Q-Knights: Best primary gun?

[chapter master 454]

Yeah the range of the battle-cannon is actually really useful. I think people are making the assumption that that range means your knight has to be static.

 

I run crusaders very aggressively, and the battle cannon means they can charge things that are out of the way and still target anything I can draw line of sight to on the table. I find people often try to spread out against knights and abuse the fact that we are a low model count army that are relatively easy to run rings around. We might look mobile on paper, but once you take into account having to manoeuvre around terrain and our mobility degrading, combined with line of sight blocking terrain. That 72" range can be pretty helpful.

 

As Focslain mentioned sometimes knights end up on flanks. This tends to happen because it had to manoeuvre around terrain to take out a crucial target, say a manticore hiding behind a line of sight blocker. The battle cannon means even though the rest of the combat is taking place on the other flank it can still support it. This is a really common scenario when an opponent double castles (splits his gunline force into two separate battle groups that set up in each corner of his deployment zone).

 

This is one of the hidden strengths of the RFBC.

I do want to just remind people of the points different between the two weapons isn't Knight and day (92 vs. 104, 12 points difference). Another thing can be said for the ability to go into overdrive when it gets some hot rolls and those can be more often due to having command re-rolls (more viable now with the CP boost we got).

 

However I do want to stomp on the whole relic thing real fast and swift. That isn't a good argument as Endless Fury isn't an end all be all weapon and I would argue that Fury of Mars is disgustingly good (Melta at 48" range with str9, no armour is safe!!) and the Thunder of Voltoris is also a big game changer as well while the Endless Fury isn't as massively powerful as the house relics. It is good, don't get me wrong it is a workhorse of a gun but it isn't exactly setting the world on fire in terms of relics (though that seems common in knight relics...none really SHOUT to us, more akin to a nice boost instead of an army defining weapon). 

 

Reliability is certainly the biggest strength of the AGC. Solid 12 shots every turn cannot be argued with and is effective. However I think having the chance to push more damage through is always nice and in grander battle plans does let you retain some elements of surprise. Another thing however I think helps is EVERY knight can take a carapace weapon, having access to those helps all knights gain some form of consistent output and even off the firepower of some weapons.

 

I am most certainly ice-skating up hill to be fair, the votes are in and the AGC has won the majority. However I do ask others to not just go out and ignore paladins and errants, those knights are still extremely effective and lets be honest, they still have some serious rule of cool to them (yea, the gatling does look nice but the massive cannon on the arm just gets me...happy!)

[Heliomanes]

How does that "stomp on the relic thing"? I might be reading you wrong, but you seem to just say that you don't like it that much. That's fine of course, but not likely to get us close to the heart of things.

[PiñaColada]

Yeah, I'm still shocked that the Avenger got the price drop. I always thought that weapon was priced okay and it was still the better option compared to the RFBC even then, now with the price drop the Avenger is just so good. It's also, as previous posters pointed out, one of the few consistent weapons we have. Maybe the RFBC gets a small price drop in Chapter Approved, but at the same time we have a really good codex (and a fun one!!) and I don't want to get greedy.

 

As a small aside, something that hadn't really struck me before now is that Endless Fury is a lot better than a normal Avenger when firing overwatch :)

[Mushkilla]

Ohh, I'm not saying the battle cannon is better than the avenger. The avenger is our most reliable questoris weapon. But when it comes to the second weapon on a crusader I'm a big fan of the rapid fire battle cannon. Range is useful.

 

Maybe I just play on boards with loads of terrain but I often have to use a lot of my knights movement on lateral maneuvers to get line of sight on targets so sometimes I get further away from a target to get a shot suddenly the threat range of the avenger is 30". Same thing if you want to charge something to your left and shoot something to your right.

 

Infantry can move through ruin walls knights can't, even if they are slower they can avoid a knight pretty well by just playing hide and seek through a wall. As a result you need to get them in multiple fire arcs and range really helps with that as my knights are often spread out.

[Heliomanes]

I see your point, Mushkilla. Still, that would mean that the Crusader or the Paladin has been outmaneuvered enough to only be able to use one of its primary weapons. The gatling or the chainsword have to be out of effective combat range for the added range of the battle cannon to come into play. Which is better than nothing of course, but its a net loss. If you could bring a Crusader with two battle cannons though (Boomblaster pattern) then it would add a lot of utility rather than just be a small remedy when a bad situation occurs.

[Mushkilla]

But sometimes that's all you need to win the mission. Knights can't afford to let their opponents get too far ahead on objectives (in progressive scoring missions). You have your knight crusader engaging the majority of your opponents force but, that force is on a flank, a fast unit breakaway or he deepstrike some cheap objective sitters onto an objective on the other side of the table and if you don't do something about it they are going to be churning out VPs. A battle cannon and/or ironstorm missiles really shine in those sorts of situations.

 

For me it's about having options to play the mission. As I find you can't ignore it as you won't table a good player and we have to approach the mission quite differently as a low model count hyper elite army without objective secure. You don't really want to be sacrificing mobility to score objectives, but sometimes you have to, either way you can't afford to let your opponent get a VP lead early on so blasting him off distant objectives is pretty important and having range helps in those situations.

 

Matching the range on a knight's weapons doesn't really matter in my experience as my knights are often shooting multiple different targets. So the majority of the dakka goes into local threats whilst the longer range weapons exert threat and board precense. If that makes sense?

[Stray]

Said it before, and will say it again. GW should stick the indirect fire rule on old RFBC - give it a tiny change like that, and ta daa, it has a superb, well defined role not better covered by it's contemporaries.

 

It already looks like artillery.

[Mushkilla]

Yeah now that would be amazing.

 

I mean right now I take it over the thermal cannon but when I run traitor crusaders I always double up on the Avenger Gatling Cannon and get a nurgle herald to debuff the target with -1 toughness (amazing against T4, T6 and T7).

[Stray]

I think i feel strongly enough about it that I might mail the rules team with the raw data regarding the q-weapons, point out the points costs, and remind them that one of these things is not like the others.

 

I really think there's a case for adding that extra utility to the RFBC given it's cost. You never know, they might go for it. Can't hurt to poke them.

[9x19 Parabellum]

Just out of curiousity, what does an "indirect fire" weapon look like in 8th edition? Is it just "ignores LOS" or is there something more to it?

[Marshal Reinhard]

The idea of indirect fire is very pleasing to me, not least because it makes my house relic very enticing

[Stray]

Just out of curiousity, what does an "indirect fire" weapon look like in 8th edition? Is it just "ignores LOS" or is there something more to it?

 

Pretty much exactly that buddy, yeah.

 

Essentially just what the carapace missile launcher does.

[Frostbit3]

I know we are talking about the best gun here, but you win this game with objectives, not just straight killing potential. In a knight army, there are absolutely situations in which it is better for a knight to hang back and sacrifice damage potential for board control and objective security. In that situation my preference is to have a crusader with rfbc as it is tactically flexible. The other knights tend to be locked into a specific role or range band. This is the only point I was really trying to make.

[shandwen]

Isn't it rather awesome that there doesn't appear to be a dud weapon in this codex? It is so rare for a game to have all options actually be useful.

[AstraWlad]

We can think about RFBC from the different angle: for just 100 pts you basically get a turret weapon of Command LRBT. It's a crazy discount. Of course, if I have to choose only one weapon I would take Avenger in no time (or two Avengers for a Renegade Knight) but if I'm looking for a weapon to _complement_ Avenger on the Crusader, RFBC is a primary choice.

[PiñaColada]

Isn't it rather awesome that there doesn't appear to be a dud weapon in this codex? It is so rare for a game to have all options actually be useful.

It is! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I feel like we've gotten one of the best codices so far in 8th. Not just in terms of power (where we're strong but not overpowered IMO) but in terms of relative balance witihin the codex. And completely stuffed full of relics!!

 

Ignore LoS would make the RFBC very interesting, I just went into the codex thinking the statline would be improved because people pointed out that the statline of IGs superheavies were improved. So in my head it was clear that either the gun would get better (more in line with thunder of voltoris) or we'd get a 20ish point drop. Hence my slight disappointment in that gun.

 

By the way, have I gotten the two carapace missile launchers mixed up all this time? Lokking at page 103 in the codex it looks like the ironstorm has a few big missiles and the stormspear has the more numerous small ones. I could have sworn it was the other way around, did GW mess up or am I wrong?

[Mushkilla]

No the big missiles have always been the ironstorm. The thin missiles are the storm spear. The way I remember is the fat ones have shrapnel and the thin ones punch through armour. :)

[PiñaColada]

Oh, so I've been wrong about this since the time the models came out. No biggie :P

[Karhedron]

Just use whichever one you like the look of and tell your opponent what you are using before the game starts (paying appropriate points of course ;) ).

[CaptainMarsh]

The Avenger is the most reliable. The RFBC is overcosted for what it gives you. This isn't to say that the RFBC can't do work, but it is functionally the same lethality as a Battle Cannon on a Tank Commander who moved under half his movement. That isn't lighting the world aflame, neither does the RFBC. You can roll 2, you can roll 12, command point re-rolls don't guarantee a thing. The RFBC needs something more to justify its point cost. As is, and assuming I'm a rich man with all the Knights, I'd only bring the RFBC if I am bringing the House that has the relic for it. 

If you have a Knight with a RFBC, it will probably do whatever job you want it to do often enough for you to feel pleased with it. Knights are good and their weapons hit hard. Just put the anointed oil in the right place and pray to the God-Emperor and Omnissah for good dice luck and laugh as the RFBC tears stuff out. You'll just have to accept the opposite result, too.

By the way, if we're including Heavy Flamer vs Heavy Stubber, it does bring the point cost closer. But then you need to consider their profiles as well, and a Heavy Flamer is a much more effective weapon at its role than the Heavy Stubber is at its role. 

The Avenger will accomplish more and do it more often, but when you are targeting heavy armour, you will have to accept less than impressive results sometimes. It will do everything else in all nice and toasty, though.

[Guest MistaGav]

I wished there was a rule similar to what the AM codex in that if you moved half distance, a tank can fire a main gun twice but at the same enemy unit. That could have been a decent rule to give knight players too, or at the very least, a stratagem. It would make the RFBC a bit better.

[chapter master 454]

The Avenger is the most reliable. The RFBC is overcosted for what it gives you. This isn't to say that the RFBC can't do work, but it is functionally the same lethality as a Battle Cannon on a Tank Commander who moved under half his movement. That isn't lighting the world aflame, neither does the RFBC. You can roll 2, you can roll 12, command point re-rolls don't guarantee a thing. The RFBC needs something more to justify its point cost. As is, and assuming I'm a rich man with all the Knights, I'd only bring the RFBC if I am bringing the House that has the relic for it. 

 

If you have a Knight with a RFBC, it will probably do whatever job you want it to do often enough for you to feel pleased with it. Knights are good and their weapons hit hard. Just put the anointed oil in the right place and pray to the God-Emperor and Omnissah for good dice luck and laugh as the RFBC tears stuff out. You'll just have to accept the opposite result, too.

 

By the way, if we're including Heavy Flamer vs Heavy Stubber, it does bring the point cost closer. But then you need to consider their profiles as well, and a Heavy Flamer is a much more effective weapon at its role than the Heavy Stubber is at its role. 

 

The Avenger will accomplish more and do it more often, but when you are targeting heavy armour, you will have to accept less than impressive results sometimes. It will do everything else in all nice and toasty, though.

 

If the RFBC gets slammed for having random shots so hard by you then in the same vain the heavy flamer is a terrible weapon. 17 points for D6 shots? Yea you can roll a 6 but you also roll 1s which just blows. Coupled with the short range you need to get it to just means it can't chose better targets which often leads to it having to target those tanks you were hunting with the AGC.

The Heavy Stubber is a FRACTION of the cost at 4 points and can actually do work turn 1 all the way to turn 5 without batting an eye regarding targets. If infantry aren't within 36" of the knight, then mission accomplished! Stubbers also do gain other benefits, imperials get the ability to strap AP1 to theirs which would very easily balance out the whole AP issue (they effectively become primaris bolt weapons) and mechanicus can have them become decent overwatch guns with various side benefits (however I admit, the mechanicus side is a little weak).

 

Sorry, but I feel you are arguing in favour of the heavy flamer purely because you don't want to discredit the already landsliding winning AGC in the argument there Marsh. Heavy Stubbers are very effective at their role as well, they may not seem to put favourable with our other weapons (we are talking about the weapon knights use for point defence here, they were never meant to be the main gun. They function the same as a commander's cupola weapon mount) but do not underestimate stubbers. They help chip away the chaff and can do so every turn. After all, a consistent 3 shots is nothing to scoff at, it will never let you down with a bad roll and since the flamer does cost a real premium of 17 points, it better do some pretty good work to get those points back! The Stubber effectively does so by knocking one guardsman out, the flamer needs to get a marine or two before it is paying points back.

[Mushkilla]

What are people's thoughts on the melta gun Vs stubber? Is it worth the 17pts?

[Marshal Reinhard]

Depends a bit on what platform you put it on. It presumably makes sense on a Gallant who's going to get up close and personal as a matter of course, and perhaps less so on a Crusader whose armaments tend to the more long range engagements?

 

That said, there's something to be said of the fact that probably even your Crusaders should be looking at charging something as often as possible, and it will be invariably armedwith the aforementioned heavy flamer (though to be sure, the twelve 3+ titanic feet attacks is the real driver behind the decision to bring this otherwise dedicated ranged platform up in someone's face).

 

If you're needing to cut corners for points though this will probably be the first thing to go.

[Karhedron]

Same as above, I would normally put them Armiger Warglaives whenever possible as it compliments their big-game hunter role. Other units maybe if there are points available.

 

A lot will depend on what other Knights are armed with. If I have 2 or more Knights armed with Reapers/Thunderstrikes then the meltas can generally stay at home as the big CCWs hit harder and hit more often.