warriors and venom cannons

[pipsickness]

Ah. So provided you don't scatter you could get a penetrating hit but would still need a 6 to destroy it? Nah... I'll stick to throwing a carnifex at tanks and whatnot!

[nurglitch]

It's worth noting that the -1 doesn't affect open-topped vehicles, so Venom Cannons of both varieties will still get the +1 to damage rolls for glancing or penetrating an open-topped vehicle.

It's also worth noting that they're not useless for anti-vehicle work, unless you think that the only useful thing anti-vehicle weapons should do is maximize the likelihood of destroying vehicles in a single phase of shooting, instead of maximizing the number of units (vehicles and passengers) over the course of a game.

Tyranid anti-vehicle strategies are based around stunning or immobilizing vehicles. Once a vehicle is stationary, it will be hit automatically. Transports that are surrounded and wrecked will take their passengers with them, and eliminating their chance of exploding by using weapons like Brainworm Devourers and Venom Cannons minimizes the cost of surrounding enemy vehicles. Even S4 non-rending models can glance an AV10 vehicle to death if it's stationary, and stationary vehicles can't move to avoid the incoming Tyranids. That's the value of the 36" range of Venom Cannons, because they help the Tyranids start suppressing and exposing vehicles from turn 1, instead of providing a mechanized enemy with craters to take cover in, and smashing Dark Eldar vehicles.

[notanoob]

Even though having as many shots as possible to stun vehicles is a good strategy, Tyranids are generally going to find less success compared to other armies that use similar tactics i.e. Eldar or GK. Both of them often rely on massed mid-strength firepower to handle vehicles. However, they have the advantage of having multiple shots, sometimes at a higher BS, or slightly higher S, or with Rending, or Guide, or whatever. While we are not entirely mimicking their strategy, having only one shot with mediocre chances to hit makes it something you hope to get lucky with. Even on low AV transports, S6 is not very likely to do much of anything. Even against AV10 the chances of doing anything at all are slim.

[nurglitch]

Only one shot? You can fit a ton of Venom Cannons and Heavy Venom Cannons in an army. Plus it's not just Venom Cannons, it's stuff like Brainworm Devourers, Deathspitters, etc.

The point is that you need to prepare enemy units with firepower to maximize the likelihood and payoff of engaging them in combat. Venom Cannons are just the anti-vehicle equivalent of Barbed Stranglers, which are there to suppress enemy units prior to a Tyranid assault.

More to the point, the likelihood of doing something is commensurate with the payoff of doing something. Impaler Cannons, for example, are excellent Rhino killers. The pay-off, however, is a unit of Marines with Cv4+ and forcing an I1 penalty on all Tyranids without Assault Grenades. Sure, you killed a Rhino, but now you have to kill the unit inside, which you have considerately supplied with cover to make an assault likely to be costly. And it's not the Hive Guard that are going to be making the assault, so no 2-for-1 that way.

The thing to consider is that the Tyranids are conspicuous for having only two ways to engage multiple units: They can either multi-charge, or prevent emergency disembarkation. Tyranids have no special rules for splitting fire, and they are almost always outnumbered on a unit-by-unit basis, the basis on which shooting works in this game barring special rules. Shooting one enemy unit to death and charging another to death will result in two more enemy units shooting those enemy units to death.

In order to win, kill-points or objectives, a Tyranid player needs to engage in kill ratios of 2:1 or better. In order to achieve that, you need to synergize shooting and assault. Destroying a vehicle with shooting is fine when it's not a transport, because why not, but non-transports still need their shooting interdicted, and transports need their passengers killed at the same time.

[coredump]

For those new to this discussion... we have had pages long threads with numerous people trying to show Nurglitch that his tactics are based on using a lot of points to set up some difficult combination, that still only has a very small chance of doing what you want. If you do a search for 'twofer' you may be able to find some of them.

The short take-away, is that
a VC only shoots once per turn,
has about a 50% chance of missing a vehicle
Chances are, every other gun in that brood is wasted for that turn
Even if it hits, it only has a 1:6 chance of getting a Pen
Even if it gets a Pen, it only has a 1:3 chance of getting an Immob or Wreck
If it gets a glance... no chance of wreck *or* immob

True, against open top, it gets a sliver better... but still is pretty darn bad

[Jabberwocky]

With the changes to glances and blast weps the VC will be better in 6th ed but TL Devs are still going to outperform everywhere but with range.

Being able to fly 24" with our MCs should alleviate range issues though.

[N.I.B.]

I'd say the with the changes to weapons and vehicles, the Venomcannon will get a renaissance in 6th ed, if the double T Instant Death is gone.

[coredump]

Hey guys, lets try and keep discussions about rumors in the rumors thread.

[nurglitch]

The take-away is:
- A Venom Cannon has a 36" range, meaning hitting on turn 1.
- It has a 44% chance of hitting its target dead-on, and some other change of hitting something else, as well as dual utility against infantry and vehicles. Combined with Deathspitters and you have firepower to take on light vehicles such as Land Speeders and Rhinos, or AV11 side armour. The range means that side armour is often presented, but that requires tactics and [sarc]tactics are too hard to do ever[/sarc].
-If the Venom Cannon hits, it is S6. That means it can affect up to AV12, and can penetrate AV11. Against a Rhino it's [(1/6)*(2/6)+(1/6)*(4/6)] where the (1/6) is the first fraction is the chance of glancing or penetrating, and the second is the change of useful results. Useful results include Stunned, Weapon Destroyed, Immobilized, and Destroyed (Wrecked). An argument could be made for Shaken results, but [sarc]why would anyone want to be able to prevent a Razorback from hammering them with a Lascannon?[/sarc]

The real question is what else you have in your army to interdict any potential vehicles, and the volume of potential vehicles that your opponent may take. The question isn't whether to take Hive Guard or Tyranid Warriors or Carnifex broods, but in putting them altogether so that you can suppress, close, and destroy the enemy units to win the game, not whether you can destroy one or two tanks a turn with shooting. In other words, the question is whether you want to be able to compete using a Tyranid army.

[coredump]

Against a rhino, no I don't care it if can't shoot, I don't even really care if it loses a weapon. It is a *transport*, I need it to stop transporting.

Plus you keep saying how great it is for 'twofer', which means you *have* to immob/wreck the vehicle, or leave your other units stranded.

Taking out weap dest greatly lowers your calculations.

So, even leaving that in, means you are down to 6/36 or 1/6; and that is *after* hitting (44%),
Which means you have a worse than 1:13 chance of doing something. So, if you shoot *every* turn, and never die, you will do 'something' once every two games.

And if you are utilizing that 36" range (y'know, 'tactics' as you say) then those deathspitters are *not* able to do anything.

And yeah, I wouldn't mind stopping a razorback from shooting its lascannon, but if that is the only thing my warrior does in two games.... not happy.

[Jabberwocky]

It might be worthwhile if it is a barebones warrior squad babysitting HG and/or T-Fex. You probably wouldn't be in range to do much else then anyway.

[pipsickness]

I'm going to stick to using zoanthropes and fexes to pop vehicles. Warriors are there to draw fire and if my victim...er.... opponent is really unlucky and they reach his lines alive to do some serious shredding of faces. Unless i'm against IG or Ork then it's barbed stranglers all the way.

[N.I.B.]

So, Instadeath is still here, around with cover saves going down to 5+ and no shortage of missile spam. Things aren't looking good for Warriors. And we will have to wait until saturday most likely, to know if the -1 is still on the Venomcannon.

[nurglitch]

The risk of Instant Death to Warriors has never been as great as has been supposed, especially since Warriors have access to a Cv5+ from Venomthropes, if not Cv4+ from Rippers/Termagants/Hormagaunts, and Krak-catchers in the form of Tyranid Primes.

But the thing that people tend to forget is target saturation: Sure, your opponent could kill those Warriors, but the Venomthropes are a priority since they provide a cover save that could potentially ignore all of the Instant Death, but it's the Monstrous Creatures like Tervigons, etc, that do the heavy lifting while Warriors provide cheap backfield Synapse control and fire support. There's a reason MSU works so well in 5th edition, and it's not just because it presents more targets than most strategies are equipped to kill over ~6 turns, but because the threat distribution is more or less even: kill one and there is another ready to hit you back.

Which is kind of my point: It's not that twofers are great, it's that they're required. You have to be able to kill 2+ units for every Tyranid brood/monster that your opponent kills. They're difficult to accomplish, particularly if you're not anal-retentively precise about position and range (a.ka. "skilled at board control and position"), precisely because they are valuable.

In a game with random elements like Warhammer 40,000, there are two things to consider in every relevant decision: the payoff of each choice, and the likelihood of obtaining that payoff. It just so happens that the Imperial armies, for the most part, are designed to enable reliable, but low payoffs. Xenos armies, by comparison, are designed to enable less reliable, but higher payoffs.

Useful Xenos armies, Tyranids included, therefore require redundancy. But rather than take multiple units performing the same role, as a useful Imperial army does, in the hope diffusing opposing actions faster than they can wear down the enemy, Xenos take multiple redundant units to spend them in pursuit of those big payoffs. Which is kind of cool, in that it means that as Xenos you tend to lose until you win - makes for a nice last-stand theme where Imperial armies grind and Xenos armies break-through. As Tyranids, you get to trade casualties for position and opportunity.

That's why we see successful, but not optimal, armies composed of things like multiple Tervigons and Hive Guard and so on. Because they combine the Imperial ability to grind, with the Xenos ability to capitalize on good luck. They're sub-optimal because, while reliable, they simply don't have the resources to really capitalize on any big pay-off.

[coredump]

Jun 26, 2012 8:19:00 GMT Jabberwocky said:

It might be worthwhile if it is a barebones warrior squad babysitting HG and/or T-Fex. You probably wouldn't be in range to do much else then anyway.

Yep, or a 3-pack designed to hold a backfield objective. Would be a useful upgrade then. IOW the unit can't do much anyway, and trying to get a lucky shot is better than no chance at all.