Blacksmoke Battery is good. Fight me.

[Landohammer]

So I have been looking through my garage for modeling projects to work on during quarantine, when low and behold I find 3 old cannons, a cog smith, and an old metal gyrocopter. Before I started repainting them, I decided to look up their rules. Unfortunately I soon discovered that Cannons had essentially been dropped from Cities and remain an Ironweld Arsenal unit only. However I then remembered the GHB 19 had mercenary units that included cannons. So I checked them out.

Blacksmoke Battery (-1CP)

0-1 Cogsmith

0-3 Cannons/Organ Guns

0-1 Gyrocopter/Gyrobomber (Gyros give your cannons +1 to hit if they are within 12" of your target)

Now cannons are an interesting warmachine. 

32" range. 2 shots, at 4+/2+/-2/D6 damage.

You can reroll shots with an Engineer, and you get +1 to hit if the Gyro is near the target. You also reroll damage vs units of 10+ models. 

The tricky part is squeezing all of those units in an army due to the 20% and 1/4th allies rules. But Cities can take a Cogsmith normally, so taking a Blacksmoke Battery in a cities army is quite easy. You just need to make sure you have 9 Cities units (including the Cogsmith).

So I painted them up and played a practice game this past weekend. I brought 2 cannons, 1 gyro, and a cogsmith. And to my surprise, they absolutely wrecked.

First thing I did was fire both cannons into his Freeguild General on Griffin. General took 12 wounds, and died to the Cogsmith's shotgun. Next turn I shot 10 wounds off his hurricanum and put 5 wounds on a unit camping an objective. They evaporated to Battleshock. Third turn I wiped out a unit of 3 demigryphs, killed the hurricanum, and started working on his remaining infantry.

My opponent left that game planning to paint up his old cannons as well lol.

What are ya'lls thoughts? It may not be the best shooting but its actually quite effective for its points, and most importantly, its available to every single faction.  I am even considering dropping the Gyro and trying to squeeze it into some of my other armies such as Deepkin and Sylvaneth where solid shooting is not available. 

 

 

 

 

 

[dekay]

My only question would be how did you manage to get them to shoot more than once, given that it takes 6 5+ save wounds to silence them both. The greatest weakness of cannons is having the 1st edition crew rules making them ridiculously fragile. Apart from that, they're not useless. They definitely hit hard, but as they're premium targets, they rarely get a chance to shine. Why didn't your opponent just shoot them?

[Salyx]

Yes, cannons used to be a great warmashine. I played them myself in the early days of AoS, as well as the good old Imperial Knights. 

However, there is one big weakness to the old warmashine warscroll that drop them out for me. 

If you take a Look at their warscroll, you will See that there are separate Stats for the warmashine and the Crew. The Crew counts as a separate entity, which means that they can be shot at seperately. So 3 arrows that are Not saved end your warmashine. 

If it Was not for this stupid rule, I would gladly field my hellcannon again. 

Newer warscrolls for warmashine like Celester ballista or the cities hellblaster volley gun have a combined Profile making them much more resilient. 

You may of course play cannons, however, you should be a wäre of their Main weakness. 

[Landohammer]

17 minutes ago, dekay said:

My only question would be how did you manage to get them to shoot more than once, given that it takes 6 5+ save wounds to silence them both. The greatest weakness of cannons is having the 1st edition crew rules making them ridiculously fragile. Apart from that, they're not useless. They definitely hit hard, but as they're premium targets, they rarely get a chance to shine. Why didn't your opponent just shoot them?

My opponents only shooting unit was his hurricanum. (actually not that uncommon in competitive cities lists) So unless he just pushed it forward he was never going to be in range. To get within 18 inches of my crew he was gonna be like 6 inches from my deployment zone lol.  I would have gladly traded a cannon for the ability to take out his hurricanum early on. 

But yea the crew are 100% the biggest weakness sadly. 

14 minutes ago, Salyx said:

Yes, cannons used to be a great warmashine. I played them myself in the early days of AoS, as well as the good old Imperial Knights. 

However, there is one big weakness to the old warmashine warscroll that drop them out for me. 

If you take a Look at their warscroll, you will See that there are separate Stats for the warmashine and the Crew. The Crew counts as a separate entity, which means that they can be shot at seperately. So 3 arrows that are Not saved end your warmashine. 

If it Was not for this stupid rule, I would gladly field my hellcannon again. 

Newer warscrolls for warmashine like Celester ballista or the cities hellblaster volley gun have a combined Profile making them much more resilient. 

You may of course play cannons, however, you should be a wäre of their Main weakness. 

I am hoping its an oversight, since all of the updated warscrolls in Cities were changed to just a flat 7 wounds. But until then yes this is clearly the biggest weakness, but there are a few things I did as an attempt to mitigate:

So if you have a good knowledge of your opponent's warscrolls and deployment zone, you can usually stay out of range of any of his shooting.  With a 32 inch range plus 4 inches of movement plus the ability to deploy crewmen an inch behind the warmachine,  your crew can often be 39 inches from the unit you are scared of. The only units you have to worry about are other war machines or Tzeentch. But again, if you are forcing Flamers, rocket batteries, or Skyfires to target your allies instead of your primary units, then that's pretty good.

While the cannon needs line of sight, the crew doesn't. So I actually like to hide crewmen either behind stuff or within forests. So combined with the additional range, many times my opponent can't physically see the crew, even if they somehow get in range. Again, Tzeentch gets by this with flying shooters but you were probably going to lose to Tzeentch anyway so why worry about them lol. 

 

[Aelfric]

They are also susceptable to Shadow Warriors  - anything that can deepstrike with a shooting attack, really.  Maybe we'll see them again in a future city with a single profile, but until then I shall leave them in the drawer.

[Kramer]

10 minutes ago, Landohammer said:

My opponents only shooting unit was his hurricanum. (actually not that uncommon in competitive cities lists) So unless he just pushed it forward he was never going to be in range. To get within 18 inches of my crew he was gonna be like 6 inches from my deployment zone lol. 

But he did have magic I’m guessing? Works the same.
I didn’t have much succes with them. But good on you if you do! 
Match ups do swing it a lot I agree. so definitely not bad, but situational. 

[Landohammer]

51 minutes ago, Kramer said:

But he did have magic I’m guessing? Works the same.
I didn’t have much succes with them. But good on you if you do! 
Match ups do swing it a lot I agree. so definitely not bad, but situational. 

He actually had plenty of magic. My second game was vs Hallowheart

99% of spells max out at 18" and magic happens before movement. There is no way they are going to reach a unit on the board edge without exposing their caster. They would need the Spellportals or some other means of extending range. And even then it would be turn 2-3 before they had a chance to kill one cannon. 

52 minutes ago, Aelfric said:

They are also susceptable to Shadow Warriors  - anything that can deepstrike with a shooting attack, really.  Maybe we'll see them again in a future city with a single profile, but until then I shall leave them in the drawer.

So deepstriking/teleporting shooty units can definitely be a problem (Living City and Tzeentch come to mind).  But shadow warriors aren't a great example. It would be nearly impossible to get the cannon in range of their bows unless all of the deployment zone was essentially empty. Remember the cannon is likely on the board edge and hopefully screened by the Gyrocopter itself if nothing else. You would also need to make dang well sure you had cover to trigger your buff, because on average your 10 regular shots won't be enough to kill the crew. And if I had hidden the crew (or the crew were too far away), then you would just be shooting at the cannon itself which would be even less productive, especially with a Cogsmith that can heal it every turn. 

But if all screens are gone, and you find cover, and you can see the crew, and you complete your 9 inch charge. You can probably take out both cannons. On the other hand the cannon doesn't really need any of those advantages to wipe out the shadow warriors.  

 

So there is a hard counter to every unit. But part of the appeal of Blacksmoke battery (and any warmachine really) is the range. If you are able to reach out and deal a potential 4d6 damage to units starting from turn 1 from the safety of your own deployment zone, then that's pretty huge. Imagine putting 4 cannon shots into Nagash or Keeper of Secrets on turn 1 before they even get to move? 

 

[Kramer]

2 hours ago, Landohammer said:

They would need the Spellportals or some other means of extending range. And even then it would be turn 2-3 before they had a chance to kill one cannon. 

No not really. Yes they could use the spellportal, but that's in most hallowheart lists I feel. But things like Comet have the range and can take out all crew within 10", every order list that can ally kroak will be taking him soon enough. And there are so many more threats  

But you're right. now we're discussing matchups which is fairly pointless. That's why I called it situational. I will say, most top lists for the next few tournaments will have easy answers. At least that's my guess. Seraphon, Tzeentch, OBR, Hallowheart. KO as an outsider perhaps. The only top factions that might not have an easy answer would be Orruk Warclans & Slaanesh. 

But regarding this, which is more objective.

2 hours ago, Landohammer said:

Imagine putting 4 cannon shots into Nagash or Keeper of Secrets on turn 1 before they even get to move?

Say you get to the target with the Gyrocopter, which won't be there the next turn in your example  .  Druchii calculator goes to:

I'm not very familiar with Death. What kind of aftersaves and save improvements does he get? Top table it's likely in the +1 save subfaction of OBR. 

That's without after saves. 

Against any hero with ethereal amulet and a 4+ save.... that's a 44% chance of doing nothing. 

So i'm not going to fight you more than this for it... but i'm sticking with situational. It takes a lot of points, a command point and effort to get them on the table and keep them there. It makes you static, it's output is situational, and a lot of top armies will have the answer for it.

So for all that if you get the copter in range and you shoot 280pts of cannons at nagash you'll most likely wont even get him below half his wounds. There will of course also be great match ups. But that's why it's situational imo. 

 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by Kramer
Clarified

[zilberfrid]

Cities can't bring Seraphon, right?

Ethereal amulet shouldn't work with PE.

Edited May 19, 2020 by zilberfrid

[Kramer]

16 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Cities can't bring Seraphon, right?

Ethereal amulet shouldn't work with PE.

Okay I’ll amend it to be more clear. Every order army that can take lord kroak will. 

and don’t see why eathereal amulet doesn’t work with Petrifax elite? You cant give it to Nagash as he is a named character. But again, don’t know all things death so let me know if I’m missing anything. 
But the statistic is against any 4+ save hero with the ethereal amulet. 

[zilberfrid]

4 minutes ago, Kramer said:

Okay I’ll amend it to be more clear. Every order army that can take lord kroak will. 

and don’t see why eathereal amulet doesn’t work with Petrifax elite? You cant give it to Nagash as he is a named character. But again, don’t know all things death so let me know if I’m missing anything. 
But the statistic is against any 4+ save hero with the ethereal amulet. 

Because the hero is immune to save mods. Including positive ones.

[Kramer]

8 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Because the hero is immune to save mods. Including positive ones.

Interesting. Need to check the wording. Don’t know. Gut feeling is that the one changes the characteristic and the other modified the dice rolls. 
I’ll go check tomorrow. 

[Ulysses1979]

Just a thought if you are playing Cities of Sigmar, you can bring SCE Lord Ordinator and get another +1 to hit, that is if they retain the order keyword as mercenaries.

[JackStreicher]

2 hours ago, Ulysses1979 said:

Just a thought if you are playing Cities of Sigmar, you can bring SCE Lord Ordinator and get another +1 to hit, that is if they retain the order keyword as mercenaries.

This works. + Rerolls for the cogsmith

[NauticalSoup]

Kramer sums this one up pretty well. I played against a Blacksmoke battery with my Big Waaagh and it wasn't really an issue given the sort of magic shenanigans available to me which kept it shoved way at the back and heavily screened, thereby ceding basically all the objectives to keep me from killing off his cannons in the first turn or two. It's reminiscent of playing against Longstrikes except they're way less scary, somehow manage to be more fragile and lack the dynamic defense of aetherwings.

Also your example engagement sounds like you got super lucky with a disproportionate amount of damage output against a sub-optimal opposition force played by someone who wasn't ready for it.

Edited May 20, 2020 by NauticalSoup

[JackStreicher]

The blacksmoke battery is a fun choice, yet not competetive. Keep in mind that humans are pretty bad at „guessing“ probability ^^ 

 

The battery suffers from the crew issue and the D6 random damage. The cannons would perform way better with 5 damage flat I stead of D6

Edited May 20, 2020 by JackStreicher

[Kramer]

7 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

Because the hero is immune to save mods. Including positive ones.

You’re absolutely right. Petrifax elite modifies the dice roll, not the characteristic. So ethereal amulet is wasted on them. 

[Kramer]

7 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

Because the hero is immune to save mods. Including positive ones.

You’re absolutely right. Petrifax elite modifies the dice roll, not the characteristic. So ethereal amulet is wasted on them. 

[dekay]

One more thing to add:

Helstorms fulfill basically the same role, while being more resilient. It's still relatively easy to put them to 2+ (re-roll ones) / 3+. -2, d3. They get 3 attacks instead of 2, without deteriorating statline, and, in Greywater, they have a) more range, b) don't generate extra drops if you take a battalion c) can shoot twice in the first turn, which combined with their greater survivability vastly increases their potential damage per battle. And not only they don't cost a CP, they can get you an extra one with battalion.

I'm not an expert on using artillery, but they seem basically like the same thing but better.

[Landohammer]

3 hours ago, dekay said:

One more thing to add:

Helstorms fulfill basically the same role, while being more resilient. It's still relatively easy to put them to 2+ (re-roll ones) / 3+. -2, d3. They get 3 attacks instead of 2, without deteriorating statline, and, in Greywater, they have a) more range, b) don't generate extra drops if you take a battalion c) can shoot twice in the first turn, which combined with their greater survivability vastly increases their potential damage per battle. And not only they don't cost a CP, they can get you an extra one with battalion.

I'm not an expert on using artillery, but they seem basically like the same thing but better.

 

Yea absolutely. The  Rocket Batteries can fulfill a similar role and with less baggage. In my mind, however I really like the ability to reroll any hit not just 1s with a cogsmith.

From an opponent's perspective, the potentially rerollable d6 damage is really scary. I can kind of predict how much damage they will deal. The cannon is just a crazy wild card and I like it

7 hours ago, NauticalSoup said:

Kramer sums this one up pretty well. I played against a Blacksmoke battery with my Big Waaagh and it wasn't really an issue given the sort of magic shenanigans available to me which kept it shoved way at the back and heavily screened, thereby ceding basically all the objectives to keep me from killing off his cannons in the first turn or two. It's reminiscent of playing against Longstrikes except they're way less scary, somehow manage to be more fragile and lack the dynamic defense of aetherwings.

Also your example engagement sounds like you got super lucky with a disproportionate amount of damage output against a sub-optimal opposition force played by someone who wasn't ready for it.

Well part of my point is that many opponents are not prepared to deal with a warmachine that can hit them from their opponent's board age. Its not really a common occurence. His first list was a Hammerhal Demigriff Lancer list and it was far from sub-optimal. In fact he was in combat on the top of turn 1 with my screens. 

9 hours ago, Ulysses1979 said:

Just a thought if you are playing Cities of Sigmar, you can bring SCE Lord Ordinator and get another +1 to hit, that is if they retain the order keyword as mercenaries.

Good point! If I was a normal person I would probably just bring Celestar Ballistas and Rocket Batteries with a Ordinator for support. But I really like the re-rolls that the Cogsmith provides. Also the Cogsmith clocks in at 60pts which is quite a steal. 

@Kramer

Sorry I was struggling to follow your diagram. (probably me being dense lol) So did you math out that Nagash would likely lose around half his wounds? On turn 1? So wouldn't that imply that he would be dead, (or close to it) in the subsequent turns from 280pts of cannons? 

I threw Nagash out there as an example, but in truth the Cannon is actually more efficient vs elite infantry due to the rerollable damage.

@ Everyone:

Thanks for all the responses. A lot of you are throwing out some pretty solid counters to the Blacksmoke Battery. However I do want to point out that many of you are acknowledging that you would pretty much focus on taking out these cannons as early as possible. But isn't that validation in and of itself? How many units can  you think of that are "must kill asap" units? Now how many of those units are available to every single faction in the game?

Just some food for thought. It may not be the most efficient use of 280-410pts, but it absolutely can not be ignored.

[NauticalSoup]

It's not really validation if the Blacksmoke Battery as a threat so much as it is just super easy to kill, and thus desirable to make at least a half-hearted attempt. You have to do tops 9 wounds against a 4+ to destroy the whole thing - barring characters there aren't a lot of threats in the entire game that easy to completely destroy. Any list running a comet can probably manage it nearly for free. It's disproportionately fragile for its damage. That doesn't mean its damage is that crazy, just that it's so fragile it'll be hard not to get good return on attacking it.

Think of it this way - cannons aren't 'must kill units' like say, for example, Longstrikes, which will disassemble your whole army if you let them. But they're basically free kills if you have the capability of reaching them whatsoever so you're just leaving money on the table if you don't even try to take them out. And if you make your opponent deploy around protecting them at a far back corner of the board where you might have a hard time reaching them you should be in a good spot to win a huge chunk of the missions on board control.

It's not often your opponent gives you a shot at hosing 400 points of stuff with less work than it takes to clean up an 80 point chaff unit. The only time I can see it being an issue is for an army that struggles to reach back-line threats already, in which case they'll probably have issues with lots of shooty units with any range.

Also at a glance it looks like Kramer has the cannons sitting at about a 20% chance to do half of Nagash's wounds with a volley. Eh. Only a tiny bit more likely than it is to do nothing.

[Landohammer]

9 minutes ago, NauticalSoup said:

It's not really validation if the Blacksmoke Battery as a threat so much as it is just super easy to kill, and thus desirable to make at least a half-hearted attempt. You have to do tops 9 wounds against a 4+ to destroy the whole thing - barring characters there aren't a lot of threats in the entire game that easy to completely destroy. Any list running a comet can probably manage it nearly for free. It's disproportionately fragile for its damage. That doesn't mean its damage is that crazy, just that it's so fragile it'll be hard not to get good return on attacking it.

Think of it this way - cannons aren't 'must kill units' like say, for example, Longstrikes, which will disassemble your whole army if you let them. But they're basically free kills if you have the capability of reaching them whatsoever so you're just leaving money on the table if you don't even try to take them out. And if you make your opponent deploy around protecting them at a far back corner of the board where you might have a hard time reaching them you should be in a good spot to win a huge chunk of the missions on board control.

It's not often your opponent gives you a shot at hosing 400 points of stuff with less work than it takes to clean up an 80 point chaff unit. The only time I can see it being an issue is for an army that struggles to reach back-line threats already, in which case they'll probably have issues with lots of shooty units with any range.

Also at a glance it looks like Kramer has the cannons sitting at about a 20% chance to do half of Nagash's wounds with a volley. Eh. Only a tiny bit more likely than it is to do nothing.

Maybe my meta is just weird. My local tourneys have been recently podiumed by Tzeentch, Skaven, Seraphon,  Dok, Khorne, Slaanesh, and Nurgle.  And from those lists, only Tzeentch and Seraphon would have had easy answers. 

My personal lists are Sylvaneth, Deepkin, and Living City, and none of my typical lists could have dealt with entrenched artillery. Not for a few turns at least.

This is the second time somebody has mentioned Longstrikes though. So I will def have to give them a look. Never heard of them before now. Most SCE shooty lists I have seen around here use Celestar Ballistas. 

[NauticalSoup]

4 minutes ago, Landohammer said:

This is the second time somebody has mentioned Longstrikes though. So I will def have to give them a look. Never heard of them before now. Most SCE shooty lists I have seen around here use Celestar Ballistas. 

Interesting - I haven't seen a lot of Celestars hit the table in a while. I have four but they always feel super pathetic these days so I don't usually use them except in casual games. Points nerf didn't help. I actually think SCE are in a pretty terrible place ATM but Longstrike lists are still a tournament staple and they incidentally are the same sort of annoying character-sniping threat as a dwarf cannon, just a bit more credible because they're extremely consistent. Super accurate and they shoot twice and have aetherwings to keep them from getting charged.

I wouldn't be surprised if those armies struggled but like I said, they will struggle against ANY unit that can shoot from behind screens. It's not the distance so much as the screens that present a problem for destroying back-line shooters. Conversely they might just grind through the rest of your army since you're sinking a lot of points into sniping units that won't be participating in the seizing of critical objectives. I also don't think you have to kill the cannons, the damage really isn't that extreme for the points investment - it's just usually pretty easy to kill them unless you have no shooting and the whole enemy army is camped out around them, in which case just probably win on objectives? If you have your cannons in a back corner and are deploying to screen out deep strikers you're making the rest of your force much more vulnerable than it ought to be. For contrast compare to say, GWF artillery blobs that can actually be played aggressively forward because they're far cheaper, more than twice as durable and still put out a good amount of damage.

[Kramer]

4 hours ago, Landohammer said:

Sorry I was struggling to follow your diagram. (probably me being dense lol) So did you math out that Nagash would likely lose around half his wounds? On turn 1? So wouldn't that imply that he would be dead, (or close to it) in the subsequent turns from 280pts of cannons? 

I threw Nagash out there as an example, but in truth the Cannon is actually more efficient vs elite infantry due to the rerollable damage.

No worries. Two things. One I didn't math out much, I just put in the variables into: http://tools.druchii.net/AoS-Combat-Calculator.php

Super useful tool. Second, yes one was Nagash with a 3+ and one with Nagash in Petrifax with a 2+ save. Vs. the 3+ it was: 

So to explain the picture. Starting upper left. 
The cannon hits on a 3+ because I gave it the bonus +1 to hit due to a Gyrocopter being within 12".  It re-roll all fails to hit due to the cogsmith. 
Next die is the 2+ to wound. 
The 5 is the save after the -2 rend. 
In your example you suggested '4 shots into Nagash' So that's why the 4 attacks and d6 damage. 
The coloured graph 'Chance per damage done' shows the chance of do that specific amount of damage. So for example there is a bigger chance of you doing 0 damage than doing 11 damage. And the most likely amount of damage is 6. 

But this is in a set up which favours you heavily. No added saves, re-rolls or anything for Nagash. And for you with a cogsmith and gyrocopter in their respective ranges. So when you say not bad for 280 pts of cannons. It's really 410 pts and -1 command point for that amount of damage. If that's worth it to do roughly half the wounds against a 880pts model that heals. I leave up to you. 

But i'm sticking with: Situationally good, but for winning a tournaments it's to much of a gamble for me. 
 

[Landohammer]

@Kramer

 

Thanks for the clarification. Hey 6 wounds sounds good to my Sylvaneth or Deepkin list which is normally just waiting on units like Nagash to expose their selves to a charge. 

I think the value of Blacksmoke Battery increases if your army is likely to get outdropped. Personally I spend a lot of first turns doing nothing but repositioning. If I could put pressure on from the very start then it becomes quite a bit more valuable. 

Again Nagash isn't a great scenario  since he can likely eat multiple cannonballs.  Bloodthirsters or Keeper of Secrets are probably ideal monstrous targets. But truly elite infantry would be best. 

 

Edited May 20, 2020 by Landohammer