Thunderfire Cannon: Tournament Metagame

[Warp Angel]

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the metagame recently, about how I'd deal with the Ork bikes, Ork hordes, Eldar Pathfinders, and Lash lists.

 

For a Vanilla Marine army, there's a dearth of direct counters to any of those lists that are effective in an all-comers list.

 

I spent some time rethinking the use of the Thunderfire Cannons.

 

From a game perspective (and a Killhammer) perspective, they're glass cannons. Small number of "models", vulnerable to basic weapon fire.

 

From a pure wounds dealt to the enemy perspective, they're good, but aren't insta-kills or ignore armor saves against all but a few basic troop types.

 

But the different ammo provides a TON of different options.

 

There are very few situations where I think I'd be using basic ammo. Horde armies out in the open are one possible target, but that doesn't happen a whole lot.

 

1) Ignore cover ammo - great against Pathfinders/Rangers, sniper scouts, heavy weapons in cover, etc.

 

2) Difficult terrain ammo - Not only do you have a (small) chance to inflict wounds with direct shooting, but you have a 1 in 6 chance of inflicting a wound that cannot be saved (unless you have invuln saves), and that you can't use FNP on against bikes. Aside from a slim chance of glancing light vehicles, you have a 1 in 6 chance of immobilizing them. Against infantry, you can slow them down and potentially deny them an assault. Against jump pack infantry like assault marines, winged hive tyrants, and winged demon princes, you make them take dangerous terrain checks if they use their packs/wings to move.

 

And all you have to do is HIT them to force difficult/dangerous terrain checks.

 

The situational usefulness has amazing potential.

 

But it IS a glass cannon.

 

Thoughts on whether or not it would have a place in a tournament list? And if it did, what points range?

[Algavinn]

I think this would depend quite a bit on how your army is compiled. In my army, where half of my army is dedicated to range fire trying to cause damage to the enemy, and the other half is a mix of stopping my opponents mobility, cohesion, and defensive capabilities (as well as scoring), slowing down the opponent is HUGE so being able to force a slow down in dangerous fast moving squads like assault squads, genestealers, etc. could make a very large difference while my drop podded squads are focusing on vehicles, MC's, taking a strong hold in objectives, etc.

 

If my army were something more fully aggressive, being transport based, drop pod/deep strike, or bike/assault squad my army should be built around being able to beat my opponents to objectives, or digging them out of it, and in general being close to the opponent. So in this situation it is likely that I will have less need for slowing down the enemy. Still useful, but not worth giving up a heavy support slot that could house a landraider, vindicator, or predator.

 

However, both of these lists do gain quite a bit from being able to put some damage into opponents in cover. With an army that is half in my DZ, I can only dedicate so many forces to digging entrenched forces out of areas that aren't objectives, so there could be something causing some real damage to me from the forests or ruins (probably not pathfinders so much, but various heavy weapon teams definitely) that I am not highly capable of stopping easily, or efficiently. Should I run an aggressive army, it is still very much in my interests to get rid of those units capable of breaking my vitally important mobility, or lighten up squads that I intend to engage up close. However when it comes to this, I am probably more likely to prefer incendiary rounds from a whirlwind, which will negate cover (granted not with as long a range) while being somewhat more resilient (indirect fire, vehicle saturation, needing something a big stronger to take it down weapon wise), and a bit cheaper. Granted the rounds are not as strong, but they can affect light infantry better, if that is your target and the whirlwind may be considered less accurate if it is firing without LoS and without the multiple shots of the glass cannon. So it's something of a toss up in what unit type you would be firing at to negate cover, but I think a whirlwind more easily fits either an aggressive or static army. This definitely being rather opinion based, or at least based off of my experiences and what I 'feel' is best, though not being able to fully articulate it in as ordered and properly argumentative form as I'd like.

 

 

Btw, I loved the strangelove/vonnegut reference in the subtitle, and am enjoying and finding your killhammer work highly useful in my acclimation to marines from Biel-Tan mech.

[minigun762]

Its a nice article Warp (for a silly Loyalist toy)

 

In my mind, the big question is:

"When would I use the Thunderfire and not a Whirlwind?"

1) they both have cover ignoring rounds (which is good). They're different slightly but overall I'd say equivalent.

2) they're both geared for killing horde and light infantry

3) both fairly cheap and fairly weak to incoming fire

 

the main differences are that Whirlwinds main shot is probably better than the Thunderfire's main shot and the Thunderfire has the odd Tremor rounds.

To me, that means that unless the Tremor round is going to be important to your overall army's success, the Whirlwind is probably a better buy.

[Brother Merrick]

Not having played them myself, I imagine like most things, to make the TFC really effective there needs to be 2 or 3 of them.... that would mean 12 templates which is just sick.

 

M

[Shiodome]

it needs to be stationary to shoot, for me this makes it useless against anything but hordes as in smaller forces it can be negated by either moving behind BLOS terrain, or using a vehicle to BLOS.. as far as i can tell the majority of tournament opponents aren't hordes, so not a great choice. that and the fact it's about as close to a free KP as it gets.

[StormTAG]

Don't forget the fact that the Thunderfire comes with a free Techmarine. Of particular note is the fact that it comes with the reinforce cover bit. If your local meta includes a fair number of ruins (mine comes with enough) and you were already bringing scouts, giving your scouts 2+ cover saves is pretty effin' amazing. And hey, once the cannon goes, you have a Techmarine to help counter-assault or go fix broken vehicles.

[Brother Merrick]

Well right but the bolstered defenses would help the survivability of the glass cannon as well. Cover and firing lines are of paramount importance to the cannon. Honestly though I cant help but think of the TFC as a fluff selection - you take one cuz its a cool freakin model and if it kills a few things before its taken out then all the better. To me its along the lines of the MotF. Although it would be fun to see them used competitively just to see what happens.

 

M

[Brother Gathurn]

I have taken them ocassonaly and have found that unless you have a complete lockdown on the heavy weapons then a thunderfire just gets killed. In smaller points it's much more usefull as ther's a smaller chance of there being a spare lascannon to take it down. I really just take whirlwinds

[BrotherAtrox]

Its a new toy, so most opponents are going to be pretty wary of and put it high on their target priority. Pair that with it's horrible armor and lack of indirect fire... just take a Whirlie.

[robdark1]

well the really did no service to the darn thing when the make a the thunder fire cannon all together making direct line of sight to shoot the blasted thing . not to metion that even i you do manage to get a good two or even three turns with the glass cannon your only hurting you self because if one model or the other go that pretty much how to get rid of it..

[Reinholt]

I would take the whirlwind over the thunderfire cannon almost every single time for this reason:

 

Indirect fire.

 

When I can park the whirlwind behind cover and force my opponent to come to me to get it, as well as fire unobstructed all over the table with it while doing so, that gives it a huge advantage over the thunderfire cannon in my view.

[robdark1]

yea i would too but, i think the value of just having one in the army as an unit could be very useful when people dont really know how to deal with them for the first time.

got to rember that large blast are good when there are alot of o model on the table to be shot at in the 3 turns of the game rest of the time you have to play the game of chance that anyone who plays against you has enounght models to allow that unit be useful at all in the list you run depending on what you build .

[Maligoare]

At first glance, the cannon does seem fragile, and indeed it is a little vulnerable. Consider however that you get a Techmarine with a servo-harness and the cannon for the points cost. Factor in the cost of these, and you wind up with a 25 point cannon. What sort of survivability can we really expect from something which chucks out four templates for 25 points?

 

Despite that, I think I am still sitting closer to the Whirlwind camp, but there are times when the Thunderfire will be worth it just as a dangerous distraction.

[Warp Angel]

Well, I played the TFire over the weekend against a friend of mine, and I have to say that I was impressed. I deployed it in an area where the gun itself benefitted from the Techmarine's fortification ability.

 

And I found that 4 Blast Templates gets better coverage than 1 Large Blast template.

 

Every time I fired the thing, I got at least 3 "wounds" out of it, with one particularly lucky turn resulting in 14 "wounds". Now, my opponent made armor saves against some of those wounds, but it basically rended a couple of my opponent's units completely ineffective and resulted in a very lopsided result in the anihilation scenario we were playing.

 

I lost 4 models, including 1 Razorback (1 Kill Point) to his 7 Kill Points gone.

 

In my army mix, I'm seeing it as an effective alternative to the Dakka Predator. I've never been a fan of whirlwinds (see my sig), or scatter dice in general, but with 4 chances each time you fire, even my horrible dice luck worked out okay. The one-shot of the Whirlwind and Vindicator don't tend to work out well for me.

 

I think I'm pretty sold that in smaller games a Thunderfire Cannon is a game breaker. If I can inflict 14 "wounds" from 100 points worth of shooting on the first turn of a 1000 point game, it's nearly an auto-win. With the ability to completely mess with bikes of all kinds, it's under consideration for a tournament list.

 

Yes, it's fragile, but the upside is potentially huge. There's also the added benefit of your opponent firing on a small unit instead of keying in on units that are more important to victory.

[Algavinn]

I'm glad you found some good success with it Warp! The multiple blasts definitely help the inconsistencies of scatter. I'd like to hear more from you on your experiences with it in the future, especially in a larger/more competitive venue.

[Warp Angel]

Well, against this friend of mine, since about... oh... 1997, my win ratio against him was something on the order of 1 victory to 10 losses.

 

He's good. Really good.

 

There's a couple of things in my favor these days though. 1) Models - he hasn't kept his army up to date and is running with smaller squads and different squads than he'd pick given a choice. 2) I figured out Killhammer and started playing "smarter".

 

Oh, and my dice luck against him isn't abysmal any more. Dunno what to attribute that to. Still sucks against everyone else, but I'm used to that.

 

I'm going to look at taking a Thunderfire in some games against different armies and see what I can figure out.

 

I really think that small points games (where there's a limited amount of fast units and units with long range firepower) are your best bet for fielding it. Larger games, I think it becomes an easy opportunity kill with a much smaller impact on the game.

 

The question is, do I spend the money on another two of them, and get 300 points of death? Just for fun, of course.

[Silber]

If I was to use the Thunderfire, I would use more than one. Two in a smaller games (~1000), 3 in bigger ones (~1500-2000). I'm absolutely not sure wether that's a good idea, but if I was to pay the cost for this thing (both points and bucks), I'd want the damn thing to work! Such a fragile unit needs redundancy to achieve something close to reliabilty.

 

I guess...

[Warp Angel]

I think if you just have other targets that are just as threatening, but are a bigger points investment you win either way. He's either ignoring your cannon or he's leaving the other units alone.

 

From a Killhammer perspective, I'd jump all over an opponent's Thunderfire as soon as practical, but that only means that it's effective if it survives. It's a moderate unit for my army, and a massive target in my opponent's.

 

This is going to need more study.

[robdark1]

as much as the thunder fire cannon has it problems still i have to admit it hit really hard being at str 6 to start off. now as for anyone who know anything about mid str guns to began with anything that has a str higher than 5 pretty much is going to would on a 3+ or two plus depending on the toughtness of the unit . now for me seeing so many marine army out there or orks armys on top of that having a something that can wound on a 2 up is pretty good in my book. as for rtt play i would asking anyone to play test the list before you play it a lot.

[Godslayer]

Yes, it's fragile, but the upside is potentially huge.

Risk vs reward baby!

 

What it's all about.