User blog:TheRedScorpion/Target Priority or...

... "How I learned to stop worrying and love the lascannon."
The last few games I played at warhammer world realy hammered home a lesson in firepower that I don't think I'd fully realised going into it. First, let me frame this discussion by introducing the two competeing philosophies.

First, the multi-melta, missile launcher spam. This theology proclaims (loudly) that fast moving-hard hitting melta weapons backed up with hordes of missiles will both annihilate armour at short range and swamp soft targets at long range.

Now, that competeing phillosophy (mine) is a much simpler one. I will put a twin-linked lascannon on all my tanks, a lascannon on atleast half my squads and assault cannons or plasma cannons everwhere else. The thinking is very simply, I don't care how far away the enemy is, my lascannons will always be effective, and they're not the cliche' "tank killing cannons" for nothing either. Finaly, if the enemy does decide to close, I've got assault cannons, and those frag tanks just as well as they chew up swarms of infantry (just so we're clear, assault cannons are very good at that -RS). Finaly for all those blood angel players, I've brought a couple of plasma cannons, I do know how much you guys love plasma cannons.

To stun, or not to stun.
The very first thing out of the mouths of most gamers when they see lascannons is "Well atleast they're not AP1" and it's true, no +1 on vehicle damage charts, boo. But I tend to look at it differently. In all three games my opponent found that his armour 10 landspeeders hardly ever got a shot off before being blown out of the sky or stunned for turn after turn. The stormraven and vindicator were very often targets of priority and without anything else to draw my fire I could plug them with lascannons from extreme range before they got a chance to really do their jobs.

Captain Lysander was in all three games a massive headache, he ate everything I threw at him and just smiled as he crunched his way through my marines, but he rarely got into a position to do maximum damage because his transport exploded too far downrange. Infact on two occasions he reached my lines on his own because plasma cannon fire had killed everyone else.

Bolters
One final point to make here. Four tactical squads and terminators, played two. That's a big difference in raw firepower. When all else fails handing your opponent a buchet of dice to roll in armour saves rarely fails to kill buckets of models. I'd dearly loved to have taken all the gucci squads I could, sternguard, vanguard honour guard etc, but without a solid backbone of tac marines to stand and deliver I'd have bled white in three turns.