1-3 damage combined) and which ones you penetrate (6+ damage combined). With a d6 spread for damage on anti-tank weaponry sometimes your guns will do barely anything to a 12 wound model, sometime they'll cripple it. If you spread firepower around you can potentially cripple more tanks, and then use other units (Blasterborn, Scourge, Reavers) to finish them off or take them down to the third damage tier so they can be ignored from then on. Firing 3 lances at one tank could potentially do 18 damage to a model that may have 2/3 that many wounds. You're gonna waste damage which I don't think you can afford to do.

I am very interested in that too. Raiders are another good question for that debate as well. My initial thoughts say because dark lances are a lot more viable in other units like scourge, trueborn, even kabalites; that this frees up ravager platforms for dissies. I would still run one or two lance ravagers but one or two disintegrators seem very good. As far as my addition of best raider weapon I think dissies win here due to being assault and more friendly for moving. That said trueborn with lances stationary backfield with a lance raider is itself almost a ravager.

Going on a limb I'd go dissis on ravager and raiders (with option for DL based on the enemy), a blaster and a dark lance on the passengers, lances on scouges, and blasterborn.
Blasters and sissies are good backup anti-vehicles, scourges snipe tanks from their 3+ cover nests and DL warriors for redundancy.

Using the maths on the first page, Disintegrator Ravagers are better than Dark Lances at damaging and killing ALL vehicles all the way up to and including Toughness 9? Until they need to start rolling 6's to wound basically. Is that correct?

On paper, yeah. Wave Serpents beg to differ, of course. On the other hand Dissies are almost hand-made to kill Necrons, so *shrug*.

Yep the problem is that different vehicles are weaker to different things.

SERAFF wrote:

As for Heatlances, guys how you could even think to use this crap as anti-character weapon? Just take Ilic and a group of rangers, you can do it in every DE detachment. This will be much more efficient and CHEAP.

Hahaha, no.

Rangers are an ok unit that actually suck at killing any remotely dangerous character. Illic is right there with them being only marginally better at low end character killing but poor at the important ones...

Both these units are ok at best.

Hellstrom wrote:

Using the maths on the first page, Disintegrator Ravagers are better than Dark Lances at damaging and killing ALL vehicles all the way up to and including Toughness 9?  Until they need to start rolling 6's to wound basically.  Is that correct?

3 Dark lances
3 shots, BS3+
2 Hits
Vs T5-7 – 1.33 wounds
Vs T8 – 1 wound
Vs T9-15 – 0.66 wounds
Saves
3+ or less – no save
2+ Save
Vs T5-7 – 1.10 wounds
Vs T8 – 0.83 wounds
Vs T9-15 – 0.55 wounds

3 Disintegrators
9 shots, BS3+
6 Hits
Vs T5 – 3 wounds
Vs T6-9 – 2 wounds
Vs T10+ – 1 wound
Saves
4+ or less – no save
3+ Save
Vs T5 – 2.5 wounds
Vs T6-9 – 1.66 wounds
Vs T10+ – 0.83 wounds
2+ Save
Vs T5 – 2 wounds
Vs T6-9 – 1.33 wounds
Vs T10+ – 0.66 wounds

SO.... what this generally tells me is that the Disintegrators will be more reliable to inflicting damage - chipping away at vehicles while the lance has a greater variance but a chance to do things much quicker. Assuming you round to the nearest whole number... and then roll average on the D6 for damage on the lances, the lances are about on par with the disintegrators in the middle range and greater of T while being out performed by the disintegrator against T5.

The lance is much more of a gamblers weapon - sometimes one shotting light vehicles, other times doing less damage than the disintegrator.

I quite like the way you have displayed the graphs for the difference between the editions.

It would be useful to see all the weapons compared on the same chart - i.e. probability of crippling with each weapon on one chart, then the probability of destroying with each weapon on a second chart, etc.

Something I am struggling with a little in my analysis is how to compare the points value of various weapons. It is fairly straightforward to work out how much the average damage from a weapon is. Previously, if you wanted a Dark Lance, and you bought a unit of Kabalite Warriors with a Dark Lance, the rest of the unit was essentially just ablative wounds that you had to pay for to get the Dark Lance. Now they can split fire, they could have some value depending on the game. In those circumstances, should the cost of a Dark Lance be 27 points or 97 points on Kabalites?

Hellstrom wrote:

Using the maths on the first page, Disintegrator Ravagers are better than Dark Lances at damaging and killing ALL vehicles all the way up to and including Toughness 9? Until they need to start rolling 6's to wound basically. Is that correct?

Not quite - I've plotted disintegrators by number of disintegrators fired, not number of shots. So you should compare the lines at '3' for both dark lances and disintegrators to see how your Ravager fares.

I do intend to plot the weapons against each other on one graph for easy comparison, but unfortunately ran out of time the other day. Maybe this week

Curiously, whatever it's armament a Ravager has a maximum possible damage of 18 wounds per volley. 5+ to wound means the disintegrator struggles to damage tougher targets; vs T6 and T7, where I think most transports fall, they have half the chance of wounding as the dark lance, and then do an average 42.8% of the damage of the dark lance, making it hard for it to compete. But the dissie is conversely much better at clearing the decks against T5 or below two wound units like bikes and Primaris marines, while still being servicable against tanks (with help from the rest of your army).