Seismic Cannons worthwhile now?

[murderfiesta]

I wrote up a bit here, but the summary is:

If you take the custom cult with No Penalty for Moving on Heavy Weapons and Re-roll hit rolls on heavy weapons, you have a 75% chance to hit with a heavy weapon.  888 pts (12 squads of 10) of Neophytes with Seismic Cannons will put 27 wounds onto a T7+, 3+ target at 12", and 18 wounds at > 12" in a single turn of shooting.

Against a T4/3+ target with 2 wounds at >12" they'll do 24 wounds, at <12" they'll average 45 wounds in a single turn of shooting.

These are not terrible numbers for a large number of models the opponent will likely have a very hard time clearing.  Plus you've still got 1100 points on the board for other things still.

For comparison, mining lasers will do an average of 35 wounds to T7/T8, 3+ targets, and will kill an average of 11 intercessors in each round of shooting assuming you never roll two damage rolls of 1 for a single intercessor.

Let me know what you think!  I think the primary difficulty here is that a decent number of these squads will have to start on the table.  That can be mitigated by taking some Brood Brothers to fill out initial drops, but if you're running this kind of list I think you might as well just take more Neophytes.

The secondary difficulty is that 12 squads completely fills the Troops slots from two Battalions.  If you want any more, you have to bring a third Battalion, which you *should*, but it should probably be a mixed battalion to allow for 4AE, which means there's no point taking any custom cults with that battalion and you might as well not bring any Neophytes in the third battalion as a result.  There's the possibility for taking a big squad of rock saw acolytes or some similar melee bomb in this Battalion for a turn 3 drop after all the Neophytes blast the front line away, but at that point managing the balance between which units start on the table and which go into reserve becomes even trickier without wasting points on Brood Brothers.

[No One]

murderfiesta said:

Let me know what you think! I think the primary difficulty here is that a decent number of these squads will have to start on the table.

At which point, siesmic is terrible. DS in 12" is workable. On table, less so. Mining lasers on table at least have a 30" threat range.

Like, if you can stick them in reserves it seems a maybe: you get a lot more play out of the range with mining lasers though, letting you reliably pick targets and stay out of easy melee range. And BC gives more survivability and WLT to take down a key target (wound rerolls>=hit rerolls).

[murderfiesta]

Re-rolling a 4+ is better than re-rolling a 3+, since the 4+ re-roll gives you a 50% boost in your damage (you go from 50% successes to 75% successes, 25 percentage point jump), whereas re-rolling a 3+ only gives you a 33% boost in your damage (you go from 66% successes to ~88% successes, 22 percentage point jump). If you're rolling a 4+ to-hit and then a 3+ to-wound (as would Bladed Cog mining lasers), you'll see more effect from buffing your hit rolls. Basically, the harder one of your rolls is to succeed at, the better it is to be able to re-roll that roll if you need to make a series of rolls that all need to succeed.

In this case, it would actually make *more* sense to go Bladed Cog and get the Re-roll Wound rolls for the Seismic Cannons than for the Mining Lasers, especially since the Seismic Cannons also rend. If you had re-roll wound rolls on your Seismic Cannons (rather than re-roll hits) then at 24" you go up to 21.6 wounds against tanks and at 12" you go up to ~30 wounds on average. Mining lasers actually go *down* to an average of 31 wounds per round of shooting for 24 against tanks.

Edit: Also, the Bladed Cog warlord trait is against a SINGLE enemy unit.  Not worth it at all unless that single enemy unit is the absolute lynch pin where if it doesn't die you lose and if it does die you win, and again if you've gone mining laser spam you're better off taking the rerolls to hit and picking up a Primus to mark the target instead.

[No One]

murderfiesta said:

Re-rolling a 4+ is better than re-rolling a 3+, since the 4+ re-roll gives you a 50% boost in your damage (you go from 50% successes to 75% successes, 25 percentage point jump), whereas re-rolling a 3+ only gives you a 33% boost in your damage (you go from 66% successes to ~88% successes, 22 percentage point jump). If you're rolling a 4+ to-hit and then a 3+ to-wound (as would Bladed Cog mining lasers), you'll see more effect from buffing your hit rolls. Basically, the harder one of your rolls is to succeed at, the better it is to be able to re-roll that roll if you need to make a series of rolls that all need to succeed.

Alphus, so 3+ to hit. Then you're wounding on 3+, or worse if seismic. And you also get rerolls on webbers/GL (and autoguns I guess if you're really desperate/nothing else).

[murderfiesta]

Alphus is nice, but not guaranteed. I'd still take the re-roll hits though since the Bladed Cog warlord trait is against a single target chosen at the beginning of the battle. If it were general re-roll wounds I think it would definitely be in contention, but since it's a single target I can't see it being more than situational compared to an army-wide always on full reroll bonus.

[No One]

murderfiesta said:

Alphus is nice, but not guaranteed.

I'm not sure what's going on that you're not getting alphus, especially getting BC WLT.

If it were general re-roll wounds I think it would definitely be in contention, but since it's a single target I can't see it being more than situational compared to an army-wide always on full reroll bonus.

Sure. The hit reroll trait is definitely better than BC WLT. Is it better enough to give up 6++ on 100+ models as well? Eh.

[murderfiesta]

Alphus can only target one target per turn per Alphus. If I've got a ton of squads there's a decent chance I'm also going to be split firing to a certain extent. I may also have squads sitting on objectives away from the Alphus. I just don't think it's necessarily possible to always get 12 squads within 6" of up to 2 Alphus and still be playing and positioning optimally (3 if the third detachment is also running this cult makes this more likely, but I think running this cult across 3 detachments is a mistake).

For the 6++, I'm not sure exactly how worthwhile I think it is. There's not a ton of high-prevalence, high-volume AP -2+ weapons outside of, for example, Storm Cannon Arrays in Devastator Doctrine and Intercessors with Bolt Rifles in Tactical Doctrine, which is what's needed to make a 6++ mandatory. Anything with that profile is likely to be pretty expensive, so if they're using it to clear my 5 pt models rather than anything else in my army... that's probably OK by me. Yes, three Stormcannon Leviathans with Captain and Lieutenant re-rolls will probably clear 60 Neophytes a turn, but those three Leviathans are also short range and cost more than all 120 Neophytes combined.

One other thing I think re-roll hits has in its favor is the number of -hit modifiers. -hit modifiers are pretty common, -wound modifiers are VERY rare. Re-roll hits provides more value the steeper those -hit modifiers get.

[No One]

murderfiesta said:

Alphus can only target one target per turn per Alphus. If I've got a ton of squads there's a decent chance I'm also going to be split firing to a certain extent. I may also have squads sitting on objectives away from the Alphus. I just don't think it's necessarily possible to always get 12 squads within 6" of up to 2 Alphus and still be playing and positioning optimally (3 if the third detachment is also running this cult makes this more likely, but I think running this cult across 3 detachments is a mistake).

If you're positioned such that you're getting BC WLT, you're positioned wrong if you're not getting alphus. Now, you positioning for 12 squads to get BC WLT is eh. But if you dial it back to ~5-6? It's doable and still at a level where you get value from 6++.

Like, it depends very much on what you're going for. If you want pure damage, sure reroll hits is going to give more. But at that level of neos, you pretty much need to be a board control list at some level: they're just not as efficient sources of damage as other units, so increased survivability is important too.

For the 6++, I'm not sure exactly how worthwhile I think it is. There's not a ton of high-prevalence, high-volume AP -2+ weapons outside of, for example, Storm Cannon Arrays in Devastator Doctrine and Intercessors with Bolt Rifles in Tactical Doctrine, which is what's needed to make a 6++ mandatory. Anything with that profile is likely to be pretty expensive, so if they're using it to clear my 5 pt models rather than anything else in my army... that's probably OK by me. Yes, three Stormcannon Leviathans with Captain and Lieutenant re-rolls will probably clear 60 Neophytes a turn, but those three Leviathans are also short range and cost more than all 120 Neophytes combined.

I mean, at this point it is the majority of your army. So...they're going to be shooting that. They might be clearing 5 pt models, but that's to get to 17 pt models (it's just under 80 for a squad of 10, so you're looking at similar average pts per model to acolytes).

As for use case? Stuff like IH/DA fliers, everything Tau, everything Eldar can be pretty much, most guard weapons, Necrons can be, most DE stuff (outside poison) I think, knights. I think the only ones who aren't on at least some of their anti-infantry/general purpose guns are assault cents, nids, orks and maybe ad mech?

[murderfiesta]

I think part of the issue is it doesn't seem efficient to go halfway with the Neophytes. You either go all the way (like the Erik Lathouras list with 100+ Neophytes and one big squad of rockcutter acolytes) or you go with the more traditional GSC list where it's wave after wave of melee threats. On the flip side, the harder you go into the Neophytes the harder it is to actually get everyone in auras to spread the bonuses more efficiently.

For the 6++ I'll have to do a better survey of the weapons to figure out where the 6++ would actually come in handy. On average, a 6++ will extend the lifetime of a unit by 20%, which in this case would make 120 models look like 144 models. 24 additional 17 pt models (since these are going to be the last models taken off, so it's effectively extending their lifetime) is 408 points, which is really not a shabby return on investment to be quite honest, so I will have to consider this more thoroughly.

I think the below point is a little off though

I mean, at this point it is the majority of your army. So...they're going to be shooting that. They might be clearing 5 pt models, but that's to get to 17 pt models (it's just under 80 for a squad of 10, so you're looking at similar average pts per model to acolytes).

The 120 Neophytes in the example only take up 888 points. They might be the majority of the models on the table, but they're not even the majority of the GSC's points in a standard 2000 pt game. Add in two Iconwards and two Alphus for HQs and you're at 1134. 9 Ridgerunners is another 531 points, that makes it 1,665, leaving 335 (I just like Ridgerunners, there's probably better picks to put here but I'm not necessarily sure if there are better picks for things that have to start on the table in this context). Probably not enough space left for an additional full Battalion, but a Primus and 20 acolytes (8 rock saws) is 285 points, leaving 50 points for a bare-bones squad of Acolytes or Brood Brothers I guess.

[No One]

murderfiesta said:

I think part of the issue is it doesn't seem efficient to go halfway with the Neophytes. You either go all the way (like the Erik Lathouras list with 100+ Neophytes and one big squad of rockcutter acolytes) or you go with the more traditional GSC list where it's wave after wave of melee threats. On the flip side, the harder you go into the Neophytes the harder it is to actually get everyone in auras to spread the bonuses more efficiently.

Erik Lathouras' list was a partly board control based list (it was running 15 man squads with stubbers), which works well with >100 neos, and is where you want the 6++.

Other lists run them as just 4-5 squad with mining lasers to just nuke a key target with BC trait: this can be better than melee threats, because while it is less efficient, 24">12", and it also lets you engage Flyers and other difficult to charge targets. And reroll hits is definitely a strong consideration there (for e.g. nuking flyers more reliably, and having better follow up post drop, presuming that the 6++ will make less difference than rerolling on remaining mining lasers). But BC can also fit better with other parts of the army e.g. solo aco squad, BC is good for the strat.

The 120 Neophytes in the example only take up 888 points. They might be the majority of the models on the table, but they're not even the majority of the GSC's points in a standard 2000 pt game. Add in two Iconwards and two Alphus for HQs and you're at 1134. 9 Ridgerunners is another 531 points, that makes it 1,665, leaving 335 (I just like Ridgerunners, there's probably better picks to put here but I'm not necessarily sure if there are better picks for things that have to start on the table in this context). Probably not enough space left for an additional full Battalion, but a Primus and 20 acolytes (8 rock saws) is 285 points, leaving 50 points for a bare-bones squad of Acolytes or Brood Brothers I guess.

It is the majority of your points (I'm including buffs here), and it is definitely going to be the majority of points on table.

Like, your example list has 120 neos, 9 ridgerunners and aco squad. Aco squad won't be around except for one turn then dead, and once the ridgerunners are dead, the neos are the only things to shoot.

[garg]

What about including a kelermorph for rr1s? Also with BC you get catalyst.

[No One]

Cat only goes on one unit (i.e. just shoot a different one by and large) and you can get a 6+++ from iconward anyway. 12" range on the keler makes him awkward for getting rerolls for units that basically have to start on table due to points/unit cap. Otherwise decent.

[murderfiesta]

Good points No One, I will keep them in mind!

[kazetanade]

Kellermorph also has to kill something, which has been awkward for me in the past having to deal with tanky mechanical components at the front.

Seismic Cannons being S3 and S6 are still trash tier - the potential output is good, but you need a reroll to wound to make that 5+ on either profile work for you for the majority of target profiles. The only reroll to wound we get is in BC WLT, making the custom trait for them a complete nonstarter.

There could be something here with the stubbers since there are 2 Cult traits and a strategem, but I'm not sold. Very much not sold.

If you want to maximize the custom trait, literally you only have Mining Laser spam, because they will be the most efficient at dishing out damage with it. But I question whether the increase damage is worth the decreased sustain - 6++ has been a big deal to me in the past for my extremely tight lists, leaving a few guys alive to force more fire on them than necessary. 6++ 6+++ would be ace on them once we get to the 90 to 100 level. But, I haven't played them into RG Cents, GK Paladins and other such infantry killers, which might make much shorter work of this list than I'd like to admit.

Either way, I'd go with the impression that seismic are dead points with no real outlet, they need to change its profiles back to S4 S8 and 6 shots 3 shots. Let the big version double the shots.

[garg]

I would have thought that most lists apart from mechanised eldar and possessed bomb would have something the kelermorph can kill. As far as range i meant with deep striking in.

As for BC catalyst you can sometimes make your opponent shoot a particular squad or if you have something like ridge runners or single aco bomb to put on.

In short i too think that as long as creeds only affect troops BC will be better most times.