Helstorm Rocket Battery useless?

[Barbarian Borelord]

So I'm a new Warhammer tabletop player (I am actually one of those Total War players who discovered tabletopping through Total Warhammer) and I'm building a Cities of Sigmar army now, I haven't played any tabletop games yet.

I got a Helstorm/Helblaster box and have to make the choice between the two. So I have been doing some tests to see how they preformed. I quickly figured out that having a Cogsmith next to them is a must. But even so the Helblaster seems vastly superior. Every test I did with two Helstorms or Helblasters and a Cogsmith vs. 20 Vanari Auralan Sentinels the Helstorms get wiped out in two turns but the Helblasters wipe out the Sentinels in two turns.  

The Cogsmith's ability to let the Helblaster reroll any attack charactaristic dice minimizes the chance of jamming, so three decks is a safe option. But for the Helstorm the Cogsmith only lets you reroll 1's in the to hit roll, a minimal advantage. And with only 4 attacks and a +5 to hit many Helstorm attack sequences stop before they do any damage. And yet the Helstorm is 10 points more expensive!

I refuse to believe that Games Workshop is just being stupid about this, so what the hell am I missing here?? Could it be that Helstorms are only useful in Greywater Fastness?

[Leemer]

Different tools for different targets.

The difficulty with the volley gun it competes with freeguild handgunners for a similar damage output but without the versatility (battleline, bodies for objectives, stand-shoot).

In general rocket battery is more popular for a few reasons, but it NEEDS to have sufficient support to work properly.

Range: 36" is huge this means you can threaten turn 1 and also leave it safely protected in your backfield

-2 Rend w/ D3 damage: This is the big difference. -2 rend is fairly uncommon and can target high armor enemies a lot of your units cant deal with outside mortal wounds. 

Synergy: lord ordinator, greywater fastness (battalion, prayer), tempest eye (hawkeye), engineer, rocket salvo ability, hurricanum

Really you need 2-3 buffs of these to make it worthwhile but once you do it's not too difficult to get hitting on 2+ which makes them way more reliable. The hurricanum is close to an auto-include in a lot of lists anyway.

If you're going in on this I'd suggest going all-in with the battalion, if you just take 1 or 2 without support it's not going to be very points-efficient or impactful.

Overall artillery is cool but expensive.

[Barbarian Borelord]

Alright thanks. I'll do some more tests using these suggestions.👍

[Crashnarf]

2 hours ago, Barbarian Borelord said:

And with only 4 attacks and a +5 to hit many Helstorm attack sequences stop before they do any damage. And yet the Helstorm is 10 points more expensive!

3 attacks, not 4.

And you will mostly have a 4+ to hit, for you will target only one unit with all the rockets.

I often play them in a Greywater artillery company (4 battery with the cogsmith), and a lord ordinator near by: it is 840 pts. It is expensive but, 1rst turn you can deal 24 shoots, 3+ (rerolling ones) to hit, 3+ to wound, -2, D3 damage, and you shoot at 39'.

I think it is one of the only way to get them competitive.

But you will have to play defensive.

My personnal list with this configuration is:

Runelord (general), cogsmith, lord ordinator, celestant prime, 4 battery, 10 shadow warriors, 30 ironbreakers, 20 irondrakes and 10 darkshards.

[zilberfrid]

Do note that the Sentinels are a unit that is overperforming. Your Helstorm would at least have a shot at shooting at them before being removed, the Helblasters would not even get close enough for a single volley.

[Boar]

2 hours ago, Barbarian Borelord said:

The Cogsmith's ability to let the Helblaster reroll any attack charactaristic dice minimizes the chance of jamming, so three decks is a safe option. But for the Helstorm the Cogsmith only lets you reroll 1's in the to hit roll, a minimal advantage. And with only 4 attacks and a +5 to hit many Helstorm attack sequences stop before they do any damage

Were you testing them on 5+ to hit? Because there could lie some issue, when you shoot at one target you get +1 to hit, so essentialy it's 4+.

Wiping 20 Sentinels in 2 turns honestly looks like luck from Volley Guns, they would need max attacks ie 16-17 to do it reliably. 

EDIT: They cannot even reach those max is 15.

Generally Rockets can work without Cogsmith, he changes little , while he is very important for Volley Guns. And he himself cost 1/2 of the warmachine cost. This also means that if 1 Cogsmith is supporting 2 or more Volley Guns enemy should consider going first after Cogsmith

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Boar

[Barbarian Borelord]

3 minutes ago, Crashnarf said:

3 attacks, not 4.

And you will mostly have a 4+ to hit, for you will target only one unit with all the rockets.

Gosh, I read that wrong the entire time in the Battletome. Well that really makes things different...

[Crashnarf]

1 minute ago, Barbarian Borelord said:

Gosh, I read that wrong the entire time in the Battletome. Well that really makes things different...

Indeed 😉

[Boar]

8 minutes ago, Barbarian Borelord said:

Gosh, I read that wrong the entire time in the Battletome. Well that really makes things different...

It makes it closer, if we assume Volleygun has 10 atks on average thanks to Cogsmith preventing it form missfires it's still advantage for Volleygun on average damage.

[Crashnarf]

Do not forget that helstorms can shoot far  away than volleyguns, so they can choose what they target, and they can shoot at the first turn, what volleygun often can't do. It matters.

So the stats are not so exhaustives  🙂

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Crashnarf

[Boar]

52 minutes ago, Crashnarf said:

So the stats are not so exhaustives  🙂

Yup range, rend when re-rolling saves appear like chaos warriors or KO re-rolling from gold, all can be very important

 

I would caution still against Vollegun, if I am not mistaken even with Cogsmith re-rerolling offending dice in missfires, it is still 1/6 failure rate with 3 decks. This is unit for people that don't want to spend real money in casino😉

Edited March 9, 2021 by Boar

[Barbarian Borelord]

Okay well I got a clear answer as to 'what I missed' and some useful advice as well. Thanks everyone

[Doko]

In general our war machines are useless,his damage is too much low. Compare it to stormcast war machine.or to sentinels that have more range than many war machines,ignore vision,cost the same or less and does the double damage than our machines and with mortals

And the steam tank vs the seraphon turtle that shoot twice with a cp is a other joke.

And the fact that who created the war machines(dwarfs) have lost his models also dont help 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Doko

[dekay]

"Useless" is a strong word, but there's a reason Helstorm doesn't show up in tournament builds. They're not 'griffon mage' bad but they're not in any way strong. Basically, if you want to get any worthwhile results from them, you need two things, both already mentioned. First, fully commit and play Greywater. If you see just how much better Greywater makes them, imagine how bad they are in other cities (ARGUABLY, Tempest's Eye +1 to wound aura helps them too if you really don't want to use 4 of them at once). Extra shot, lower drops, longer range... want Helstorms, go Greywater.

The second thing is their range: Comparing their damage output to any of our good shooters (handgunners, irondrakes, anything goes) they perform badly. However, this comparison looks way better on longer range, in which handgunner output is a nice zero. If you want to shoot things up close, you have a lot of better options. If you want to shoot things across the entire table? Much less competition. You need either command points or spellcasting to shoot into enemy deployment zone with other units, and the first one is a limited resource and the second one may just as well fail. If you use helstorms, keep this in mind: if you're shooting something closer than 20'', you'd be better off with other shooter. Seek distant targets because nothing else will reach them.

They're also pretty much superior to hellblasters because with their range, they have at least a niche to compete. Hellblasters are basically worse handgunners that can explode.