The higher the strength the better the weapon surely and yet in the modern 40k meta game not so much, but why is this the case.
I've spoke before about needing a change in mentality for my long fangs moving away from thinking about needing to destroy vehicles and instead just slowing vehicles and stopping them from shooting my army. I decided to take this a step further with my latest incarnation of wolves by including an autocannon toting dreadnought.
Because of this I went to pick up a pair of autocannons from Warhammer world this weekend only to find the left to be totally out of stock so why are autocannons with their subpar strength so desired?
Well partly its down to the new Grey Knights codex and the cost of a psyfleman dread which obviously has strength 8 but still in a Wolf army they are a common feature. This has to be a continuation of the idea of supressing fire, for 4 shots they aren't a massive target for the enemy but they still have a good chance of hitting and causing a glancing hit (mathhammer is not my strong suit). So because of this Im going to be adding a autocannon dread into my new list.
Suppression fire is important, but keep in mind you DO need to destroy vehicles as well. Meltaguns (which SW can bring pretty easily) are great for that, of course. I wouldn't generally trade Long Fangs for a Rifleman Dread, though- LF are cheaper and hit harder. The increase in accuracy (and, to some degree, survivability) is generally not worth it.
ReplyDeleteJust take both! Dreads and Fangs and loads of melta...perfect! Got to say though, I don't feel this is something new nor a new trend developing...the autocannon has been a sweet weapon since 5th hit with the Vanilla marine book having the first Rifledread and of course the bloody hydra squadron in IG... Not new news! But obviously worth a reminder..
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't ditch long fangs for a dread either. Once the transports are dead the fangs can fran troops. The dread however will be less useful once transports are down. Not to mention AP3 missiles bring handy against MCs.
ReplyDeleteUseless is strong... I'm in agreement with you here... but the dread still has uses past popping transports and suppressing tanks..those puny combat squad marine squads fear it due to high accuracy and 2+ wound rolls, as do any units that are ID'd by them - DE, IG HWTs...and as FromTheFang says, whilst LF are better, Rifledreads are still wounding on 3's..
ReplyDeleteI'm certainly not thinking about dropping my long fangs in fact I am adding an extra 5 Missile Launchers, but I have taken all the las cannons out of my army, they just aren't worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteS'funny...I'm adding more in lol!
ReplyDeleteAs always in life, I think a mixture would probably work best. THe only things that require Lascannons or melta are really those big Necron things and Land Raiders. But if you do come up against 'em without Lascannon or melta, you're virtually powerless to stop them.
ReplyDeleteI think you're lucky with the Wolves that you can split fire, so I'd be tempted to keep with your current set-up. The good thing about infantry-based heavy weapons is that they are always a low target priority (or perhaps that's just me, and possibly why I usually lose against Space Wolves!).