Juris
Junior Strategist
Posts: 578 
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Post by Juris on Jun 14, 2018 20:48:51 GMT
Bombardiers provide threat ranges, without threat ranges you will be charged. Getting charged and playing counterpunch is bad idea because you never know what charges you, it could be things that will destroy your shocks. So unless you're playing V2, Kozlov or Strakhov2 who make your shocks into cavalry in terms of speed you have to take bombardiers. They don't bring much shooting, but jacks and tankers bring even less if we're talking about shooting something armed. A unit of bombardiers with UA can kill 1-2 heavies over the course of the game just by shooting big CRAs and God knows how many dudes or lights. You can't ignore that, you have to come to them and get greeted by the Butcher.
Shocks can protect bombardiers against all long range things, unboosted shooting bounces off them. Bombers in turn protect shocks against low def weaponmasters and cavalry.
The only problem is high def+long threat+high effective pow things like Satyxis, against which you take Supressors.
Bombers+shocks+supressors is the mow trifecta of victory.
Demos have monstrous charge power with a caster that can help proc the Shatter and they can jam really well with Dragos+Atanas. But you don't inherently need them if you're playing Butcher who can take care of damage dealing without demos.
Unless they get shot back. At ARM16 with 8 boxes, they die to massed small arms fire. They also die to boosted POW14 or higher guns. Maybe my perspective is skewed by playing Cygnar, but when I look at a table with 16 dudes that are ARM 21 or higher, moving relatively slowly up the table, and then there's this unit that is ARM 16 and lobbing gunshots at me, I'm sending my small arms fire at the ARM16 dudes. Honestly, if you want to force engagement with ranged output, I think that the Tankers and Chariots are far better choices. They provide good ranged output, superior control, and are far more durable. They also give you different model types (instead of more units) that can score flags or rectangular zones. |
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Post by mcdermott on Jun 14, 2018 21:16:09 GMT
They have arcing fire, if they're not firing from BEHIND your arm 21 guys you're playing them wrong.
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Post by Netherby on Jun 15, 2018 4:23:53 GMT
Just consider the mirror match.
You have a list with 2 units of Demo Corp vs a list with 1 unit of Demo Corp and 1 unit of Bombardiers. Who wins? The Bombardiers are killing the Demo Corp from beyond their range to counter attack.
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Post by GijsB on Jun 15, 2018 6:18:51 GMT
They have arcing fire, if they're not firing from BEHIND your arm 21 guys you're playing them wrong. Can't agree more with this, this is why Atanas or Irusk2 are great to use them well and keep them safe. |
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Post by Netherby on Jun 15, 2018 6:38:17 GMT
They have arcing fire, if they're not firing from BEHIND your arm 21 guys you're playing them wrong. Yeah but he plays Kygnar, he will just Shadowfire your entire front line AND backline. |
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Post by smoothcriminal on Jun 15, 2018 9:19:39 GMT
Bombardiers provide threat ranges, without threat ranges you will be charged. Getting charged and playing counterpunch is bad idea because you never know what charges you, it could be things that will destroy your shocks. So unless you're playing V2, Kozlov or Strakhov2 who make your shocks into cavalry in terms of speed you have to take bombardiers. They don't bring much shooting, but jacks and tankers bring even less if we're talking about shooting something armed. A unit of bombardiers with UA can kill 1-2 heavies over the course of the game just by shooting big CRAs and God knows how many dudes or lights. You can't ignore that, you have to come to them and get greeted by the Butcher. Shocks can protect bombardiers against all long range things, unboosted shooting bounces off them. Bombers in turn protect shocks against low def weaponmasters and cavalry.
The only problem is high def+long threat+high effective pow things like Satyxis, against which you take Supressors.
Bombers+shocks+supressors is the mow trifecta of victory. Demos have monstrous charge power with a caster that can help proc the Shatter and they can jam really well with Dragos+Atanas. But you don't inherently need them if you're playing Butcher who can take care of damage dealing without demos.
Unless they get shot back. At ARM16 with 8 boxes, they die to massed small arms fire. They also die to boosted POW14 or higher guns. Maybe my perspective is skewed by playing Cygnar, but when I look at a table with 16 dudes that are ARM 21 or higher, moving relatively slowly up the table, and then there's this unit that is ARM 16 and lobbing gunshots at me, I'm sending my small arms fire at the ARM16 dudes. Honestly, if you want to force engagement with ranged output, I think that the Tankers and Chariots are far better choices. They provide good ranged output, superior control, and are far more durable. They also give you different model types (instead of more units) that can score flags or rectangular zones. Against shooting bombers hide behind shocks. Against melee they go in front. If Atanas is present it doesn't even matter, you can go forward with bombers, shoot and then shocks go through them and screen (and can also shoot). Tankers and Chariots cannot kill low def high arm weaponmasters like exemplars, banes or fangs efficiently. |
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Post by welshhoppo on Jun 15, 2018 9:29:55 GMT
Tankers can kill like arm17 on average.
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Post by 36cygnar24guy36 on Jun 15, 2018 9:32:26 GMT
I really don't get the fascination with Bombardiers. They're a lot of points for not a lot of attack power. Bombardiers are the type of Unit that demand to be played well. At RAT 6, RNG 12, POW 14, they are effectively a unit of upgraded Hand Cannons. They don't do anything flashy, they won't beat you with pure math, and they are not a package with too many rules for too few points. They are appropriately costed with basic rules. Simply put, they are Vanilla as Vanilla gets. Which puts the burden of getting work out of them in the hands of the player, not in their innate OP-ness. Which means that target prioritization and position are key to making them shine On the Table (and that usually means that they don't look so good On Paper). Surely you are not suggesting people need to be good at this game, instead of always being spoon fed OP-ness to prop them up!  |
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Post by hocestbellum on Jun 15, 2018 10:57:12 GMT
Surely you are not suggesting people need to be good at this game, instead of always being spoon fed OP-ness to prop them up! Oh, well, that's me fooked then! |
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Post by hocestbellum on Jun 15, 2018 12:13:19 GMT
Tankers and Chariots cannot kill low def high arm weaponmasters like exemplars, banes or fangs efficiently. They really, really can. The Assault Chariot shreds things up to about ARM 18, the Suppression can get things at ARM20 with the spray, and the Strike Tanker has 3 attacks for 5 points. Having played them into an Exemplar Interdiction list recently I can tell you that the Exemplar Errants and Knights Exemplar die to all three. |
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Juris
Junior Strategist
Posts: 578
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Post by Juris on Jun 15, 2018 23:13:53 GMT
They have arcing fire, if they're not firing from BEHIND your arm 21 guys you're playing them wrong. Yeah but he plays Kygnar, he will just Shadowfire your entire front line AND backline. Alternatively, "there are guys in the way, it's impossible for you to shoot the guys in the back!". Until a guy in the front dies...or a much faster unit shoots from the flank (where there are no guys blocking LOS), or there's a hill (maybe one that your caster creates) that let's models see models in the back rank, etc. |
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Post by mcdermott on Jun 16, 2018 4:18:33 GMT
Yeah but he plays Kygnar, he will just Shadowfire your entire front line AND backline. Alternatively, "there are guys in the way, it's impossible for you to shoot the guys in the back!". Until a guy in the front dies...or a much faster unit shoots from the flank (where there are no guys blocking LOS), or there's a hill (maybe one that your caster creates) that let's models see models in the back rank, etc. And this is all well and good but the idea that all of this needing to maneuver is going to make it trivially easy to decimate 48 boxes of arm 16-18 strikes me as more napkin mathy than table mathy. |
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Post by Netherby on Jun 16, 2018 4:49:44 GMT
The point is that there are plenty of ways to deal with stuff hiding behind other stuff. A serious shooty army will almost certainly include one or more of those tools and make short work of DEF 10, ARM 16 models.
It will still protect you from more incidental shooting, which is still good because they die really easily...
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Post by mcdermott on Jun 16, 2018 5:26:26 GMT
Again, napkin math over table math.
Learn the lesson of butcher3. If they have one or two of those tools in the list, kill those tools first. AK is more than capable of doing so, properly built
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Juris
Junior Strategist
Posts: 578
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Post by Juris on Jun 16, 2018 14:15:05 GMT
Alternatively, "there are guys in the way, it's impossible for you to shoot the guys in the back!". Until a guy in the front dies...or a much faster unit shoots from the flank (where there are no guys blocking LOS), or there's a hill (maybe one that your caster creates) that let's models see models in the back rank, etc. And this is all well and good but the idea that all of this needing to maneuver is going to make it trivially easy to decimate 48 boxes of arm 16-18 strikes me as more napkin mathy than table mathy. I never said anything about it being trivial. On a game by game basis it may or may not be. But Chariots and Tankers will NOT be killed by small arms fire, and will force engagement. That is and was my point. |
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