The Shadowsword - Eh?

[Jolemai]

The Shadowsword. One of the eight configurations and the one sporting the "most powerful weapon in the Imperial Guard" volcano cannon. Or does it?

 

The chap in my gaming group has one of these and configured it this way to pose a threat to opposing warmachines during our yearly Apocalypse game. However, each time it has underperformed and it has left my friend somewhat underwhelmed. Sadly, the Imperial Guard aren't my army so I can only speculate as to how to use it. So I leave the floor to you guys.

 

How should a Shadowsword be utilised? Tactics? Strategies? Synergies? Targets? All help is welcome, cheers.

[Emicus]

Why does it underperform? Dies too easily? Dies to what? Doesn't kill enough stuff even when unmolested? What is he trying to kill with it?

[Jolemai]

Doesn't kill enough I guess. Perhaps he's shooting the wrong things? A single volcano cannon isn't going to do much to a Super-heavy after all despite it being the only Destroyer type weapon in his force. As for its durability, it usually gest whittled down over the course of the game through shooting (generally long range shooting). He tends to sit it on his board edge and I've never seen it move.

[Jolemai]

It's a combination of not knowing what to do with it or how to use it. Perhaps there's some pressure and/or a psychological effect as well? Forking out £85 on a model that doesn't obliterate all before it must be annoying. Meanwhile, the group's Stompa has never died; a record that stretches back to the fourth edition...

 

How would you boost it's survivability other than putting it behind an Aegis Defense Line, bubble wrapping it and hiding a Techpriest and Servitors nearby?

[bozo69pd]

generally you bubble wrap it to protect it from a charge because melee would hit on rear armor 12 which would suck. You wouldn't shoot super heavies or gargantuans with it. You hit transports, deathstars, blobs to either try to get maximum hits to multiply wounds from the destroyer table, or to hope to delete that land raider possibly removing models with it.

 

Against things like wraithknights and stuff I'm thinking about bringing invisible helbrute formation for the twin linked lascannon. I feel like lascannons are very important to have in any army right now. More str 9 ap2 shooting needed.

[march10k]

First, for it to be worth its points, you have to spend more points.  It needs to have five twinlinked heavy bolters and four lascannons.  That's 110 points more for nine additional weapons that each chooses its own target and is immune to "weapon destroyed."  

 

Then you need to ensure that it's protected and that it has excellent fields of fire.  There are two ways to accomplish each of those.  Let's look at protection first.  Generally, this means not allowing melta to get double penetration.  Bubble wrapping is the usual technique, but it costs you a lot of troops.  My method is to deploy the shadowsword on top of a skyshield landing pad.  The trick there is that you cannot be at ground level and get within 6" without losing line of sight.  Meltaguns are useless until and unless you get on top of the platform, and even then the shadowsword gets its 4++ save...which is also effective against the long range shooting that you indicated is the problem that you face.  75 points for a 4++ on a 500 point model is solid gold in any event.  The other problem is good line of sight...obviously, skillful deployment can accomplish this...but at ground level there will always be "dead space."  On top of the landing pad, you're elevated, seeing over the top of a lot of terrain.  On the other hand, your main gun, lascannons, and hull heavy bolter can only depress 23.5 degrees, so depending on the height of the target, there is going to be a minimum range, you get dead space in the immediate vicinity of the skyshield.  I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff for denying the enemy the ability to hide behind terrain and break LOS.

 

I've had games where mine underperformed, but most of the time it does a great job with its ten guns (and survives the game), and once it singlehandedly induced my opponent to concede the game after the top half of turn two (so two of my shooting phases-I went first)

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

I was about to say the same thing. While the shadowsword is fluffed as a titan killer, I wouldn't use it on superheavies. I'd use it to take out transports and maybe the models inside as was stated before. It's going to kill any non superheavy it hits, so use that to you advantage (you in this case referring to your friend). A Superheavy needs support, the skyshield is a great idea, as is a conscript bubblewrap. I'm going to guess that he's throwing that shot at infantry, which is not the best idea. At BS3 that template is best used against large targets, to minimize the impact of scatter. Once all of the big transports (you mentioned a stompa, so I assume there are battlewagons too) are gone, then turn that titan killer on the Superheavies. Against orks, you always want to get rid of those transports, and force them to foot slog, then use the other templates (LRBT's) to kill the stuff that fell out (if any). 

 

Sounds to me like your friend needs a lesson in combined arms tactics. Guard can be a very nuanced army, you can't just tack a shadowsword on to a list and expect it to do something, you have to work out how to employ it.

 

The only superheavy I have right now is a knight, and It kills a lot, maybe not enough to make its points back, but certainly enough to keep my troops from feeling too pressured.

[WarriorFish]

D weapons are scary, so it's going to attract attention. I agree with the above, combined arms wins the day so it'd help if we had a better idea of the type of units he takes so we can see what might be worth changing.

[march10k]

Yep...kill tanks with infantry, kill infantry with tanks, shoot the fighty things and fight the shooty things, combined arms and asymmetric warfare carry the day.  Think about it, what's the best tank killer?  It's multiple meltaguns at close range....toted by infantrymen.  What's a LRBT, the basic tank, actually good for, killing enemy tanks, or killing enemy infantry?  Do you want to trade fire with a devastator squad, or charge it?  At the same time, say you have a space marine assault squad...do you really want to slam that into an enemy melee unit?  No way!  By the same token, a shadowsword might be a titankiller in the fluff, and it certainly has that potential, but it's really better off shooting standard vehicles (erm, land raiders make excellent targets, you don't have much that's better at killing them, it's really hard to give them a save, and they're so big that you just about have to roll boxcars to miss) with the volcano cannon, and following up with as many of the four lascannons as are required to finish the job.  It's great against orks, too...five twinlinked heavy bolters will remove buckets of models over time, and it's hard to avoid killing a bunch with the main gun (even if targeting a vehicle) at the same time.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

Building off of what march said, the perception of tanks comes from real life. It wasn't until the introduction of the first Patton tank (the M46) that we saw the Main Battle Tank concept take shape. Up until that point, there were light, medium, heavy, and superheavy tanks, and tanks were supposed to support infantry, not kill tanks. Tank Destroyers like the Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger, M10 Wolverine, M18 Hellcat, and M36, were used to hunt and kill tanks. 

 

Now that there's a bit of historical context, let's look at the Leman Russ.

 

Battle Tank- It's good at killing armor with it's S8 AP3 ordinance gun, but it really shines at killing infantry because of the large blast.

Vanquisher - Tank Destroyer, it's sole mission in life is to kill tanks. S8 AP2 armorbane, means it can pen just about everything, and AP2 gives it the potential to blow up just about everything.

Eradicator - Infantry killer, plain and simple.

Punisher - Horde control and air defense. 

 

There are too many to list, but you get the idea. The Shadowsword is a Vanquisher on steroids, while the Baneblade is a LRBT on steroids, the Hellhammer is an Eradicator on steroids. Baneblade to kill troops, Shadowsword to kill non superheavy vehicles. The opponent's superheavy isn't going to win him the game. IF that stompa needs to go away, throw a knight gallant with the helm of the nameless warrior and mark of the omnissiah at it. That's possibly 8 SD AP2 attacks hitting at WS4 and I4 with the ability to regain lost hull points. All while the Shadowsword is tearing up his tanks and transports, and your tanks are tearing up his infantry, and your infantry is tearing up infantry and tanks. Add some air support for more gunship goodness (Vendettas against tanks, and Valkyries against Infantry), and then pump out artillery onto his infantry and back line. 

 

That's an idea on how to employ Guard. 

[bozo69pd]

I had a painful loss last week to eldar and used a plaguereaper of nurgle, which is just a baneblade with puscannon instead (s7ap3 ignores cover with rerolls) I thought it would be so good against hits dscythes but then he put them in a fast skimmer transport for mobility and I wept.