Niche for the assault cannon?

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

A6 S6 AP0 D1

is a weird stat profile.

sure it will tear through T2-3 units, but we already have tons of weapons options to use against them.

 

against T4-6 you’re more than likely facing multi wound decent save units.

at S6 you’d think they’d be decent into gravis, but AP0 D1 means you’d be lucky to kill a single gravis model.

 

so what’s the niche these days?

[Sir Clausel]

The only thing i find it usefull for is when its twinlinked like on the land raider crusader/redeemer. 

There its quite usefull to take off the last or maybe 2 wounds off a tank or other tough unit that needs to die because of the devastating wounds. Otherwise its really meh mostly.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

7 hours ago, Sir Clausel said:

The only thing i find it usefull for is when its twinlinked like on the land raider crusader/redeemer. 

There its quite usefull to take off the last or maybe 2 wounds off a tank or other tough unit that needs to die because of the devastating wounds. Otherwise its really meh mostly.

Yeah, it just seems so underwhelming.

 

i feel like they should give it at least AP-1 and D2 to help separate it from the onslaught family of weapons.

 

but let’s face it, other than terminators and land raiders they’re probably going to try and phase the assault cannon out, and even for terminators/land raiders I wouldn’t be surprised if they were just transferred over to the onslaught family of weapons next codex.

[TheArtilleryman]

Yep. Assault cannon is very disappointing these days. It’s basically a multilaser and that sucks. Same syndrome as standard boltguns that are poor at AP 0.

 

Aside from terminators, it’s also on stormtalons, stormhawks, stormravens, dreadnoughts and Baal predators.

[chapter master 454]

been thinking about this myself. One thing I think could be handy for it is to give it "Anti-Infantry 5+". This doesn't improve its wounding rate however it does improve the rate of devastating wounds it gets against the target it is meant against. Damage 1 means it still won't be hosing out more elite troops at any decent rate due to higher wound count but having the advantage of just turning 1/3 (instead of 1/6) of the hits into outright kills would help it shine a little more.

 

Kind of make me think this sort of decide ideal might be embraced in other weapons as well that serve purposes elsewhere that have devastating wounds. Due to now no longer spilling over as they aren't mortal wounds, they aren't as oppressive so maybe just adding "Anti-X 5+" to certain weapons that are meant to deal with a specific threat that carry devastating wounds would help them just be a bit more meaningful. As it stands imo though, devastating wounds is just straight worthless as anything to rely on or even consider part of a weapons kit unless it does have a decent rate of fire, and even then it often doesn't do much. 17% chance to trigger is just comical (and that's after you hit).

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Yep. Assault cannon is very disappointing these days. It’s basically a multilaser and that sucks. Same syndrome as standard boltguns that are poor at AP 0.

 

Aside from terminators, it’s also on stormtalons, stormhawks, stormravens, dreadnoughts and Baal predators.

Standard boxnaughts probably won’t be around long, same with the Baal predator unfortunately.

[Paladin777]

Honestly, I find them useful for taking the last couple wounds off a tough target when my opponent refuses to fail his last saving throw. I also run my termies with a librarian, so the SH1 helps keep the shot volume high. Combos nicely with OoM, if it's in range, averaging 7 hits from 6 shots. 
 

finished off a Dreadknight and a Lord Invocatus like that last weekend. 

Edited April 9 by Paladin777

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

3 hours ago, Paladin777 said:

Honestly, I find them useful for taking the last couple wounds off a tough target when my opponent refuses to fail his last saving throw. I also run my termies with a librarian, so the SH1 helps keep the shot volume high. Combos nicely with OoM, if it's in range, averaging 7 hits from 6 shots. 
 

finished off a Dreadknight and a Lord Invocatus like that last weekend. 

I mean if you’re just trying to chip away a final wound or two, I feel like a 5 man HI squad is better for that job. A butt load more S5 shots with AP-1 and 3 of those shots being D2 with SH1, 7 more wounds and 35pts cheaper than a dread.

 

edit

although my last game I had a boxnaught on my home objective in cover, and my opponent was concerned about if he’d be able to shift it, so I guess there might be a psychological aspect to it.

Edited April 9 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Cenobite Terminator]

I think it good on the land raider crusader and redeemer since it’s twin linked. It’s good for putting a mortal wound or two on an enemy unit down to its last 1-2 wounds. It’s fairly reliable at this and you don’t have to waste more serious firepower.

Edited April 10 by Cenobite Terminator

[Helias_Tancred]

Great against chafe and fodder. With the devastating wounds mechanic it has a slight gambling feature vs other units, or a desperation feature, lol however you view it?

 

 

 

Edited April 12 by Helias_Tancred

[L30n1d4s]

Very, very niche application, but a Space Wolf Grey Hunter or Blood Claw pack and their attached Battle Leader in TDA/with Assault Cannon, with Inquisitor Greyfax leading them, has Anti-Psyker 4+ for its shooting... Combined with the Devastating Wounds from the Assault Cannon and Greyfax's own Devastating Wound weapons, you can reliably inflict a bunch of unsaveable wounds on a Psyker unit, especially something big and dangerous like Magnus or Mortarion that is difficult to take down normally.

Edited April 12 by L30n1d4s

[Paladin777]

On 4/9/2024 at 3:42 PM, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

I mean if you’re just trying to chip away a final wound or two, I feel like a 5 man HI squad is better for that job. A butt load more S5 shots with AP-1 and 3 of those shots being D2 with SH1, 7 more wounds and 35pts cheaper than a dread.

 

edit

although my last game I had a boxnaught on my home objective in cover, and my opponent was concerned about if he’d be able to shift it, so I guess there might be a psychological aspect to it.

Except I don't run it on a dreadnought. It's on one of my terminators. The rest of them typically fire at a different target, while the assault cannon opportunistically targets that 'last wound' target. If that's what I'm going for anyway. 

Edited April 13 by Paladin777

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Paladin777 said:

Except I don't run it on a dreadnought. It's on one of my terminators. The rest of them typically fire at a different target, while the assault cannon opportunistically targets that 'last wound' target. If that's what I'm going for anyway. 

That’s still an extra 85pts for all around worse shooting.

[Paladin777]

And melee that's actually decent, while being more durable to heavy firepower... 

 

they do what I ask of them: bully lighter units with impunity while being nigh-impervious to most small-arms fire. 

Edited April 13 by Paladin777

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

16 hours ago, Paladin777 said:

And melee that's actually decent, while being more durable to heavy firepower... 

 

they do what I ask of them: bully lighter units with impunity while being nigh-impervious to most small-arms fire. 

Idk…that’s a lot of investment to harass and resist chaff..

[Paladin777]

They do it really well. And those 'lighter units' go up to and include things like regular marine profiles,  chaos spawn, tyranid warriors...

Edited April 13 by Paladin777

[Paladin777]

@Inquisitor_Lensoven they dropped a unit of deathshroud and their leader unit in a game a couple days ago, as well as tanked land raider shooting for a couple turns (and still ended up with 4/6 models left at the end of the game).

 

This was after my heavy ints failed to hold the point.

Edited April 20 by Paladin777

[Dr. Clock]

Its niche is clearly 'rending pony'. i.e. 'something to make us feel good rolling 6s'. I don't hate the idea of giving it anti-infantry 5+, but I think that would make both heavy bolters and autocannons very sad. They're already a bit sad, but AP overall is just lower this edition.

 

The niche is the same as every heavy weapon on the game: 'weapon that technically peaks at ~6W per turn but realistically gets like 2 or 3 on their preferred target'.

 

I think it suffers mostly from not being a direct comparison to other options of the same price because only really on the dreadnought and a few flyers do we see it directly compared to the heavy weapon everyone wants most: las.

 

I like the one on my terminator squad as well, but their guns are always a secondary consideration to their punching in my books.

On 4/9/2024 at 3:42 PM, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

I mean if you’re just trying to chip away a final wound or two, I feel like a 5 man HI squad is better for that job. A butt load more S5 shots with AP-1 and 3 of those shots being D2 with SH1, 7 more wounds and 35pts cheaper than a dread.

I mean... yup. If you're looking for a beefy camper squad, Heavy Ints are better than terminators or dreadnoughts. But HInts don't want to get stuck in. They're quickly wrong-footed if they get touched, whereas heavy assault units like terminators can actually hit the enemy where it hurts and push them back rather than just holding on and hoping not to die. 

 

The assault cannon is not the reason you are getting terminators, nor should it be IMO. I'd love Heavy Intercessors if their rifles were the reason to take them rather than mostly their defensive stats and pure OC, but I also don't really want to pay much more than 100 points for what amounts to slow riflemen.

 

Heavy Intercessors are not bad at what they do, they're just a rock unit whereas terminators are scissors, so the comparison is off. Note that in direct comparison the intercessors can beat the terminators on sheer capacity for punishment, higher OC and almost double the units.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.  

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

8 hours ago, Dr. Clock said:

Its niche is clearly 'rending pony'. i.e. 'something to make us feel good rolling 6s'. I don't hate the idea of giving it anti-infantry 5+, but I think that would make both heavy bolters and autocannons very sad. They're already a bit sad, but AP overall is just lower this edition.

 

The niche is the same as every heavy weapon on the game: 'weapon that technically peaks at ~6W per turn but realistically gets like 2 or 3 on their preferred target'.

 

I think it suffers mostly from not being a direct comparison to other options of the same price because only really on the dreadnought and a few flyers do we see it directly compared to the heavy weapon everyone wants most: las.

 

I like the one on my terminator squad as well, but their guns are always a secondary consideration to their punching in my books.

I mean... yup. If you're looking for a beefy camper squad, Heavy Ints are better than terminators or dreadnoughts. But HInts don't want to get stuck in. They're quickly wrong-footed if they get touched, whereas heavy assault units like terminators can actually hit the enemy where it hurts and push them back rather than just holding on and hoping not to die. 

 

The assault cannon is not the reason you are getting terminators, nor should it be IMO. I'd love Heavy Intercessors if their rifles were the reason to take them rather than mostly their defensive stats and pure OC, but I also don't really want to pay much more than 100 points for what amounts to slow riflemen.

 

Heavy Intercessors are not bad at what they do, they're just a rock unit whereas terminators are scissors, so the comparison is off. Note that in direct comparison the intercessors can beat the terminators on sheer capacity for punishment, higher OC and almost double the units.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.  

I don’t think giving assault cannon anti-infantry 5+ will hurt the feelings of autocannons since they wound all infantry I can think of on a 2 or 3.

[Cenobite Terminator]

I think it’s interesting the new anti rule is a stealth method for GW to introduce how rolling to wound works in AoS.

[Dr. Clock]

On 5/8/2024 at 8:06 PM, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

they wound all infantry I can think of on a 2 or 3.

Assault cannons also already wound lots of infantry on 2s and 3s... the anti-infantry 5+ would just be to proc the devastating and skirt the low AP issue, which heavy bolters and autocannons both share. My point was more that having devastating already makes assault cannon comparable to those weapons, so increasing the devastating effect by 100% on preferred targets would make the others pale even more than they already do.

 

I certainly understand that assault cannons don't really feel special any more, just because in 10th they are actually trying to have near-parity on option utility so that choices don't cost points.

 

Indeed - across the entire game it's the multi-shot heavy weapons that seem to get the least use, and I think that's because everyone's infantry is already primarily used against opposing infantry, so wherever you can take a big shot, you probably should if you're going to hope to challenge enemy armour. Because the T range is so high, and so often correlated to high Sv, the difference between heavy weapons vs. infantry almost doesn't matter because some options do nothing vs. vehicles, and that's where most stat checks are going to be.

 

I think this could be fixed in a bunch of ways, but I'd recommend changes to basically every heavy weapon with 3 shots or more, to the effect of making them better vs bigger stuff, and even to the extent of just a blanket Dmg increase. Dmg 3 heavy bolter? AWESOME. Damage 2 assault cannon? AWESOME Damage 2 multi-laser or scatter laser? AWESOME. If I sneak a round of AP0 heavy weapon fire through your 2+ armour, it should make a mess inside! I fully appreciate that this kind of change might mean that most heavy-weapon-toting units would have to go up in points, but that's no bad thing either IMO. Finally, in this kind of regime it might be important to raise the floor on lascannon, melta and plasma... so like d3+3 for las, 4(+2) for melta and plasma cannons damage 3. This is all to say that I think the general back-and-forth of wounding and saving feels mostly okay, it's just the 'stopping power' of heavy fire that needs a nudge up.

 

The other way to do it would be just increase number of shots at the high end. Autocannon at 3 (base) starts to look interesting, as does heavy bolter at 4 and assault cannon at 8.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, Dr. Clock said:

This is all to say that I think the general back-and-forth of wounding and saving feels mostly okay, it's just the 'stopping power' of heavy fire that needs a nudge up.

 

Counterpoint though, heavy weapons had more stopping power in 9th and vehicles were almost never taken unless they could be given an invulnerable save. At least in 10th I can take a Land Raider for my Terminators without being penalized by offering the enemy an easy kill.

 

Now if you want to kill vehicles, you have to invest in dedicated anti-tank weapons. The humble lascannon is now the baseline for infantry-carried anti-tank. Weapons like melta either need to be used en-masse or with special rules (e.g. Eradicators) to really threaten vehicles.

 

Yes, high RoF weapons can threaten vehicles but in most cases you will ned to be lucky to do more than chip off a few wounds here and there. IMHO this is a good thing as it makes vehicles viable in 10th. It also make anti-tank matter. In previous editions high RoF weapons were so good that dedicated anti-tank was almost redundant. Now you have to make a decision as to whether your infantry can handle tanks at all or whether you need to invest in some tank-destroyers of your own. Just my personal take of course but I feel the vehicle meta in 10th edition is healthier than it has been for a long time. Vehicles are viable without being overpowered.

[Dr. Clock]

44 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

heavy weapons had more stopping power in 9th and vehicles were almost never taken unless they could be given an invulnerable save.

They had more AP, sure... and comparatively higher strength because of generally lower T ceiling making vehicles actually vulnerable to alot of random chip damage on 5s to wound. That's alot less common with lots of armour at T9-10, the lower AP generally, plus the addition of alot more 2+ Sv AND 3W infantry. As I say, I think in general the hit/wound/save dynamics are working pretty well, just that there are edge cases where it feels actively terrible when you shoot the heavy weapon into the big thing and even if I get lucky there's very little benefit. If I'm already searching for like 5s on wound into a 2+ save, I think adding one more damage to that one shot in like 24 that goes through won't suddenly make vehicles bad, just a bit less clearly dominant over anything not dedicated to killing them.

 

The cool thing about tweaking damage instead of other stats is that it has no impact on the lower end where heavies don't need the help really. It makes sense to me that for heavy weapons they will generally always be overkill on light infantry.

 

58 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Just my personal take of course but I feel the vehicle meta in 10th edition is healthier than it has been for a long time. Vehicles are viable without being overpowered.

I agree! The main problem right now for me is that spamming armour is kinda just better than spamming other stuff, and it's way too easy to accidentally neuter yourself by not taking enough of one specific gun, i.e. lascannons.

 

So yeah, I don't want S and AP to go up much - it should be difficult to wound vehicles with machine guns, and it's good that save characteristics matter...

 

Obviously none of this is going to happen, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

 

[Tacitus]

On 5/10/2024 at 10:41 AM, Dr. Clock said:

They had more AP, sure... and comparatively higher strength because of generally lower T ceiling making vehicles actually vulnerable to alot of random chip damage on 5s to wound. That's alot less common with lots of armour at T9-10, the lower AP generally, plus the addition of alot more 2+ Sv AND 3W infantry. As I say, I think in general the hit/wound/save dynamics are working pretty well, just that there are edge cases where it feels actively terrible when you shoot the heavy weapon into the big thing and even if I get lucky there's very little benefit. If I'm already searching for like 5s on wound into a 2+ save, I think adding one more damage to that one shot in like 24 that goes through won't suddenly make vehicles bad, just a bit less clearly dominant over anything not dedicated to killing them.

 

The cool thing about tweaking damage instead of other stats is that it has no impact on the lower end where heavies don't need the help really. It makes sense to me that for heavy weapons they will generally always be overkill on light infantry.

 

I agree! The main problem right now for me is that spamming armour is kinda just better than spamming other stuff, and it's way too easy to accidentally neuter yourself by not taking enough of one specific gun, i.e. lascannons.

 

So yeah, I don't want S and AP to go up much - it should be difficult to wound vehicles with machine guns, and it's good that save characteristics matter...

 

Obviously none of this is going to happen, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

 

I think the issue is they again only did half the fix.  A Lascannon (and other obvious anti-vehicle weapons) should absolutely vaporize a man sized target.  It should also hit a man sized target less often than Imperial Stormtrooper.  Give it a keyword like CUMBERSOME such that it only hits non-vehicles/monsters(maybe swarms) on a 6+.   Take what they did with Aircraft and apply it to Vehicle Armor/Anti-Armor.  Vehicle/Monster Toughness starts at 11 or something and goes to 20.  Anti Vehicle weapons (meaning weapons designed to shoot vehicles not necessarily the ones with the ANTI-X keyword) start with a STR of 11+ going to 20, and the CUMBERSOME/UNWEILDY keyword so they can't hit crap if it's not a vehicle/monster.  Everything coexists on the same board somewhat in paralell, but you don't have the Double Duty problems. 

[Minsc]

Assault Cannons are a cool but extremely underwhelming weapon (especially on Terminators, Typhoon ML + Stormbolter >>> Assault Cannon), that doesn't really offer SM-armies something they're in need of: Anti-GEQ firepower.

I don't think their AP or D should get buffed, as that would step on the toes of HB's and AC's, but giving them Anti-Infantry 5+ (4+ might be too good) and possibly Sustained Hits(1) would be a nice way to buff them against their intended target while also maintaining their uniqueness compared to our other heavy weapons.