So, I played a game with my O&G today vs an empire gunline. Needles to say, I got shot to pieces without anything I could do about it really. His dice rolls were obcenly good and my bad luck just continues :( .

What does people see in gunlines? Is it really that much fun sitting on your side of the table throwing dices? Does some people really need to win that bad? Is it fun to either lose or win depending on wether or not he rolls good or bad? I dont see any strategic value in gunlines, pretty much point and shoot, hope for the best. When your opponent then "accidently" overguess his mortars and character snipe with his cannons, one really loses the taste in playing. As good sport I played until the end, really should have parked my units somewhere behind terrain.

His army consisted of:

Hero with that magic bow
Level 2 mage that can cast with 4 dice

2 blocks of infantry + detachments

Then the shooty stuff:
14 handgunners (champ with some nasty weapon)
14 handgunners (champ with some nasty weapon)

10 huntsmen

14 handgunners (champ with some nasty weapon)
Cannon
Cannon
Mortar + engineer
Hellblaster

Wonder why he even bothered with the blocks. Im not saying people need to make "nice" armies, but this is plain evil :ph43r: . Is there even any way to counter armies like this? Me and my brother thought that bretts could have a reasonable chance, a brett RAF if one wants to be really nasty. Ambushing beastmen could do the trick aswell. I need to go magic heavy with my greenskins, seems to be the only sollution. What do you guys think of armies like this? Seems like the gunline syndrome will be reinforced even more in the new empire book, with the hellstorm battery and all that...

That's a somewhat annoying gunline, tis true, but not as bad as, say, the Dwarves can make. They can throw 6 S7 BS4 runed up bolt throwers at you, plus a stone thrower with the rune of accuracy and an organ gun or two, PLUS handgunners with an innate +1 to hit. Oh, and possibly plus the Anvil and maybe even a Gyrocopter too.

That said, no, gunlines aren't THAT much fun to play against for some armies, no more than SADs or RAFs are fun to play against.

As Orks, you don't really have any fliers, right? That's normally the warmachine hunter du jour, as it were, but lacking that is a problem. About all I can suggest is several units of, say, 5-10 fast cav wolf riders to do the same thing. Another possibility is to bring a couple Rock Lobbas, and use them to blow down their units. If it's a gunline, they're probably packed in relatively close together for mutual support, leaving lots of meaty targets for the rocks, even if you scatter.

I think the problem is: there are counters to the gunline, but they pretty much count on you building an army to beat them. As you say, heaps of 5-man wolf rider units would do it, but he shouldn't have to do that. Every other army can have a fun game against a 'normal' army, gunlines just can't.

I think all artillery is too cheap. Considering cannons and bolt throwers are both extremely good at killing hordes, characters, armour, monsters: pretty much anything, they should be more expensive. Either that or limit the 'bounce' of a cannon, so that it can't plough through whole units and characters.

Since you can "choose" terrain in 7th, block off the flanks of the battlefield with hills, and advance behind them. If your opponent complains, point out he's using hills to his advantage as well ^_^ .

Or, for even more fun (and increased nastiness - don't expect to make friends): put impassable terrain on each of his hills :D .

Oh and I might add that we played 1500p so it´s pretty much for games of those sizes. Well, I had 3 units of fast cavalry, not nearly as much as needed I presume. They die or panic awfully quickly aswell. Magic would have worked if I´d capitalise on it since all he had was a level 2 wizzie for magic protection.

He didnt have hills either, but placed his troops very far back in his deployment zone. Thats a long walk for my poor footsloggers. Really need to get more artillery myself, although cannons are absolutely lethal vs other warmachines :ph43r: .

Am i correct in assuming that you can declare a waagh multiple times? dont have the new rulebook yet but with that you could easily reach his line if your boyz moved their feet fast enough. Failing that i would go with the wolf riders to simply get them into combat with the handgunners. Avioding the blocks of infantry but then agian i would use the wolves as suicide squads to keep your opponent busy while your black orcs/ hitty things move up.
I personally dont like to play with gunlines or against them. I tried it once (playing with) and it was boring. And against there is really no sport

I don't think that's the problem. I believe the problem is in their number, not their cost. Often, a cannon or bolt thrower won't be worth its cost if taken alone, but several of them are a pain in the ass for almost all opponents.

I think war machines should stay the same cost, but there should be tighter limits on the number of them an army can include. For example, making them Rare units (or two Special slots) rather than just single Special choices. Plus maybe a 0-1 or 0-2 limitation for eccentric things like Volley Guns, Flame Cannons and Warp Lightning Cannons.

There's only so many restrictions that can be placed without stifling individuality. Besides, it's a challenge - and we all love them.

KingTut, I'm afraid you're wrong - you can only call a Waaagh! once per game.

The problem with using wolf riders as suiciders (is that a word?) is that they tend to die too quickly. Damn goblins ...

You should try for as much of a gunline as possible some time, just to see the reaction (Empire has no flyers either, if I am correct). How about a lobba, a doom diver and four chukkas? If you have good aim, a stone thrower hit is not too bad against other war machines, and even if not, concentrated bolt thrower attacks can work. Not that I've ever tried this - I've never really faced a proper gunline.

Yeah, one can call waaagh once per game. Still, you can roll a lot of 6´s on the animosity rolls if you are lucky. I tend to throw poorly on the distance I get to move either way :( Black orcs with a waaagh banner would be effective still :) .

I need to get more artillery myself too, aswell as more magic. With a little luck I can have lots of troops still (goblin shamans are cheap as chips).

Two cannons for instance is a real pain in the neck. How can empire cannons be better than dwarf ones? :blink:

You know us humans - bigger is better!

In my personal opinons humans tinker around with magic and really unrealiable gunpowder (inthe 6th ed. emp army book you add d6 to your maximum range on the first shot), and they cant reroll misfires (like dwarves). And i am really interested if the helblaster misfired at all because i am thinking of getting one for my fledgling empire army.

Well, you throw 3 artillery dices instead of 1 like for most other warmachines, so the chances of misfires are remarkably higher. My opponent rolled only one missfire and that ment that he could fire the weapon next turn again so no big deal really. It´s good that it will no longer be a auto-hit weapon.

It was an auto-hit weapon? <_<

I really hate auto-hit weapons like Fanatics and Ratling Guns. I hope all those weapons are tuned down in 7th Ed, because they're much too cheesy when there are a lot of them. And even just one can cause terrible damage, especially against my precious knights.

How can it be possible to auto-hit, even against large units? I thought a crossbow was much more accurate than a multi-barrelled cannon...

Oh, fanatics aren't that bad ... they no longer ignore armour save.

Yeah, you just rolled the ammount of hits, 3 artillery dice worth of hits. Thats a potential of 30 hits. S5 on close range and armour piercing. It can blow up but then again it might not..

Fanatics arent nearly as destructive as before. D6 S5 hits arent that bad still.

Dwafs will be the only race with auto hit weapons in this edition, the organ gun.

Fanatics no longer ignore armour!!!!!

:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(
This is a sad day for my hopes of crushing my friends brettonians.
Whoo 3 plus armour saves 5 plus ward save!
I really am not liking fanatics a lot right now. And i just assembled and painted a box!

Nope, 4+ armor save. Brets don't have full plate.

And I think Fanatics are still worth their relatively low cost: S5 is killy, especially against infantry. Fanatics were merely rid of their thick layer of cheese.

Ah but i was thinking of using fanatics to take out grail knights. :)
not quite 4 plus saves there.

5+ armour save, actually. Fanatics have the Armour Piercing rule now.

oh well thats something i did not know. Thank you for that information. I was thinking fanatics with a -2 AS modifer were not all that good believe me -3 makes all the difference in my book. :)

Ratling gun is still auto-hit. Of course, I expect that to change, but for right now, they still have one. (Actually, it wouldn't surprise me at all for Skaven to get changed rather dramatically, to eliminate the entire SAD possibility from existence. Well, that and I expect Doom Wheels to return. heh.)

Anyway, as of right now, Dwarves easily can make the nastiest possible gunline out there. Between runed-up S7 bolt throwers, Rune of Forging'd cannons, Rune of Accuracy'd grudge throwers, organ guns, innate +1 to hit handguns, AND the freaking Anvil... yeah.

AFAIK, engineers for Dwarfs and Empire are still pretty useless aren't they?

Maybe it would be good if blackpowder weapons were a 0-2 choice, and for each engineer you took you got an extra one. It makes sense fluffy (complex weapons would need a lot of maintenence), and it would mean you'd actually have to take some engineers to make the pathetic fluffed "engineers guild" army.

Honestly, having glanced at the empire army list I don't blame the players for overdoing war machines. Nearly everything there is a big gun: except for an elite infantry, elite cavalry and unbreakable roadblock, pretty much all of the special and rare slots are war machines. From the White Dwarf summary of the new empire army list, it doesn't look like the infantry units are any more attractive than before: only a few new character options have been added (a lot of them to Engineers of course).

That is why I wrote "will be" :P . But yes, indeed they still auto-hit, but hopefully that will change :).

At least they seemed to have tried making variable lists for dwarfs to use. The anvils movement "spell" and the movement banner and stuff like that. Obviously the gunline option got a lot better aswell, with the 1+ to hit handguns etc. :P They seem to have skipped that part in the empire book. Sure, one can make a flagellant army and whatnot but it´s like "cool, but meh!" and much like dwarfs they will be even more effective as a gunline I presume :). Good that they made the hellblaster somewhat less effective to the current one, at least something.

Well, I don't know about engineers in the Empire army, as I don't have the new book. I do knwo that taking them gets you access to some odd weaponry, like Pigeon bombs, etc. that would otherwise not be available. How USEFUL such things are, I have no idea.

As for the Dwarves, yes, the character slot engineer is probably not overly useful. However, remember, they can get a "engineer" as a unit upgrade on all of their special-slot warmachines. Bolt throwers, Cannons, Grudge throwers. Just not on Organ Guns, Flame Cannons & Gyrocopters. The unit upgrade engineers have BS4 instead of the usual BS3, give the war machine 1 extra crew by being there, AND can be given a handgun or brace of pistols, if you really want to. Plus, just having them there allows you to reroll the result on the misfire chart. All in all, a no-brainer upgrade given that it only costs 15 pts. (+5 more if you want to give them the brace of pistols or the handgun)

with my warmachines, i always try and include atleast one enginner to each machine, whether it bea normal engineer, or master engineer. they really are nice, with brace of pistols, i get 5 attacks against anything wanting to destroy my machines, plus a stand and shoot reaction.

Burro