Dreadnought Weapons Part 2

This follow on article on Dreadnought Weapons Part 1 is comparing the Rifleman design to the standard box dreadnought armed with an assault cannon/powerfist.

On the field, they both do different things.  The Rifleman design is by its nature a stand off and shoot dreadnought.  It has no incentive to charge towards the enemy, indeed it should be hanging around at the back firing its guns at light transports like Rhinos and Chimera.  With its reasonable mobility compared to a battletank, it can move around the table edges and fire both its guns, meaning you can move it around to get into side arks.  This is pretty much its sole use, albeit one which is useful if you lack volume of long range anti tank fire.

In comparison the assault cannon design works in a totally different fashion.  The assault cannon has half the range, but twice the rate of fire of the autocannon, but no twin link. Still, on average, an assault cannon will get 2.64 hits on average which is more than the autocannon can possibly get.  This instead gets around 1.66 hits on average if I have done my maths correctly.  There are however two such autocannons on the Rifleman bringing its average hits up to 3.33.  The assault cannon dread comes with a built in stormbolter/powerfist combo which can be upgraded to a heavy flamer/powerfist combo for a minimal amount of points.

As you can see, this makes the box dreadnought a more versatile unit at closer ranges, ideally staying 12-24 inches away from anything with a meltagun.  If you stray within melta range, your dreadnought is likely to be turned into scrap metal, much like any other vehicle.  You do however have the option of charging a unit with the box dreadnought configuration as you are armed with a Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon [DCCW].  This functions much like a powerfist but doesn't strike last and is strength 10 on every hit, ignoring saves.  While this may not kill a lot of models per turn, it is an option against small units of elite troops provided they are not armed with more than one of the following:  Meltabombs, Thunder hammers, Power fists, Power clawz, Witchblades, Singing Spears, Warscythes etc.  Monstrous creatures of all types, unless badly injured and only have one wound left. Necron Scarabs should be avoided at all costs as they will likely destroy your dreadnought in one round of combat. 

If the enemy do not have the required anti dreadnought weapons and are relatively small in number, you can charge into combat and protect yourself from melta in the enemies next turn.  Obviously you need both units to remain locked in combat for at least one round to take advantage.  Too many enemies and you could end up being tarpitted forever.  Not that this is neccersarily a bad thing, it depends on what unit you engaged in combat.  If it is exceptional at shooting but poor in close combat, this could well be a good use of this dreadnought design as shooting units tend not to be armed with close combat implements.  If you have taken the heavy flamer upgrade, you can cause a lot of damage to lighter infantry before charging which can help in this matter.

Now all of this is fine in theory, but if you are considering not using a rifleman you will want to see the numbers.  As before, the twin autocannon statistics are as follows.  Please note in this example, both designs have exactly the same number of shots, but these numbers are on a per shot basis.

TLAC                           Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
 VS AV 10                              13.88%                    41.66%                13.88%
 VS AV 11                              13.88%                    27.76%                  9.25%
 VS AV 12                              13.88%                    13.88%                  4.44%
 VS AV 13                              13.88%                           0%                      0%
 VS AV 14                                     0%                          0%                      0%

Assault Cannon               Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
 VS AV 10                              11.11%                    22.22%                   7.41%
  VS AV 11                              11.11%                    11.11%                  3.70%
 VS AV 12                                     0%                    11.11%                   3.70%
 VS AV 13                                3.70%                      7.41%                   2.46%
 VS AV 14                                3.70%                      3.70%                   1.23%

So what do these numbers tell you?  Quite a lot really.  Against every armour value up to 13 the autocannon is better.  It is considerably better on a per shot basis than the assault cannon against AV 10 and 11 while the AV 12 is reasonably comparable.  At AV12 onwards, this is where Rending helps the assault cannon outperform its low strength value and offers a small percent chance of damaging every thing in the game, something the autocannon fails on.  Notice you can't glance armour 12.  You can only penetrate or not. 

This is without taking into account the damage the box dreadnoughts secondary weapon can do. 

Stormbolter               Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
 VS AV 10                              11.11%                         0%                         0%

Heavy Flamer             Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
 VS AV 10                              16.66%                    16.66%                    5.55%
 VS AV 11                              16.66%                          0%                        0%

As you can see from these numbers, the heavy flamer is actually pretty decent against AV 10, with exactly 1/3 chance of either a glance/penetrate, although it does require you to be virtually on top of an enemy tank.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, as you can assault the tank with your DCCW after if it should survive.  The stormbolter provides a small amount of extra firepower, but can't really do anything to any tanks.

Now there is another weapon which can be used on a dreadnought to provide anti-tank fire.  It is the best anti tank weapon available to space marines and is the cheapest dreadnought option, coming built in for free.  I am talking about the multimelta. 

Melta over half range   Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
 VS AV 10                               11.11%                    44.44%                  24.07%
 VS AV 11                               11.11%                    33.33%                  18.55%
 VS AV 12                               11.11%                   22.22%                   12.96%
 VS AV 13                               11.11%                    11.11%                   7.41%
 VS AV 14                               11.11%                          0%                   1.85%

Now due to the melta rule using two dice for armour penetration, the percentages will be somewhat different. 

Melta under half range   Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
 VS AV 10                               1.83%                     64.84%                  33.03%
 VS AV 11                               3.66%                     61.17%                  31.20%
 VS AV 12                               5.49%                     55.68%                  28.76%
 VS AV 13                               7.32%                     48.36%                  25.40%
 VS AV 14                               9.15%                     39.21%                  21.14%

As you can see from these numbers, any weapon which is strength 8 and has the melta rule, will have these statistics.  Over half range and it is only slightly more effective than a missile launcher and is less effective than either the assault cannon or autocannon due to their volume of fire and accuracy.  Within close range, the melta weapons have a very high chance of inflicting a kill on nearly anything.