Some concerns on the Battle Cannon, and it's relatives. First is the ability to have a notable effect on heavy AFVs, the other is the way Artillery ammo is presented.

1) So on Battle Cannon effectiveness. On a shot against a comparable opponent, say a Traitor Leman Russ, even rolling all 9's won't penetrate the front armor. And an Anti-Tank shell needs 8's, and that only lets one point get through to Structural Integrity. Now, fully understand the front armor is the thickest and is there to provide protection against these weapons, but it still seems a bit much to even barely scratch Structural Integrity. I would propose to add at least another d10 to the damage of the Battle Cannon and it's relatives (Vanquisher, Demolisher, and Baneblade Battle Cannon). This would keep armor combats from dragging out, while still leaving the Armor meaningful. And it also avoid the situation when a penetration does occur it's ALWAYS a Critical Hit, which you get with standard ammo against another Leman Russ from the front since you much roll at least one 10 to get a penetration.

2) Ammo: The rules for Artillery ammo seem to be written only for the Battle Cannon. I'd propose:

• Anti-Tank: Improve Penetration by +X and range by +Y, eliminate Blast and Concussion (or reduced by -Z). Vanquisher standard ammo is already Anti-Tank
• High-Explosive: Improve Blast by +X, reduce range by -Y and Pentration by -Z, -1d10 from damage. (This assumes the base ammo for the Battle Cannon is something similar to modern High-Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose, HEAT-MP, which is a shaped charge with improved secondary blast/frag effect to let it do double duty as both anti-armor and anti-personnel. And the this proposed High Explosive ammo is STRICTLY blast for anti-personnel and anti-structure work)
• Infernus: -2d10 from damage, -X from Penetration, maybe a bonus to Blast. Other rules on Flame over Concussion remain. This makes an Infernus round from an Earthshaker or Demolisher, much bigger bore weapons, more damaging then one from a Battle Cannon.

Anyhow, those are my current observations. Course I could very well be missing something in the mechanics.

Morgan Keyes
Win the Mind, Win the Day
Airborne All The Way

The standard rounds are HE (in the ammo listing, the HE rounds have the same stats as the standard battle cannon shells), which means you can have hybrid HEAT rounds (even if they don't really have a decent sized explosion in real life) and pure AP kinetic sabot darts.

From what I can see, the damage of the battle cannon doesn't need to be increased for the HE rounds, but the AP ones should remove the blast and improve penetration to 16-18. The Vanquisher should have increased damage (up to the standard 3d10+10) and increased penetration to 20-22. This should make tanks somewhat vulnerable to lucky frontal shots, while still keeping side and rear shots important.

Another thing would be reducing all tank armor by 5 points across the board, which should make them more susceptible to all types of weapons, including Krak missiles).

These two things combined should make the tank combat slightly more deadly (and less frustrating as cannon shells bounce off harmlessly) while still making it into a tactical affair.

Sounds an appropriate approach as well.

Just on the reducing tank armor, that just really overpowers the Land Raider if you are borrowing stats out of Rites of Battle .

I'd boost the damage of AT weapons rather than reduce armour - righteous fury criticals aside, you don't want too much damage from non AT weapons.

My main concern isn't the battlecannon so much as the vanquisher. This is supposedly an ordnance-scale AT weapon, which (aside from bastion-breacher shells from a siege mortar) is the single most lethal antitank firepower the guard possess.

My issue with this is that - if you gave me the option - I'd rather just take a second lascannon in the turret. For that matter, the Leman Russ Annihalator may be a useful vehicle to put in there; as it's a genuine tank ace's tank…

Speaking of ordinance, three other weapons caught my eye in regards to range; the infantry mortar, the Demolisher Cannon, and the Earthshaker.

The infantry mortar, that maxs out at 1200m. I suppose that works, but places it between the ranges found for light infantry (50-60mm) mortars of World War II, where the typical one had a 400 to 600m effective range, up to the US M2 which reached out nearlyu 2km. Then again, at 41kg the Guard infantry mortar has a weight more in keeping with medium infantry mortars of the 80-90mm punching weight. And those typically fired rounds out to 2500+ meters.

The Demolisher: the 50m range is very limp-wristed. Going beyond the fact the anti-tank weapons found in bunkers and with infantry will outrange it, lets compare to what seems to be it's nearest real world equivilant, the 150mm L/12 gun found on Germany's Brummbar assault gun of World War II. Range for that? Well seen some sources place it at 4700 meters. Figure that's lobbing the shell in a indirect fire mode. As far as direct-fire infantry support, divide that by 10 and you get 470 meters. That's still a **** sight better then the Demolisher maxing out at 200m. So I'd say bump the Demolisher up to 100 to 150m.

Earthshaker: Published range, 3500m. That applies to it in direct fire mode as well. I would expect a Leman Russ to have better direct fire sights then the Earthshaker, which use direct fire mostly for back-up and on things you just can't really miss (fortress walls for instance). I think part of this would be fixed by an addition to the Indirect Fire trait, to the effect of "if a weapon with this trait is fired indirectly, multiply the base range figure by ten (as an example)".