The Imperial Infantryman's Artillery Primer - 7th Ed Update

[WarriorFish]

Quote

"Infantry win firefights.
Tanks win battles.
Artillery win wars."

- Old saying amongst Imperial Guard artillery officers

What do you say to the Eldar Ranger hiding in cover?
Nothing, he's been blown to pieces by your artillery.

I figured it was time to update the old primer to bring it in line with the current rules, as it's about 2 years old now! This is still chiefly based on the original, which was done with the help of @Argun who is currently MIA.

7th has carried on the kindness 6th dealt to artillery, but as ever the compounding of different rules and more can mean mixing them up is easily done especially if you've played across many editions as some of us have.

Rules Index

• Errata/FAQs
• Blast markers (page 12)
• Artillery (page 64)
• Blast (page 158)
• Barrage (page 160)
• Ordnance weapons (pages 41, 73)
• Heavy vehicles (page 88)

Errata/FAQs

Always need to keep up to date, though GW aren't that frequent with them these days. I wish I could say that was a good reflection

Games Workshop Errata

Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook FAQ 1.1 - Dec 2015

Imperial Guard FAQ 1.2 - Dec 2015

Blast Markers

• Small blast - 3" diameter
• Large blast - 5" diameter
• Massive blast - 7" diameter
• Apocalyptic blast - 10" diameter
• Apocalyptic barrage - clover shaped set of five 5" diameter markers

Artillery (Unit type)

• Crew member within 2" can fire artillery in place of his own weapon
• Weapon's Toughness is always used when shot at
• No charging with an Artillery piece in unit
• May receive Orders as an Infantry unit

Barrage

• Fires as a normal, direct fire weapon without benefiting from Barrage rules
• May choose to fire indirectly as a barrage weapon, but only at models outside of the minimum range
• When firing as a barrage firer's BS may only be deducted from the scatter roll if the target is within Line of Sight
• For Cover Saves, barrage shots comes from centre of the blast
• Against vehicles hits are always resolved against side armour
• No requirement to remain stationary to fire a Barrage, and no longer automatically hits the top level on buildings (for you older players!)

Multiple Barrages

• Weapon closest to enemy fires first (i.e. for resolving range, LoS)
• Re-rolls to hit only work on first shot fired (following shots are not To Hit rolls, see Blast rules)
• If a Hit! is rolled for a following shot the template may be placed anywhere touching the first - even in the same spot
• Otherwise in the direction specified by the roll, touching blast markers edges side to side
• Perform for all shots and tally up hits for wound rolls together
• For Cover Saves, shot comes from the centre of the first blast

Ordnance weapons

• Can not fire Snap Shots unless moving at Cruising Speed (i.e. only non-blast Ordnance)
• If fired, other weapons may only fire Snap Shots
• Roll 2D6 armour penetration and pick highest

Heavy Vehicles

• Always count as stationary for firing purposes
• Does not override Ordnance forcing other weapons to fire Snap Shots

That should cover everything The simplest way to remember is that your artillery fire like any other weapon, but have an additional firing mode which is what the minimum range is for. Otherwise it's all fairly straight forward especially in bullet point form

So go forth comrades and render His enemies into lots of tiny chunks! If you've got any questions, additions or general artillery ideas and advice please share them below

What do you say to the Chaos Marine hiding in cover?
Same thing you told the Eldar Ranger.

[Warsmith Uveron]

May be a Section listing the size of each type of Blast Template available as this can be a little unclear in places.. 

[WarriorFish]

No problem Uveron, they're all on page 12 and now the OP :tu: Small and large are the normal ones, though with artillery you're mostly dealing with the larger of the two pie plates. Bigger than that and you're looking at Apoc/Lords of War ordnance!

[librisrouge]

Are we going to go into detail on the various, and beautiful, artillery pieces His Imperial Guard can bring to bear? I'd love to hear what people think about the Manticore nowadays. I used to field two consistently and now...not so much. I miss them.

[Kilofix]

Barrage always hits Side Armor of Vehicles.

 

There is no longer a rule that says that Barrage hits only the top floor of Ruins.

 

Super Heavy ignores Ordnance rule about Snap (e.g. Knight, Minotaur).

 

Edit:

 

When targeting, the "doughnut hole" of the Blast Template can be placed over ANY part of a Vehicle's hull, or Walker's base. It doesn't need to be centered.

 

Twin Linked can be used to reroll Blast Scatter Direction and Distance.

 

Blasts that hit a Unit on the Battlements of a Building will also damage the Building.

 

Blasts only remove a single Void Shield each, regardless of how many Units are hit (per FAQ).

 

Blasts cannot deliberately target Invisible Units or Units locked in Close Combat but may incidentally hit them when targeting something else or after Scattering.

[WarriorFish]

Thanks Kilo I'll add a few in to the OP, I wasn't looking to detail every rule to do with blasts :P

[Phubar]

Apoc barrage now is the adjustable "template" with 6 (?) blasts linked together. The clover one is the old one :)

[Truesight]

Having used artillery pieces for a few games now I've found great value in splitting them between an Imperial Guard CAD, and Death Korps Siege regiment lists.  The Imperial Guard of course have the wonderful Fire on My Target! order for ignores cover, thus I usually have a medusa or two for my Company Commander to devastate threats with.  The Death Korps Siege Regiment however has a different version of Bring It Down! giving the unit twin linked against vehicles and monstrous creatures.  My basilisks have been using this to reap a fine toll of imperial knights and hiding tanks.

My best piece of advice to people using artillery is to not try to hide them, you want good lines of sight to destroy your opponents centrepieces.  Toughness 7 with a 3+ and crew is very hard to take down, an Aegis can be invaluable though for when lascannons start blazing.

 

Next have sacrificial units. When the enemy gets in range of your guns they move in and stand in front of the enemy.  One more turn of shooting after that chump unit is obliterated in assault is usually all you need.  I've found conscripts and Death Riders work well for this.

 

Don't forget: Imperial knights cannot declare their shield against a barrage weapon, with Strength 9 ordnance we have probably one of the best weapons in the game to punish them.

[Father Mehman]

Don't forget: Imperial knights cannot declare their shield against a barrage weapon, with Strength 9 ordnance we have probably one of the best weapons in the game to punish them.

 

Where does it say this? I'm horribly curious about this.

[Truesight]

 

Where does it say this? I'm horribly curious about this.

 

Under the Barrage weapon rule it says "Hits against vehicles are always resolved against side armour" .

This is written horribly, and there are a few interpretations:

1) The shot hit the "top" facing which has an armour value equivalent to the side armour.  Knights cannot shield this facing.

2) The shot hits the side armour.  The knight cannot shield both facings. 

3) The shot hits side armour, if the knight player elected to shield one of his side facings, check which side the centre of the blast is closest to to determine which one is hit.

 

Our area determined that the first one was correct, as backed by the ITC tournament ruling on the issue (number 3): https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/03/27/dont-fear-the-knight/

[WarriorFish]

Apoc barrage now is the adjustable "template" with 6 (?) blasts linked together. The clover one is the old one

Can you let me know where this is please? I got the description from the rulebook, and it has the marker used in an example on page 161 and there's no mention in the FAQs.

Where does it say this? I'm horribly curious about this.

Under the Barrage weapon rule it says "Hits against vehicles are always resolved against side armour" .

This is written horribly, and there are a few interpretations:

1) The shot hit the "top" facing which has an armour value equivalent to the side armour. Knights cannot shield this facing.

2) The shot hits the side armour. The knight cannot shield both facings.

3) The shot hits side armour, if the knight player elected to shield one of his side facings, check which side the centre of the blast is closest to to determine which one is hit.

Our area determined that the first one was correct, as backed by the ITC tournament ruling on the issue (number 3): https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/03/27/dont-fear-the-knight/

According to the barrage rules on page 160 barrage hits are "resolved against side armour" on vehicles, so that means case 2 or 3 - I checked the FAQs and found no mention of this so it's something the rules miss. You'd have to decide which side your shot hits with your opponent in some way.

I've updated the OP with some more, including the FAQ links

[Father Mehman]

Thank you for the information, Truesight and Lord Commissar. I hate to say that it's not applicable for me.

[Phubar]

About Apoc barrage blast marker.

In Escalation book. It says that veteran players may still have the clover one instesd of the ajustable one but it says that both are valid.

[Kilofix]

It's abit odd but the original Apoc template was the clover but there really wasn't a physical template. Then the bendy one came out with Escalation, then with the 7th edition rule book it's back to the clover

[CaptainHelion]

It's abit odd but the original Apoc template was the clover but there really wasn't a physical template.

 

The large plastic clover template in my terrain box would like to disagree with you there.

[WarriorFish]

Sounds about right from GW doesn't it? I think the clover looks better and is easier to use, but not too many weapons use it as far as I'm aware so it likely won't come up much.

I hope this topic proves useful and maybe helps get some more artillery (other than Wyverns) on the table. If it does share your wisdom you gleaned from battle For the moment here's a little bit of fluff I wrote especially for it:

Sergeant Uraraka lay motionless, peering through her magnoculars on the xenos position she had just called an Earthshaker barrage on. Even from this distance the familiar shriek of the ordnance dropping was audible and yet someone proved to be ineffective against their fortifications and bunkers.

"Looks like we came all this way for nothing" Specialist Jon signalled, nodding at the tangled jungle they had spent two weeks sliding through to find the enemy base.

Uraraka said nothing and sent the signal on her vox to stop the bombardment. Even with the message sent the sheer volume of shells and the distance involved meant it wouldn't stop any time in the immediate future. The Stormtroopers than waited, silent and still. They waited for the shelling to stop and then they waited again.

A small smile crept to Uraraka's lips once the Firewarriors, suits and more finally emerged from their defences to fall in. The smile extended to the rest of her squad when she called in the barrage once more and they watched the regimented xenos try in vain to reach cover before the scream of shell became the roar of the Omnissiah's fury. After a full day of unrelenting artillery strikes Squad Uraraka moved in amongst the carnage to set charges to ensure the xenos base could never be used again. Except perhaps as a graveyard...

[Kilofix]

 

It's abit odd but the original Apoc template was the clover but there really wasn't a physical template.

 

 

The large plastic clover template in my terrain box would like to disagree with you there.

Oh, I stand corrected then. But they did go from the clover Apoc template to the bendy one and then back to the clover.

 

You can't get the bendy one new anymore.