VenomFex's ?

[undead]

I recently bought two carnifexes and decked them out for shooting
the group i play with are pretty lenient and so i decided i would build one of my fexes as a dakka and the other with two heavy venom cannons
(not twin linked), for tearing up the enemy from a range. I just wanted to see everyone's opinions on the VenomFex even though it strictly not a legal model.

[infornography]

I'd rather have a dakkafex. HVCs aren't very good unless you plan on hunting open topped vehicles or need to instant death T4 models at range and they don't have good armor saves.

Load him up with twin linked devourers and he will probably do a lot more overall.

[Deleted]

Heavy Doodoo Cannon is doodoo

[t⊗theark]

Heavy venom cannons aren't useless, they're just underwealming. I remember playing against a brood of a couple of HVCs and they took by leman russ squadron down to half hit points, including killing one, and wiped out some heavy weapon teams and some veterans from the scatter. But that's all it did, that brood was almost 400 points.

[Deleted]

^That sounds like they were rolling well and it's still bad for 400 points. There's no way to get around venom cannons being bad, unfortunately. Hopefully the new dex fixes it.

[undead]

well thanks for your opinions guys
as i said i have already built one so it may be to late, but none the less i still find it helpful for giving cover to the rest of my army or hurting squads of ork boys from a distance which i do regularly , I have built a dakkafex and you r right it is way better

[Deleted]

Sounds like you could use some Biovores

[angelwing]

Apr 15, 2013 0:10:34 GMT undead said:

or hurting squads of ork boys from a distance which i do regularly

The venom cannon is fairly useful against ork armies that use lots of open top vehicles. I'd also consider it against necron armies that like to use the open topped stuff. Sadly in general play its a bit of a waste.

[undead]

well hye thats good nuf for me coz 2 of the 6-8 players in my gaming group play orks and necrons, so ill be sure to aim my fire of the HVC's at those particular armies

[coredump]

I think you are missing the point. They are *still bad* against open topped vehicles, just not 'as bad'.

Lets take an orc trukk,
HVC, 1 shot, .5hits, .08 glance and .42 pen
TLDev, 6 shots, 4.5 hits, .75 glance, 1.5 pen

There are situations you can create where the HVC will do better... but usually because they are both horribly bad. (like the .08 glance .08 pen on the front of a battlewagon; while the TLDev can't do any damage)

And against things like orcs, is when the TLDev go even better against infantry.

Nope, the HVC are just a poor choice in comparision.

[nurglitch]

undead:

There's not really much point to discussing an illegal model. That said, it would be better to heterogenize your weapon-symbiotes, to gain the advantages of both.

Personally I find the Heavy Venom Cannon really useful since it lets your Carnifex start affecting the game on turn 1, thanks to its 36" range. The blast means that it's surprisingly accurate, and the S9 means Instant Death and no Feel No Pain for quite a lot of targets. Hitting a unit of Ork MegaNobz or Grey Knight Paladins yields good results if, between hits, wounds, and saves, you kill any. It's a utility weapon that allows your Carnifex to address any target in the game, excepting flyers, and its effectiveness against any one target suffers commensurately. Of course, there's the option of giving it a twin-linked Brainworm Devourer for that anti-air work, and Tyranid units really benefit from being multi-purpose.

Which brings me to volume. The main benefit of the Carnifex is its ability to be fielded in broods, allowing more than one to benefit from bonuses, and letting you spread wounds around the unit that would kill one on its own. It's worth qualifying what that means: The model closest to the attacker suffers the wound, unless both are equally close in which case it's random. By positioning the members of your Carnifex brood according you can force your opponent to cause as many as 7 wounds to remove one model from the board as a casualty. And allow members to shelter while rules like Regenerate or It Will Not Die restore the model to some semblance of fighting shape.

Which brings me back to the Heavy Venom Cannon. Despite the range and strength it's not going to let you sit back and shoot. The weapon is designed so that your Carnifex can do something while it moves forward. You'll notice that the weapon options on the Carnifex essentially trade off reliability against locality: the less local a weapon's effect, the more reliable it will be. Astute opponents will learn to retreat in the face of shorter-ranged Tyranids, so having the ability to reach out will proportionately benefit armies with close combat units that need to close: your opponent won't be able to ignore the Carnifex in preference to a closer Trygon. You'll want to use the Heavy Venom Cannon to soften up enemy units and support your general advance. It's not going to tear up enemies from range, even if you take a brood of three. It's there to soften up the enemy at range. Expecting anything else will lead to disappointment, but understanding how it works will make it work for you.

[coredump]

the S9 means Instant Death and no Feel No Pain for quite a lot of targets. Hitting a unit of Ork MegaNobz or Grey Knight Paladins yields good results

The S9 and ID is handy, and is possible to be useful. Unfortunately, it is the rest of the gun that makes even that pretty useless.
One shot, AP4, on a 200pt model....

taking into account scatter and models being even somewhat spread out... I figure it is pretty accurate to estimate 1 hit per shot. That gives about a 14% chance of wounding (and thus IDing) a Paladin.
That means if you do nothing but shoot that gun at the paladins for the entire 5-turn game; there is a 50% chance that you get *no wounds* on any paladins. (Average about .75 wound/dead per game)

Lets compare that to the TLDev option
6 shots, 4.5 hits, and average of just more than 3 wounds per game.

So, even when taking into account the 'best' scenarios for the HVC, the TLDev does better.