Some competition in the tank space!

[Black Knight]

New datasheet for our spider tank courtesy of Marshal Loss over on the rumour thread.

 

Still a little miffed that the Neutron is still D3 shots even if it is strength 12 now. It really needs to be two, as the amount of times I have seen one shot and no wounds, is way above it actually doing anything worth the price of admission.

 

The air weapons stay the same which I am pleased with, I do not want them to be the default goto weapon again.

 

Eradication Beamer is not bad now, swingy yes but the damage is a lot more consistent now. I am thinking it maybe worth trying them out.

 

Wow the heavy phosphor blaster is actually what it should be, I wanted twelve shots at damage one but eight at damage two is marvellous. There is now a choice between that and the energy cannon on the Submarine, depending on whether you want AP and constant shots or indirect fire.

 

Oooh heavy Stubbers are assault now?

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Black_Knight

[Magos Takatus]

Well, the Ironstrider's Autocannons were given the assault rule so it seems the Cognis weapons will be assault weapons now. Well spotted!

 

I was using the Neutron Laser on both of my Onagers in the few games of 8th/9th I've had but these rules changes could very well open up options where were previously lacklustre. When I first saw the Onager I thought all the weapon options  looked great so I magnetized them. I may be experimenting with using the Beefy Phosphor Cannons (Official name for the weapons :p ) on the Onager to chew through Zoanthropes. I'm more likely to try the Eradication Beamer on the larger Nids though, my friend doesn't have many medium-sized Tyranids.

[Prot]

I am pretty sure I'm in the minority with this, but as shown above, I'll probably continue to avoid this chassis in 9th. 

 

What I wanted to see was something a little more similar to the Sister's tank I face all the time. I think we should have a higher damage tank like that and we just don't have it. I don't think this is the right chassis for a mid-to long range, medium strength/low damage weapon set. Admech have a lot of access to this flavour of damage, and these big crab boxes have huge limitations on the 9th ed table top. Using 1 is worse than using 2 which puts more pressure on them to perform in a higher end damage expectation.

 

With this news it's still about the Ballistarii Cognis Las. This is a bit unfortunate. I just think the pessimist in me sees a plethora of the Onager kit in player's hands and it's in GW's best interest to leave this vehicle in a 'B' category. 

 

Points not withstanding, and external rules, and Strats, I just can't see fielding mine any time soon. I like my CP, and a Batallion gives me 3 choices. I put Onagers on the bottom of that list. Even if you could take a 'squad' of Onagers it would help. 

[Black Knight]

Yeah its not great but it is better, I do like the fact that they have tried at least, the winners are definitely the Eradication Beamer and the Phosphor Blaster, but as you say they are both covered by other units, Cognis Las beats the Beamer and the Energy cannon on the Sub is a non-los of the blaster. I am still holding out hope on something that may help with the random shot issue on the Neutron like a stratagem.

 

It will come down to price again, as is always the case with Admech.

[Prot]

True... price will be important. 

 

Honestly though I don't think they tried very hard with it. I mean that Eradication beamer.... D3 shots still? Gees that's just terrible. This tank's goal in life should be ripping crater sized holes through thick armour.  S12 is nearly meaningless... I mean it will come into play on the very odd time it's going after something bigger than an attack bike, but smaller than rhino. Which I'd debate is not what you really want to do with this gun.

 

I want that gun to strike fear of the Omnissiah into other tanks! I go back to the Exorcist because that thing is a beast, shooting the equivalent of (potentially) 9 lascannons! (And a strat to make it much more probable) on a T8 platform.

 

I face that tank all the time and it is exactly the hole the Admech have in our arsenal. 

 

Also it's an odd ball platform. I am starting to really wonder if there is a new unit in the codex for us to fill the hole that I hoped the Onager would fill? 

 

I'm sorry to come off as negative. I actually have not been a fan of the Onager in all of 9th, and I manage to get a lot of games in, and every time I put it back in (usually 2) my list, they come right out the next game and I just don't miss them. I had very high hopes for the unit... I do think it's iconic and still looks cool. 

[DanPesci]

Aye having 3 neutron onagers built I was really hoping for a bit more..

 

D3+3 is better, but unless there is a strat/onager special rule to fire blast weapon at max or a further special rule to the neutron laser itself (reroll wounds against vehicles), itll need to be cheap points wise to work. Something needs to offset the random shots.

 

There was little to no point with the S12 upgrade with what you take them to deal with (vehicles)

 

Eradication beamer will be interesting, certainly against larger squads of marines etc, and charging an onager forwards is always fun (if we keep the auto-explode strat).

 

Twin heavy phosphor blaster is cool, but Id say you can take from this that a kastellan is now getting 12x S6 AP-2 D2 shots too (plus whatever rule phosphor gets)...so remains to be seen if theyre a better platform for the weapon still.

[Prot]

Agreed. Part of the problem is something you see when you play with Admech for a while. We need our CP to compete. We have very little outside of Canticles to give us a real boost. We don’t have a great farming system either so I really hate making extra detachments. This means the Onager has to be good enough to crack the top three and what the onager does well is easily mimicked by units in other slots. 
 

I agree with Dan that we have to see what’s happening to Kastelans as well. For now I’m going to probably pass on the Onager without more info. 

[Gaz1858]

All the new datasheets are in my post on the Competitve Adeptus Mechanicus page FYI

 

Regarding the Dunecrawler. I have always run the Icarus, i find it much better than the Neutron and those were the only 2 real options. Now it would seem that the Heavy Phosphor Blaster may be better than the Icarus due to number of shots and Damage potential. HPB has damage potential of 16 with the Icarus is 13+d6 so it will come down to costs and any special rules the guns have, along with competition in the codex of course.

 

The Ironstrider buff has made them more of an option for me. I have never used them as t6 W6 and 4+ was just no survivable enough for me. Going to 3+ does help with that as does the Cognis Autocannon gaining more shots. 

[DeStinyFiSh]

If my calculations are correct, the Beamer at short range is better against AVs than the Neutron Laser (4.66 damage compared to 4.44) and better against MEQs than the Phosphor gun (1.94 to 1,77 unsaved wounds; gets even better against 3 wound targets or DG because of higher damage).

At long range it is worse than the Laser against AVs (only 2.59 wounds; but the difference will be mitigated a bit if the target has an invul) and slighty worse against MEQ than the Phosphor (1.62 unsaved wounds).

 

I have not done the calculation against T8, but my guess is the Laser gets better here. Same for the Phosphor against hordes because of the rate of fire.

 

Long story short:

The Beamer can keep up with both options, but you have to get within 18" to get the most out of the gun. Against some "extremes" (T8 models or no save hordes) the other guns are propably better, but the Beamer is right in the middle and gives some flexibility.

And since the boards are smaller and you have to get to the center you might get away with that restriction.

 

Other rules might come up (for example Phosphor ignoring cover like it does now) that push a gun a bit further of course.

 

 

So is the Onager a competition in the heavy slot? I don't know... I have only 1 Gunboat and I am not the biggest fan of Dakka Bots (I think they are boring), so I took my Onagers quite often and they did ok. The 5++ reroll 1s made them a bit more resilient than other tanks with the same price tag, so that is something. New weapon rules are a straight upgrade to that.

 

To realy answer the question I guess we have to wait for new Skorpius rules as wenn as the full Onager rules (points? forcefield? squadrons?).

Edited April 7, 2021 by DeStinyFiSh

[Gaz1858]

The pteraxii rules are up on Facebook competitive page as part of the collection

[Black Knight]

Any chance you could link the pics here please, I don't use facebook.

[Gaz1858]

I dunno how to add pics sorry

[Black Knight]

No prob got hold of them on the rumour thread

 

If you want to add photos in the future you can right click the photo and select "copy image address". With that you can select the image insert button on the post edit page(The small rectangle that's next to "<>") paste the the link that is now saved from "copy image address" and that will add the photo to your post. Only works on images that are already online though.

Edited April 7, 2021 by Black_Knight

[Gaz1858]

[Magos Takatus]

So the Heavy Phosphor Blaster is unchanged but the Onager Phosphor weapon has been boosted? I'll have to wait and see how Kastelans work now before celebrating but most of these are looking good. A little concerned that the Dragoons are losing an attack, they feel reliant on rolling a lot of sixes to get decent damage output. I know I should just relax until the codex is released but I can't help wanting to know more.

[Black Knight]

Thanks Gaz1858, I have been trying to find them everywhere.

 

Ironstriders are looking really good, I need to buy some more. Looking at all these datasheets makes me realise just how many models I am yet to buy...

[DanPesci]

So the Heavy Phosphor Blaster is unchanged but the Onager Phosphor weapon has been boosted? I'll have to wait and see how Kastelans work now before celebrating but most of these are looking good. A little concerned that the Dragoons are losing an attack, they feel reliant on rolling a lot of sixes to get decent damage output. I know I should just relax until the codex is released but I can't help wanting to know more.

 

 

Yeah id noticed that. So presumably the onagers phosphor blaster is gonna get changed to a different name as it now seems to have a different profile. Very interested to see what the kastellans now have.

 

 

Priests - Nice to see the 2dmg stickpriests and -1 AP jazzhands. Will be interesting to see what these keep rulewise too (for both invs and mortal wounds on the stickboys especially)

 

Goads - Ap -1 confirmed on all goad weapons is also good for my block of infiltrators I refuse to replace ha

 

 

Just looking at stuff from a purely weapon stats - ironstriders certainly seem the way to go currently for antitank with those D3+3 lascannons. Im still holding out for better onager rules though cos im not huge on the ironstrider models, and certainly dont want to buy/build 4-5 of em just to have a reliable antitank option 

[Subtle Discord]

Onager = 1 Twin Phosphor Blasters. Archaeopter = 2 single Phosphor Blasters.

 

Now, that's not a guarantee that there won't be some distinctions. In this case the rate of fire is different, even if you double it, but in some cases I think it's confusion over multiples of a single weapon vs. Twin/Linked weapons. But yeah, looking closer now, it seems like the rate of fire might be different depending on the platform (Yay! More obscure weapon variant names!) or it could simply be a typo. Maybe the Cognis term is providing extra shot/s and that's what's confusing?

[Magos Takatus]

So far it looks like Cognis weapons are converting weapons into the assault weapon category. I think the shot number is a different issue here because the Heavy Phosphor Blaster seen on the flier is D1 however the Onager mounted weapon inflicts two damage per shot. This would mean there is more than one mistake in that statline if they are the same weapon type. From what I've seen twin linked weapons double the shots rather than the damage.

 

This does make me wonder what the Cognis rule will do for the Cognis flamer since that will already be an assault weapon. 

 

So, what name do you think the Onager Phosphor weapon be called? Super Heavy Phosphor Blaster sounds like it should be mounted on a Titan. Phosphor Blast Cannon? GW loves to use archaic weapon names for a lot of weapons so who knows? I hope they don't mangle it like they did with the Serberys and Sterilyzors. I don't think I could cope with a Mega Fosfor Blastyr. 

[Lord Raven 19]

Aren't regular lascannons still damage D6, seems strange these are 3+D3? 

[Subtle Discord]

Yeah, that's the thing, everyone is noticing different bits-and-pieces in the details depending on how closely they're looking and comparing, and on top of that we're working with incomplete information so there's more room for error. GW also has a few copy-and-paste errors in their recent past that make it so it can't be completely ruled out. Time will tell.

 

Heck, I'm having a hard time comparing things because I don't like the symbols in place of the text for the categories. After several decades my brain is hardwired and this old dog struggles to learn that simple new trick. :)

[Magos Takatus]

Yeah, that's the thing, everyone is noticing different bits-and-pieces in the details depending on how closely they're looking and comparing, and on top of that we're working with incomplete information so there's more room for error. GW also has a few copy-and-paste errors in their recent past that make it so it can't be completely ruled out. Time will tell.

 

Heck, I'm having a hard time comparing things because I don't like the symbols in place of the text for the categories. After several decades my brain is hardwired and this old dog struggles to learn that simple new trick.

I know how you feel. I remember short and long range to-hit modifiers for weapons. 

 

One thing is for sure though, our weapons don't follow the in-universe trend of stagnation. It feels like every stat line is in flux at the moment! As much as I'm looking forward to the complete reveal of our codex being drip-fed these stats certainly has ignited some fun discussion around here. :D

[Prot]

There is an overall theme I’m picking up from all new codex data sheets..... 

 

it feels to me that there are so many 2 wound models now ( to compensate for damage increases in 9th) that having a 1 damage weapon is truly in the basement, and far less useful in 9th ( especially without AP). Now at strength 3, it’s hardly worth rolling the dice against anything above cultists or conscripts. 
 

the other thing is the wide sweeping changes to D3 weapons largely becoming 2 flat is making damage mitigation better and better ( IE dreadnoughts, wave serpents, death guard, etc). The ability to “spike” damage to kill that extra model is gone and it will all become 1 damage in such cases. 
 

it seems like the ‘newer’ units are nearly unchanged. Still super curious about Breachers and Destroyers. 

[Zebukkuk]

This does make me wonder what the Cognis rule will do for the Cognis flamer since that will already be an assault weapon.

2 + D6 hits