Interesting, the dwarf player I usually go against has appearently been using the master engineer rules for the regular ones. I've always been envious of that 15 point cost while mine (as Empire) was always much more expensive. Was it different in an old edition? He hasn't played much 8th, and only used the 7th book 4-5 times. (We switched to 40k when 7th came out, then he moved)
The Rune of Forging allows you to re-roll Misfires on the artillery dice for Cannons, and the Rune of Accuracy allows you to re-roll the scatter dice for Grudge Throwers, so that may be what he is doing.
Dwarf Master Engineers are only worth it if you have multiple Grudge Throwers, as he allows you to re-roll misfires (no runes can do that for Grudge Throwers).
Yeah, but how much does that even matter on the average table? Even with these mitigating factors, I just can't account for what is really just a stone thrower with a couple of special rules being priced the same as a large monster.
Thommy H
Just a stone thrower with a couple of special rules? Is that all you see? I mostly plan OnG and I use the rock lobba all the time. It really is only good for specific targets. That is units of unarmored enemy and monsters. That's it. The S3 doesn't wound that much and anything with armor just blocks it. So, what's the difference?
S5 is massive. You will have a good chance to wound almost anything. Monsters with T6 or higher will be the only thing that it wound wound (OK...steam tanks, too). Most things are T3 or T4. With T5, you will be getting a lot of hits. That right there will put it beyond a catapult.
Armor Piercing tied with S5 is another thing that is quite good. Chaos Warriors with halberds won't get an armor save. Even an Empire Knight will only get a 50%-50% chance of saving the wound. Since S5 is going to cause a lot of wounds, the -3 to AS is really going to smash what you hit. The catapult does not have this ability at all. No where close. With this, you should be able to target almost any unit and do massive hits with it. That's very different than the specific targets a rock lobba has. I wouldn't even bother firing at a unit of Chaos Warriors with a catapult.
To me, this all sounds great. What else can make this even better? Multi-wound. Everyone is going to start running Ogre armies. We are going to see these guys everywhere. Not only will we still wound these guys on a 3+ with almost no armor save, they will take multi-wound! A direct hit on a unit of Ogre Bulls will see a fair number of them blown to bits. Hit an enemy monster and get to do more than just one hit. Even things like Khorne Juggernaughts will not want to be hit by this thing.
Now, I like all this. I'd be happy with a weapon like this, but it gets even better. Force the unit to take a Dangerous Terrain Test. You know, nothing really wants to take one, but if you happen to hit a massive unit of infantry and you will do so much more damage due to all the DT your opponent will have to roll. This is great!
With this war machine you can sit behind your lines and strike about anywhere on the board. You can fire at any unit or monster. You can expect it to do really nasty things no matter what you hit. For that it is far different than a catapult.
To be fair, Groznit, I believe the multiple wounds applies only to the S10 shot, as a standard catapult. It doesn’t explicitly state that, but I would bet money that Forgeworld catches that in an errata, if they haven’t already fixed it by book launch.
Well, in fairness I’m mentally cancelling out a couple of the advantages you mentioned because of the vicious misfires and the only shooting on a 3+ thing. The net effect, as I see it, is only a slightly beefed up stone thrower. Maybe I’ll try it in a game one day though and be proved wrong! It just doesn’t add up in my head right now.
I think te upsides are great, but the downsides are horrendous. Paying all of those points and it won’t fire (on average) 1 in three turns (in a typical game, that’s 4 shots instead of everything else’s 6) and you could be unlucky and get to fire 0 times. Paying all of those points and, when it DOES get to fire, if it misfires have a 50% chance of losing it?
The downsides should bring the points cost way down - one or the other would be bade enough, but both combined make it next to useless in my army-building phase
I maybe new to Fantasy, but the dreadquake mortar looks quite good.
The 3+ to fire is only if you don’t buy the Ogre right? 20pts to get rid of that rule and give 3 wounds seems worth taking to me. Plus if used as part of your force with a daemonsmith nearby you can re roll the artillery dice that would give you a misfire?
I am certainly considering taking one. Am I missing something?
@khedyarl: It’s not a difference of 48" vs. 72". The Magma Cannon only has 24" range. So, the difference is quite substantial.
Also, who plays on 4x4 tables? I only do that if I play 1k pts.
@Thommy H: If you said it was an expensive version of the trebuchet, I might agree with you. The S5 is a lot different than S3. The catapult really can only shoot at specific targets where the treb can shoot at almost anything and expect to do some damage.
I also agree with Coopervisor to say that taking the Ogre is pretty much standard and probably should just be included in the cost. Who isn’t going to take the Ogre slave? He also adds 3 more wounds to the war machine, too. I wonder if there will be special rules for who you take off as a casualty first? I’ll take the Ogre off last if I have a choice.
The misfire is pretty terrible. I admit that. It would be fantastic if we could get re-rolls with our “engineer”. I seem to blow up my own war machines 50% of the time anyways. My luck tends to suck with that. I forget who it was that said the misfire makes it a weapon with great benefits for bigger risks. I think I agree with that.
There’s no denying that the Ogre is a great buy - he should probably cost about 50 points (35 just for being an Ogre and adding those Wounds and Attacks, at least 15 for the reloading bonus) but the fact that you get all that for just 20 points really makes me think the unit is priced on the assumption that you’ll certainly include an Ogre. Well, that’s a nice little marketing strategy, but not much use for anyone using the old Earthshaker model with these rules.
The major downside of this warmachine is the concurrency in rare choices : hellcannon for example…
Everybody show the major advantage : S5, but hellcannon already has S5… So, I see no reason why playing it rather the hellcannon… At the present time… (because with reroll or something else thanks to daemonsmith, it’s not the same warmachine… Even if magma cannon seems to be far better than it in each cases…)
Hellcannon, if it has the same rules as it does in WoC, is better IMO. Better in combat, has a lower risk of not being able to shoot, same strength, no armour piercing - but instead causes a panic test at -1Ld and has an armour save.
I wrote a post a page back detailing pros and cons of Hellcannon vs Dreadquake - if the Dreadquake were costed the same, it would be a no-brainer for me to take the Dreadquake. As it stands… well, I’ll probably end up taking the Dreadquake because it looks amazing.
Something else I considered this morning: IF the Daemonsmith rule does hold out, it won’t apply to the Hellcannon - it isn’t a warmachine - something else to potentially think about when building a list.
If that were the case, it would make absolutely no sense because the Dreadquake isn’t even necessarily Daemonic but the Hellcannon always is! So we’d have the bizarre situation of a Daemonsmith who can help out with a mundane engine but not a Daemonic one!
as someone already pointed out, the decision between hc and dqm+ogre comes down to a matter of taste; nearly same points cost but different cc-abilities, similar devastating shooting attack with slightly differing effects, and both of them have equally bulky rulesets imo. its just compared to the magma cannon that the dqm loiks awkwardly priced, but lets face it, its not GW we’re bit**ing about, it’s WF, and it’s their first attempt to produce whfb-rulesets… we shouldn’t be so harsh with them, it’s not like they completely screwed up, rather not meeting our expectations they fed by producing that gigantic model! they need our support, lets give it to them by finding ways of effective implementation of this (more or less) ‘awesome’ machine… and by the way: i agree with almost everything said in this thread, many many good points were made, and personally, as many others, i am very ambiguous towards the dqm, but i dont doubt it will make its points back when utilised.
another thing: maybe the mods can merge parts of this with the other dqm thread, they’re both discussing the same matter
Sure, but by default it isn't and presumably the Daemonsmith's LOS-type ability works without it being so. It just seems a bit ass-backward to me, but I guess we'll see what the final rules look like.
