Anti tank?

[Beams]

I keep seeing the sentiment that anittank is worthless, since anti horde weapons work better as anti tank, and that IG infantry squads make taking anti tank weapons super inefficient.

 

That said, Ive always had great luck with meltas, and having run the math, it seems to vindicate the melta.

 

I came up with 7 guardsmen (28 pts) firing their lasguns, hitting 50% of the time against a tank (wounding on sixes, 3+ save) doing on average about .74 wounds vs a single sister of battle dominion with a melta gun (27 pts) dealing an average of 1.96 wounds (hitting 66% of the time, wounding on 3's, 3+ save) and a veteran, who is cheaper, is still as efficient shooting the meltagun.

 

Sure against a land raider it will be a little less likely to wound, but will still be above the guardsmen. Can anyone explain to me why it seems like the consensus is to never take antitank?

Edited December 13, 2017 by Beams

[Frater Cornelius]

Variance. Look at Marine AT. Single shot, still allows a save in most cases, D6 damage. This can spike in a good and bad direction, which is rather annoying. But in many cases it isn’t about anti-tank being worthless. Multi-purpose weapons like Plasma do a very good job at killing anything and can be brought en mass.

[Lysere]

Variance. Look at Marine AT. Single shot, still allows a save in most cases, D6 damage. This can spike in a good and bad direction, which is rather annoying. But in many cases it isn’t about anti-tank being worthless. Multi-purpose weapons like Plasma do a very good job at killing anything and can be brought en mass.

 

Variance is a big part of it. Melta benefits from being able to reduce the variance by getting close but for some armies larger numbers of weapons like Plasma tend to work better, especially with re-rolls and stratagems to boost them.

 

Most AT weapons that see common use tend to reduce variance to a degree as well. The Mechanicus Neutron Laser has a minimum damage of 3, Melta weapons have their bonus, weapons like Thunder hammers have a fixed damage amount.

 

Of course the current trend could change in the future as more armies get their books and we see stratagems to aid durability against volume of fire, or ways to boost consistency for AT weapons but for now I personally only have a couple of weapons in my list that can truly be considered Anti Tank, the rest tends to fill multiple roles.

Edited December 13, 2017 by Lysere

[Frater Cornelius]

^Eldar weapons are pretty good at it. Reapers are Missile Launchers done right. To some degree Brightlances as well as they are -4AP, thus can not be saves by 3+, unlike the -3AP of the LC. The variance wouldn't be much of an issue if you could bring enough. IG has the potential to use the LC much better than Marines, who can not bring enough to converge on the average roll. But IG will not do it, because they can bring even more Plasma and Mortars for the half the price. Cost-benefit simply ain't up to par with heavy AT.

 

Having said that, if I am not running Guilliman, whos aura turn even Bolters into fearsome AT weapons, I tend to include around 6-8 LCs, as they hit and wound on 3s, thus the re-rolls of 1 are saver here than with Bolters.

[chapter master 454]

Tried to type up a response for this thread twice now and can't get my thoughts straight so here are two things and I will leave it at that:

1st: the random damage of guns is stupid. The point of hit and wound rolls are to determine that you did land a square hit (they represent a shot skimming your hair or bouncing) but then damage adds to this. Somehow a lascannon hits true and yet doesn't leave you a crumpled heap. Weapons should have fixed fire rates (I did a short home brew of rules for my own fun of how blast would work in this case) and fixed damage. Lascannons should hit for 3-4 damage, maybe 5. Brightlances however should only do 2-3 to represent their lighter frame but greater penetration power.

 

2nd: in contrast to the prior statement, anti-tank weapons are good. While yes variance sucks, on average D6 weapons have 3.5 per roll for their result which can be a big threat to some units. Thunder Hammers may be consistent but you need to get it to the target first before it can hit. I have found these weapons on average good picks for their duty (anti-big stuff) and even then they can clear out tough infantry nice and easy. They may allow saves but again that isn't the whole truth: Turning a 3+ into a 6+ is a HUGE deal. Naturally there will be those 16.67% of games where the shot is saved but it certainly is a lot better than giving them a 66% success rate. This is white lighter guns don't work so well and need to be so heavily massed to get anywhere.

One thing to make note of is weapon's 'impact' on the unit. Yes a lascannon can for some dumb reason do 1 damage but when you finally hit the target with a lascannon you know it's going to hurt it. Where as those few shots of your lighter guns won't do so well. Most big targets at most can only take 4 lascannon hits on average and even then it becomes less when you plink wounds here or there.
Yes, mass plasma is pretty good for blowing things up but when you compare 10 plasma guns to 4 lascannons, the 4 lascannons will generally put down a tank more consistently and from greater range than plasma which may as well of been melta at that point since you want to rapid fire it. (I use plasma guns and not cannons because lol plasma cannons are terribad with their D3 shots. Same stats across the board even damage but yet rate of fire on average of a 12" plasma gun...for how many points?)

 

there, finally got my thoughts out...some reason that was hard...brain must be farting something fierce today

[Lysere]

Las Cannons also don't threaten to blow up the models holding it while still having higher strength and average damage than plasma but it all comes down to the rest of your list as all things inevitably do. I do wish more weapons had minimum damage stats or they could reduce max damage and add a fixed amount to it, or just break it down into more dice. Instead of d6 some weapons could have 1+d3 or 2d3 damage. In the lance vs las cannon example the lance could be the 1+d3 with the las being 2d3. Both have the same minimum but the las cannon has better potential in exchange for less ap. Obviously points might need some adjust if this happened but this would need to be done all at once anyway so that's an easy thing to do.