Monday, March 31, 2014

Bringin' Out the Big Guns!

I will admit that I am a fan of big guns, real life, movies, games and so forth, I mean why shoot twice? For me this means CANNONS! Rockets and missiles don't impress me much, bolt throwers and rock lobbas fail to excite, but cannons, mortars and larger than usual 'guns', that right there is the stuff. Continuing to be honest, the biggest draw for me to 40k are the guns, and therefore to the armies that have the big ones, IG and Tau. But I am still solidly stuck in the fantasy world, for now, and so I have to make do with what I have. As anybody familiar with the hobby and or lore should know by know who my favorite army is. Dwarfs, masters of engineering, taught the humies how to build and use black powder weapons and all that jazz.
just a cannon

 The Dwarves are my favorite army, lore wise and how they 'should' play on the table top. However I have found many a reason to drift away from them, and while the new book has brought me back there are still issues. If you were to take a gander at my army there is a relative lack of artillery at least when considering other stunty armies.This is because of how artillery works, for me, in the game. Before my latest additions all i had was 2 cannons, yup that's it, only a little more than you find in the average pointy ears army. This is fact is tied up in several factors. 1. The whole mechanic for how cannons work in game, I don't like it and seems way to wrong I guess. 2. is the fact that the dice gods don't like me, particularly when rolling artillery dice. Bob can attest to the fact that when i field the cannons the crew does more damage than the cannon ever does, hahaha charge me again with your chariot! If i guess six inches in front of my target I roll a 10. If i get it to land in front of my target i will then promptly roll a 2 or a misfire so that the cannon ball never actually makes it.
cannon with a rune of usefulness aka a engineer

Dwarven made artillery doesn't exist as far as the game is concerned. Lore wise the dwarves are masters of their craft and make the best cannons out there and have been doing longer than anyone else. yet this is applied exactly nowhere in the game. The Empire's cannons are actually better (d6 wounds vs d3 on a dwarf) and cost the same amount of points, riddle me that Batman?
What dwarven artillery should look like, so much better than a cannon
So am I doing about this? Changing what artillery I am taking. I have bought an Organ Gun and have spent time playing with how I am going to use it, a rune and an engineer come in handy. The Organ Gun removes my main issues with the cannon. I roll to hit, not roll to see how close I get to almost hitting my target. Strikes multiple models, in the same unit of course, while i agree that the cannon ball bounce only hits a single model per rank I don't like how it doesn't explode and hit a lot of guys at once. Organ Gun fires 2 artillery dice worth of shots, that is going to hit something. S5 is respectable and range 30 is meh but a choice of runes can help with either the power or the hitty-ness of the shots. So while it may not pose the one shot danger a cannon can, there aren't too many targets that aren't going to worry about an Organ Gun looking its way.

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