Leman Russ vs Anti Tank Vulture

[Tirak]

So I've been having a great time with 8th edition, combined arms guard is here with a vengeance and a lot of interesting options are here with a fairly strong Index and some (in my opinion) great flyer rules. Now I'm a huge fan of flyers, I love jets of all kinds, so when I got my hands on Imperial Armour and saw some of the options we had now, I was pretty excited. My current list is fielding a pair of Punisher Vultures, but looking at things, I think I might be able to get away with swapping out my Tank Commander and Pask for a pair of Vultures armed with Twin Lascannons and 2 Hellstrike Missiles. Combined with Officer of the Fleet, I get a less reliable "All Gunners Fire" order that i can share between all four of my flyers rather than just Pask giving it to the TC.

 

It seems good in my head, but I know my bias is towards air power, so I'm looking on the community's thoughts to the idea of the Poster Russ vs the Anti Tank vulture.

 

Right now my Russes are both Battlecannon, Lascannon, Heavy Bolter Sponsons and Heavy Stubbers just for the laughs. They're not ideal, but it lets me run my tanks WYSIWYG and also I love the flexibility the diverse armament brings. The Tank Commander comes in at 229pts, and Pask at 239. On a T8 W12 platform that's some pretty sweet staying power, and with Pask bringing BS2+, that's reliable shooting to boot.

 

The AT Vulture clocks in at 200pts, so obvious savings there. It's less tough at only T7, but has 14 wounds and is "Hard to Hit" to boot. You pay for that however by hitting on 4s thanks to a BS4+ and the Strafing Run rule cancelling out the Heavy Weapon movement penalty. If you're willing to put yourself at risk, you can lose your hard to hit rule and go into hover mode and match the 3+ BS on the Tank Commander, though that's pretty risky, and I rarely do that with my Punisher Vultures. Hellstrikes are single shot battlecannons with better damage generation, but you do get 2 of them, and of course the Vultures internal Heavy Bolter.

 

The weaknesses are pretty obvious. Flyers can't hold territory like a tank can, and being T7 is in my opinion a serious step down from T8 when using an aircraft that can often get very close to infantry squads with Bolter equivalents, but the points savings and the mobility let me spend in other areas such as 3 Earthshaker Batteries and 2 full Lascannon teams, but I'm well aware I might be missing some huge Achilles Heel in my desire to fill the skies with jets.

 

So thoughts? Am I overselling the Vultures? A buddy of mine thinks this makes me vulnerable to being tabled as I'll have no solid T8 bulwark in my army to hold the line down to the last turn, but what do you all think?

[Feral_80]

I'd like to try anti-tank Vultures, but I am not very persuaded by them. Your analysis is correct and quite points out that they are probably not optimal.

This all stated, LR aren't that good in anti-tank either. As it has always been, Guard suffers when it comes to long-range anti-tank, as odd as that may sound. Pask is an exception, but he won't last that much usually. At the moment, our best anti-tank are artillery and short-range plasma- and melta- squads. And Cyclops just for the fun!

[Otto von Bludd]

My problem with the Vulture, and our aircraft in general, is that you can almost never escape enemy LoS with them, which means they die when he wants them to die if he has decent shooting.  Though the codex LRs are somewhat mediocre they can at least drive behind a building if they need to, or use LoS to escape being targeted.  Also, as you mentioned T7 to T8 is a huge difference.   The Vulture does hit harder however this increases its perceived threat level, which means it will drawn more fire, which isn't good because you can't hide and are stuck with T7.  That said, the Vulture with missile pods and las-cannons looks really cool so I would run it at least once (which I did with 2xlas and 6xhkm.  It looked cool, missed 5/6hkms and 1/2 las-cannons and then exploded). 

[Stylian_StHugh]

Point for point, AT Vultures just aren't very efficient either. Meanwhile the Punisher version is top tier efficiency if in Hover and has OotF support, and is still about middle if you keep it moving and no buffs

[narcolepticltd]

Point for point, AT Vultures just aren't very efficient either. Meanwhile the Punisher version is top tier efficiency if in Hover and has OotF support, and is still about middle if you keep it moving and no buffs

 

I agree with this. The punisher vulture is a huge volume of dice - even moving, with 43 str5  (and only 3 of those AP -1) shots you still have better chances at getting wounds onto tough targets, has excellent anti-horde potential, and the point cost is great compared to a russ or other valk/vulture variants. 

[Maarten]

As far as I know hellstrikes aren't one shot anymore in 8th. So that's a huge boost.

[narcolepticltd]

As far as I know hellstrikes aren't one shot anymore in 8th. So that's a huge boost.

 

I'm really thrown off by the differences between the index and IA with wording... in the regular guard index, but I'll probably start another thread instead of derailing this one in case it's a discussion point people want to go into. 

 

Tirak, do you already own a Vulture and you're just working with what you have painted and ready or theorizing trying to decide on a flyer to potentially replace a russ? The thunderbolt, lightning, and Avenger all have decent anti-tank options and have a better natural ballistic skill compared to ground based guard to compensate for the movement penalty, where the vulture only gets a 'bonus' vs non-flying targets.

 

For example a Thunderbolt (before adding Hellstrikes) is 190 points - reaches out to 48" with 2 lascannon shots and 8 autocannon shots hitting on 4+. add those hellstrikes and you've got a much better potential alpha as well (kinda broken that they can all be fired every turn and never run out honestly, unless I'm missing something somewhere), and can reach out to 72"

[Tirak]

 

As far as I know hellstrikes aren't one shot anymore in 8th. So that's a huge boost.

 

I'm really thrown off by the differences between the index and IA with wording... in the regular guard index, but I'll probably start another thread instead of derailing this one in case it's a discussion point people want to go into. 

 

Tirak, do you already own a Vulture and you're just working with what you have painted and ready or theorizing trying to decide on a flyer to potentially replace a russ? The thunderbolt, lightning, and Avenger all have decent anti-tank options and have a better natural ballistic skill compared to ground based guard to compensate for the movement penalty, where the vulture only gets a 'bonus' vs non-flying targets.

 

For example a Thunderbolt (before adding Hellstrikes) is 190 points - reaches out to 48" with 2 lascannon shots and 8 autocannon shots hitting on 4+. add those hellstrikes and you've got a much better potential alpha as well (kinda broken that they can all be fired every turn and never run out honestly, unless I'm missing something somewhere), and can reach out to 72"

 

 

I own several flyer proxies, 1/48th scale models that I've painted up and themed for 40k (since in my opinion, most of the 40k flyers are ugly as sin, and the Warhammer club I play at doesn't mind at all). I'm already making use of a Thunderbolt (An F-9F-8 Cougar), however I use it in the Air to Air role. 6 Skystrike missiles gives me a huge amount of flexibility as the bonus against units with the Fly rule is in play even if it's just Jumppack infantry meaning hitting 6 Skystrike missile attacks on 3s. The number of Skystrikes makes them useful even after I've secured air superiority because even only hitting on 5s, Skystrikes are a potent weapon and you're kicking out enough of them to statistically get the hits. However the aircraft is very expensive to field, and so instead of having more points to spend elsewhere in the list, I'd have to shave off points all around to afford a more expensive piece of kit, which is not desirable.

 

My intention in this list in particular is to take the points saved from swapping the Russes to AT Vultures, combined with changing my artillery section to be stationary Earthshaker Batteries, rather than mobile Basilisks, so that I can afford an additional Earthshaker, and hoping the resulting additional Earthshaker and the 2 Vultures can match the lost firepower from the 2 tanks. In theory, I think it works out to be a close enough that I can get away with it, but I figure there's no harm in getting advice from other Guard Commanders. I'll end of fielding this list regardless, just for the amusement of putting 5 flyers on the field and still having a full brigade on the ground, but I want to knock as many holes in the idea as possible before dice start flying, so that when things start going ploin shaped, I've got contingencies.