Crew and Artillery

[Shankzalot]

Question: Can you target artillery crews with ranged attacks, or does the player of the artillery warscroll get to allocate wounds as normal.  

My interpretation is that the player can allocate wounds as normal.  The warscroll reads: "A Cannon consists of a war machine and a unit of 3 duardin crew."

As I interpret it, this is all one warscroll/unit/force org slot, so you don't target the crew or cannon individually.  I have never played an artillery before, so I haven't run into this personally, but it was  topic of discussion this weekend.  If this has been FAQ'd then I totally missed it.  

[BaldoBeardo]

Can the warmachine fire without a crew? 

Normally no, as the attack table for the weapon usually refers to the number of its' crew nearby.

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[Shankzalot]

Note to self, never field artillery.

[b1ackni9htgaming]

Additionally, in the FAQ it specifically states that you target either the crew or the artillery piece.

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[fartsocks]

I generally put a wall of warriors in front of my guns to give them a bit more time to shoot potential crew predators in the face.

[BaldoBeardo]

No-no, you're not allocating within a unit as normal. All that happens is the attacker can decide whether to shoot the cannon or the crew, as they are two separate units. E.g. crew get hit with something that inflicts 7 wounds. Crew is dead, but cannon is unaffected because wounds don't carry over between units.

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[LordRogalDorn]

So you only get the kill points if you kill both the weapon and the crew?

[Double Misfire]

9 hours ago, BaldoBeardo said:

No-no, you're not allocating within a unit as normal. All that happens is the attacker can decide whether to shoot the cannon or the crew, as they are two separate units. E.g. crew get hit with something that inflicts 7 wounds. Crew is dead, but cannon is unaffected because wounds don't carry over between units.

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Please listen to this guy. He knows an awful lot about the finer points of killing artillery crew.

[Ben]

This rule is the bane of my Hellcannon

[amysrevenge]

This is definitely something that shold be revisited if there is a Compendium 2.0 in the future - treat each warmachine as a single model that gets worse as it takes damage (like monsters), crew would get modelled on the same base or as hobby tokens that don't affect gameplay in any way.

[Sombremine]

On 10/01/2017 at 9:33 PM, amysrevenge said:

This is definitely something that shold be revisited if there is a Compendium 2.0 in the future - treat each warmachine as a single model that gets worse as it takes damage (like monsters), crew would get modelled on the same base or as hobby tokens that don't affect gameplay in any way.

+1 on this, Artillery become unefective 3 poor servants with a very mediocre save are doomed and will die too quickly to do anything... Pity I had just finished to paint my Duardin Artillery battery

[Squirrelmaster]

It wouldn't help much, if those "single models" were each 3 wounds with a 4+ save. At least right now you can put the crew behind the machine, adding a few extra inches between them and the enemy (though of course, your opponent can always just target the machine instead).

Given the extreme long range of many war machines, I think the main problem is all the fast, teleporting, shooting armies who can basically target anything in your army before you even get a turn. Removing the "whoever finishes deployment first chooses who goes first" rule would help a lot imo, with so many armies now being able to manage a single deployment drop.

[Ravenwing]

I have played some with artillery.

The artillery is defintely vulnable to fire and especially units dropping down or entering from any board edge. However, artillery is also quite powerful and still has a role in many armies. It is normally quite easy to keep crew out of range from non artillery handguns, arrows etc. Range is normally to short to hit the artillery until round 2 or 3.

Plus some artillery is indirect fire, which allows it to be in cover from shooting - and at least the crew get +1 armor save by hidding behind their warmachine.

Also note some crew are quite numerous - trebuchet crew is five if I recall correctly. Not that easy to kill for smaller units. obviously 2 person crews are super vulnable.

Artillery can also move and shoot. That sometimes allows them to get out of charge or shooting range - essentially buying them another round of shooting until they are attacked.

Everything can be killed, but I feel most Order artillery pieces are useful for matched play although some might not make it to Tournaments as value vs. points is low. Still fun to play with though.