# cannon snipe



## ExtraCrew (Jan 22, 2012)

Does any one else think this is stupid. In my empire army I have 3 cannon and 3 mortars. I never snipe characters, some times the bounce or scatter makes it happen but never on purpose. Ah I hate it so much, and I hate when a cannon is taking for that purpose. just needed to rant


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## Samules (Oct 13, 2010)

"Look out sir" for the win.


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## blackspine (Jun 9, 2010)

I've failed LOS's and it's rough.

snipers are annoying, but your warmachines (thank Khorne) are not snipers.

If enough die, the chars don't get LOS....and with THREE cannons and THREE mortars, you're going to whittle one unit to nothin fast.

ouch


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

An empire player I play against occasionally is pretty nasty with his war machines: 3 mortars at a unit till its under 5 models and then cannons on the general/BSB till they die. Its painful, especially for my WE since I only have units of 10 but it means he has so many points in warmachines that I normally get to smash everything else pretty easy.
Nasty, but not unbeatable (and if I really care I just hide behind a building).


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## Dave T Hobbit (Dec 3, 2009)

I agree with T/S: if you have not prepare a strategy to deal with war-machines then you can really get pummelled.

The ramifications of not having much other than war-machines are larger than smashing the rest: without units to guard the flanks fast cavalry &c can get onto the end of the line and start rolling it up at which point the mortars and cannons are risking friendly fire.


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## olderplayer (Dec 11, 2009)

Targeting characters is acceptable with war machines, although cannons are best left to shooting at monsters and heavy cav units and mortars at larger infantry, monstrous infantry and then other blocks of troops. BTW, Jervis commented that the mortar will be a 3" template in the new book. 

The problem with empire running that many war machines is that not enough points are left for the army to run all the other units and characters necessary to be balanced and to adequately defend the war machines, unless you are playing at or above 3000 points. Your army becomes a one trick pony. Also, some of you cannon hits should be stopped by terrain (buildings, obstacles, and impassible terrain should be on every battlefield with an average of 7 to 8 pieces of terrain intended in 8th edition) and others due to low multi-wound rolls and saves by monstrous infantry (beasts and cav) and monsters. Also, unless you invest heavily in engineers, you will misfire regularly and miss more often because each engineer only gets one re-roll. 

If you get lucky, then a relatively slow infantry-heavy infantry army can be so wasted by those pie plate mortars and hard targets by the cannons, that the enemy does not have a lot left to fight with at the end. However, a fast ogre army or an army with faster scouting and skirmishing units (like Lizardmen cham skinks and skaven gutter runners and dark elf shades) or flying units (harpies, furies, fell bats, pegasus riders) will get through and begin to eat up those war machines by turns 2 and 3 as you will not have enough troops to effectively stop them. 

In our area, running that many cannons and mortars will risk getting bad game votes and bad comp scores (when comp is scored) in both local 3-game/one-day tourneys as well as the 5 to 6 game Indy GTs just because it is not a fun game to play. It is kind of the same if you run two steam tanks. You will also struggle because objectives and scenarios will sometimes require units that can move and fight and hold ground.


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