1 hour ago, Derrault said:

Most people are bad at math. Their wrong opinions don’t change math.

Since it apparently isn’t obvious, to you, the heavy weapons are entirely enemy force composition dependent as to how well they shine; if the meta is all troopers, with nobody bringing vehicles or armor, impact and ion heavies won’t be as useful, because they are costed around that.

Ion in particular is absurdly powerful in that it can remove actions from 200+ point cost units. Reducing the cost purely to increase the use of those units, regardless of enemy force composition is short sighted.

Please show us your math.

If you're talking about the "remove actions from 200+ points of units," that doesn't hold a lot of water with me given that I've never lost a game to someone who brought an AT-ST purely by ignoring it or (very rarely) throwing Luke at it and not bringing any absurdly expensive and relatively ineffective ion weapons.

24 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

Please show us your math.

If you're talking about the "remove actions from 200+ points of units," that doesn't hold a lot of water with me given that I've never lost a game to someone who brought an AT-ST purely by ignoring it or (very rarely) throwing Luke at it and not bringing any absurdly expensive and relatively ineffective ion weapons.

Yeah.... I faced one the other day for the first time in uhm... 4 or 5 months? Not sure, vehicles suck. Anyways, it killed a decent chunk of units, but he still conceded cause I just ignored it and took out all his trooper units. All he had left was the AT-ST and a snowtrooper squad with 1 guy left. I mean the AT-ST had full HP, and took up like over 1/4th of his army, but yeah. I haven't even seen it necessary to take ion weapons.

The only vehicles that are good enough to use, in my opinion, are the AT-RT and the Speederbikes. Albeit Speederbikes die REALLY easily, and the AT-RT is good enough, albeit I prefer the hoth turret.

I think part of the problem for exhaustible weapons is the fact that they aren't really needed even if vehicles are on the table. As noted above, completely ignoring them works in 9 out of 10 scenarios simply because they can't cap objectives and can't really kill enough units to pay for themselves.

I think a general vehicle buff or some objectives that lend themselves more to vehicle play would help exhaustible weapons, but not enough. Although vehicles would get better and might be taken in greater numbers, there are still plenty of ways to deal with them that don't involve exhausting. DLTs, Turrets, Luke, laser AT-RTs, Vader, and Impact Grenades are all on the list of things I would consider taking over exhaustible weapons, and if vehicles really got that much better, taking more vehicles to deal with them becomes more appealing as well. Half the things on the list above (DLTs, Luke, Turrets) are already great options even when vehicles aren't on the table, and if they get to use their impact it is really just gravy. If vehicles were suddenly everywhere, as a Rebel player I would probably grab a bunch of turrets before ion weapons, but maybe that is just me.

TL; DR version: IMO, vehicles are in a bad place. IMO, exhaustible weapons are in an even worse place.

10 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

Please show us your math.

If you're talking about the "remove actions from 200+ points of units," that doesn't hold a lot of water with me given that I've never lost a game to someone who brought an AT-ST purely by ignoring it or (very rarely) throwing Luke at it and not bringing any absurdly expensive and relatively ineffective ion weapons.

Red dice have 5 hits, 1 crit (.75 hit/crit per die)

Black dice have 3 hits, 1 crit (.5 hit/crit per die)

White dice have 1 hit, 1 crit (.25 hit/crit per die)

A full salvo from the AT-ST at range 2 is 3 red, 5 black, 3 white dice. That’s 5.5 hit/crit (on average), which also has blast ignoring cover. Rebel Troopers have white surge defense, giving them a .333 chance of rolling a block, for projected wounds of 5.5 x .666, or 3.67 (rounds to 4) average wounds.

Enough to instantly paste or cripple an enemy squad each round, not to mention the additional damage from the mortar, (.75 hit/crit), plus suppression that might just rout them.

Your anecdote doesn’t say more than that you outmaneuvered your opponent, or they failed to stymie your ploy. It tells us nothing at all about how effective vehicles can be when employed correctly.

With the HH-12, it has the double whammy of both being forced to not move AND it exhausts when used. The thing is that most wargames simulate the "this weapon takes a long time to load" with the "You can't move and shoot" mechanic OR a "You must spend an action to load this weapon" mechanic. Doing both was a huge mistake.

Right now all the exhaustible weapons are for anti-vehicle use. Let's wait for some good vehicles before we judge them too harshly.

When someone actually brings an at-rt or three, I always end up appreciating the one ion gun I find room for. If I can catch an At-ST pointed the wrong way, then it works on them as well.

5 hours ago, Derrault said:

Red dice have 5 hits, 1 crit (.75 hit/crit per die)

Black dice have 3 hits, 1 crit (.5 hit/crit per die)

White dice have 1 hit, 1 crit (.25 hit/crit per die)

A full salvo from the AT-ST at range 2 is 3 red, 5 black, 3 white dice. That’s 5.5 hit/crit (on average), which also has blast ignoring cover. Rebel Troopers have white surge defense, giving them a .333 chance of rolling a block, for projected wounds of 5.5 x .666, or 3.67 (rounds to 4) average wounds.

Enough to instantly paste or cripple an enemy squad each round, not to mention the additional damage from the mortar, (.75 hit/crit), plus suppression that might just rout them.

Your anecdote doesn’t say more than that you outmaneuvered your opponent, or they failed to stymie your ploy. It tells us nothing at all about how effective vehicles can be when employed correctly.

Yeah, that's not scary. Under absolutely perfect, ideal conditions it's still dealing less than 4 wounds to some trash (of which I probably have 6 units) that I threw at it so the rest of my army can go through his commander and corps like a buzz saw. Seriously, who gives a **** if one of my six minimum Rebel Trooper squads is "crippled?" Or better yet, how about he shoots at Han and does nothing or shoots at Luke who actually reflects damage back at him. The AT-ST is simply not that scary, and there are better ways of dealing with it than bringing **** exhaustible weapons.

Exhaustable weapons are fine. The trouble is, there is no need for antitank weaponry, because armour isn't tanky in Legion. Try them against an opponent that has maxed out his vehicle options and they work. But nobody does that and you can kill an ATST with Han's pistol. Like this:

6 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

Yeah, that's not scary. Under absolutely perfect, ideal conditions it's still dealing less than 4 wounds to some trash (of which I probably have 6 units) that I threw at it so the rest of my army can go through his commander and corps like a buzz saw. Seriously, who gives a **** if one of my six minimum Rebel Trooper squads is "crippled?" Or better yet, how about he shoots at Han and does nothing or shoots at Luke who actually reflects damage back at him. The AT-ST is simply not that scary, and there are better ways of dealing with it than bringing **** exhaustible weapons.

I dunno. I've been playing around with an AT-ST with one extra weapon, and like 5 squads of pretty much maxed out snowtroopers. Killing off 5 squads of 5 or 6 snowtroopers isn't that easy. On the other hand, the AT-ST picks on the weakest things (sniper teams and small trooper squads) to rapidly bring us to activation parity, then I use it as portable scenery to block off things. It doesn't need to "buy back its points" it needs to kill off a few activations, kill off a few scoring units, and then mess with my enemies LOS and avenues of movement. If they destroy it with Luke Skywalker after it has killed off a few things so be it. It is also handy for brazenly setting off mines, and other things. Like it'll attack flamer AT-RT's and other priority threats to my infantry.

Maybe the whole reason this works is lack of ion guns on the field. Then again, it's hardly a foolproof plan.

Maybe I'm too old but this points-buy approach of maximizing the efficiency of your (highly abstracted, artificial) army list and then more or less crashing the armies into each other to see whose stats were more efficient is not interesting to me. I come from an old, non-WYSIWYG, approach where oftentimes, scenarios dictated your heavy weapons and such, and playing the game meant making tough decisions with what you've got on the terrain and objectives that were totally beyond your control. Even coming from that mindset, I find the exhaust weapons to be pretty much pointless. It's not very interesting or fun to take a weapon with these kinds of limitations. I want to always take at least one ion gun but even my "f**k la meta" attitude is increasingly unable to justify ion guns in my lists. They are getting annoying in an out of game sort of way.

6 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

Yeah, that's not scary. Under absolutely perfect, ideal conditions it's still dealing less than 4 wounds to some trash (of which I probably have 6 units) that I threw at it so the rest of my army can go through his commander and corps like a buzz saw. Seriously, who gives a **** if one of my six minimum Rebel Trooper squads is "crippled?" Or better yet, how about he shoots at Han and does nothing or shoots at Luke who actually reflects damage back at him. The AT-ST is simply not that scary, and there are better ways of dealing with it than bringing **** exhaustible weapons.

No, that’s incorrect. The AT-ST deals between 0-11 hits, averaging 3.67 (4).

Furthermore, it gets to select its targeting, so it’s entirely possible they split fire to suppress 4 units. So it can be your most expensive units that get scrubbed, before they have a chance to do any real damage. Han’s defense is contingent on cover, blast wipes that so...good night Han.

As for Luke, I’m not sure why an opponent would deliberately fire all guns at Luke with a dodge token...why would anyone choose to do that? It seems like a truly wasteful use of the attacks.

And, no, there are not better options for corps units to harm an AT-ST, Ion is literally the best possible option.

The best option to harm an AT-ST is a DLT Rifle in a Stormtrooper squad.... why is that not obvious

55 minutes ago, Derrault said:

No, that’s incorrect. The AT-ST deals between 0-11 hits, averaging 3.67 (4).

Furthermore, it gets to select its targeting, so it’s entirely possible they split fire to suppress 4 units. So it can be your most expensive units that get scrubbed, before they have a chance to do any real damage. Han’s defense is contingent on cover, blast wipes that so...good night Han.

As for Luke, I’m not sure why an opponent would deliberately fire all guns at Luke with a dodge token...why would anyone choose to do that? It seems like a truly wasteful use of the attacks.

And, no, there are not better options for corps units to harm an AT-ST, Ion is literally the best possible option.

If you're splitting your fire to suppress 4 units, then you're wasting your Weiss charge as it's not going to accomplish much besides slowing me down slightly. If you're in range to throw all of that firepower onto a single unit, especially a commander, then you're in range of most of my army. If corp unit(s) are packing impact grenades or I'm using a pair of laser cannon AT-RTs then that behemoth of a unit that you put well over a quarter of your points into isn't long for this world.

Lets talk about Ion. Ion would be a near useless keyword if not for impact as the things you want to stun are all armored. Therefor Impact is better than Ion

2 hours ago, thepopemobile100 said:

If you're splitting your fire to suppress 4 units, then you're wasting your Weiss charge as it's not going to accomplish much besides slowing me down slightly. If you're in range to throw all of that firepower onto a single unit, especially a commander, then you're in range of most of my army. If corp unit(s) are packing impact grenades or I'm using a pair of laser cannon AT-RTs then that behemoth of a unit that you put well over a quarter of your points into isn't long for this world.

Lets talk about Ion. Ion would be a near useless keyword if not for impact as the things you want to stun are all armored. Therefor Impact is better than Ion

This is pretty much why I only take 1 weapon upgrade on my AT-ST now.

10 hours ago, thepopemobile100 said:

If you're splitting your fire to suppress 4 units, then you're wasting your Weiss charge as it's not going to accomplish much besides slowing me down slightly. If you're in range to throw all of that firepower onto a single unit, especially a commander, then you're in range of most of my army. If corp unit(s) are packing impact grenades or I'm using a pair of laser cannon AT-RTs then that behemoth of a unit that you put well over a quarter of your points into isn't long for this world.

Lets talk about Ion. Ion would be a near useless keyword if not for impact as the things you want to stun are all armored. Therefor Impact is better than Ion

A) Wouldn’t bunching all your units be a bad idea given that most of the time objectives get spread out?

B) The AT-RTs would need a minimum of 4 rounds to kill the AT-ST, that’s assuming they survive that long themselves, and they cost 180 points. That means that, even at peak efficiency for the RTs, we tie up 180 points and destroy approximately 160-248 points (4 corps/possibly with z-6s) in the first four rounds. That really does seem like a win for the Imperials.

C) The guns with Ion come with Impact.

D) Why would you think that the AT-ST goes unsupported? It would make sense to hide some units behind it for the cover bonus, and have them move to screen in the event you tried to swarm hoping beyond hope to land a (very lucky) volley of grenades.

On 12/23/2018 at 6:34 PM, Jedhead said:

As a side note, let's all try to keep it civil. We are disagreeing about how best to play with our plastic toys, so we don't need to be overly personal, even if we think the other guys painted his toys an ugly color or that he isn't bringing the "right" toys to the table. 😊

Unless he painted them as my little ponies. In which case we all get to get a punch in

On 12/25/2018 at 12:40 AM, Jabby said:

Unless he painted them as my little ponies.

As long as they PAINTED them. I don't bother with 40k/fantasy store play anymore because I can't find anywhere around me that people paint their armies.