Improving our Phosphor Blasters?

[Magos Takatus]

I have been tinkering with army lists recently and I have been considering Phosphor weapons. On most platforms they seem to be lacklustre with the exception of the Kastelan robots. Do you think that there is a way to make some platforms more viable (Onager, Stratoraptor) without making the Kastelan ridiculously powerful? 

 

The ability to fire Kastellans twice in a turn gives them a huge advantage over the Onager. Perhaps the lockdown for the robots could instead give them an improvement to Ballistic Skill (enhanced targeting cogitators?) and make them fire Phosphor weapons twice into a Stratagem for any unit with Phosphor or Heavy Phosphor weapons? This would require a reworking on the current stratagems but it might make it easier to balance the weapon across different platforms?

 

Am I seeming a problem where there is none? I would like the option to make the Phosphor Onager viable now that we have a couple more weapon options for targeting high value armour targets but perhaps that option was always going to be a bit disappointing? Perhaps this post is all because I magnetised that option on my Onagers and feel the need to make that extra work justified? :p

 

 

[Subtle Discord]

Given the scope and scale of the changes we've seen so far, I think it's very reasonable to expect a general overhaul of each faction's wargear and weapons and how they function. Thing is, it's all-but impossible to tell what they've got up their sleeve because of the aforementioned scope of the changes so far. Who knows, as long as they don't suddenly start running hot-and-cold (and we all know GW can quickly fall into that) I can see some respectable tweaks to many of the AdMech toys that are under-performing and/or lacking a proper role beside other options. Sadly, I can also see GW somehow messing it all up, but I remain optimistic until I have a reason not to be.

[Whitelion]

I think it is logical to assume that GW will make renovations in the future, phosphex weapons have always intrigued me, even I would like to use them in some battle.

[MajorNese]

The ability to fire Kastellans twice in a turn gives them a huge advantage over the Onager. Perhaps the lockdown for the robots could instead give them an improvement to Ballistic Skill (enhanced targeting cogitators?) and make them fire Phosphor weapons twice into a Stratagem for any unit with Phosphor or Heavy Phosphor weapons? This would require a reworking on the current stratagems but it might make it easier to balance the weapon across different platforms?

With the current scope of the rules overhaul (changing weapon stats, transforming wargear into strats, changing/removing special weapons) there is no way to tell how/what GW might do. On the one hand they are rather likely to overhaul the robots' protocol mechanic, on the other hand they replace the old fire-without-penalty mechanic from the onagers to a variant of Grinding Advance, or improve BS, or something else. Grinding Advance for example, coupled with the better BS, would mean onagers hit almost as much as twice-firing bots, or the same when facing -1 to hit.

 

There is no point in making more detailed speculations. There are ways to use new special rules to get those units and choices closer to each other in terms of usefulness, but since GW makes a general overhaul instead of adjusting single units/rules (like they did with C:SM doctrine nerf and IH nerf) there is no way to tell how they will do it in detail.

[Shinespider]

The Onager's weapon should simply be a different gun. I mean, just look at the model - there's an order-of-magnitude difference between the Onager blasters and the Kataphron ones. 

[Magos Takatus]

Yeah, the visual appearance of Phosphor weapons is quite inconsistent across the board, they barely look like the same weapons.. Having a Heavy Phosphor Volley Gun or something on the Onager in order to boost it's stats would be a good move.

[MajorNese]

It could be named Very Heavy Phosphor Blaster. That would solve it, and still leaves space for the Superheavy Phosphor Blaster.

[DanPesci]

Twin Phosphor Cannon - Heavy 8, S6, AP-2, D2, ignores cover