Man o War Bombadier. Any chance they can be useful?

@rowdy Dragon: please dont take my comment as offensive.

1) im commenting about pow 14 in general. Not bombadiers. Some players is having overexpectation to what shooting damage can do. Except there is some way to debuff the enemy like cryx, pow 14 is pow 14. And khador dont have much to begin with except signs and portents and hand of fate.

2) then we just have to agree that we disagree.

Have you ever looked at the Man-O-War and thought: "Wow, without the Shocktrooper Officer, these guys are a mess!" I have. I hope I'm not the only one. I might sign up for the CID just for the Man-O-War.

I think one of the biggest problems with Man-O-War (any type) is that Privateer Press laid out their mission profile, just assumed that their mission profile would be *obvious* from their design and that we would all use them that way - and we are not.

The Shocktroopers are fantastic on the defensive side of things and can take an absolute beating, but they have a very low offensive output. The Shocktrooper Officer doubled their offensive output by granting Assault, which is great! If you can charge. So what do your Shocktroopers do if they get jammed? (And before you say "Shocktroopers never get jammed!" it has happened to me before, long before Bombardiers came out. Filthy pirates!)

Looking at the design of the Man-O-War, I think the mission profile PP had in mind for the Man-O-War was that the Shocktroopers are the front line, acting as a moving protective wall for whatever is behind them. If there is a cluster of warjacks that need to be taken care of the second line will be a squad of Demolition Corp. Otherwise you have Bombardiers running around in the second rank arcing fire their Grenade Cannons over the heads of the Shocktroopers. The arcing fire of AOE3 attacks is important, I think, because if there is a mass of infantry jamming the Shocktroopers this is what allows the Bombardiers to target the enemy 2nd row, not suffer the target in melee penalty, and catch the front row in the AOE.

Give MOW Bombardiers ROF 2? I would love that! All of us Khadorans would love that. Who wouldn't like 2x POW 19 RAT 10 AOE 3 shots out of a 16 point unit? Probably everyone else who we would be turning to paste with these FA:3 units. I think Trump would even start tweeting about it.

I think a more realistic (and thematic?) improvement to the Bomardiers would be to give them the "High Explosive" (blast damage is POW 10) special rule and to give them bigger AOE with bigger CRA - 4" with 2 or 3 guys and 5" with 4 or 5 guys.

Bombadiers are nice with Vlad2. His feat helps their SPD and RAT and Hand of Fate helps them hit and do more damage. People don't fear the Bombadiers so you can sometimes get the element of surprise when they are effective.

I really wish we'd get our MOW theme. The wait is keeeeeeeeeling me.

Personal I'd like to see them get sustained attack and maybe replace critical shred with Rapid Strike.

I use them with scorcha 1 as a bunker. She dances around the models getting a standard line to block LOS. And KD via tempest means even the bombers can hit. They are nasty on the feat turn also. Any one who can KD really helps them shine. But they are still a bit slow unless you have a kovnik. I find that helps them get to where they need to for the feat round undamaged. Kodiack and marauders help w/o takeing away from their MO. I like to think of it as 3/5 bombard spread out. The one thing to consider is this squad is supposed to imitate light jacks. Sure they cant preform those roles 100% but a light jack w/o a Warcaster is as effective as MOW w/o support. People consider light Jack's a picture of efficiency. But the thing is if they're imitating a light Jack for us we need to keep in mind even a light Jack needs support to be great. Sure we pay more points than a light in that reguard so the 3man and a kovnik makes a nice unit as the Kovnik has a slam.

It's not a theme force thing. I play without theme forces sometimes. The question is why not Target MOW Shocktroopers? They benefit from Vlad way more. On feat turn a even higher arm is a good thing. HOF means they can do more damage on the assault.

Arcing fire does have its uses but their so close ranged and inaccurate I find it pretty hard.

Well keep in mind that Vlad2 adds +3 to RAT and SPD. Giving a threat of 17inches with arching fire at RAT 7. Hand of fate may be over kill but it's a multi angle threat with at least 4 models. V2 feat is for assassinating or clearing out large swaths of your opponents models IMO. Not too shabby considering that they will be jacked up for a turn as well. But cost effectiveness tilts out of your favor running 5 instead of 3 IMO. I like the Darkun too much as a V2 feat target.