Thursday 19 May 2016

Collegia Titanica: Inferno Gun

Welcome to our next installment of Collegia Titanica. We continue to review Titans, Void Shields, Battle Engines, Titan Weaponry, and even Titan movement to enable you to get the most out of your table top giants or at least help you choose how best to utilize a firing solution. 

Today we look at the Warhound Titan's Inferno Gun. This weapon is often overlooked in favor of the more powerful weapons and ranged warfare, but it does still have its uses.

Range Hellstorm Template - S7 - AP3 - Primary Weapon 1, Hellstorm. 



Range: The Inferno Gun suffers from two major issues: range and vehicles.  We'll cover the vehicle issue later in the article.  Of the two flaws the Inferno Gun has, the range is the worst of the two.  While a Hellstorm template is big and covers a large swathe of area, making it ideal for infantry killing, it requires that a Titan get very close to the enemy.  This ultimately means that a Titan is within striking range of about every weapon imaginable and places units that can harm it within the Titan's protective void shields.  However, while the Titan does sacrifice range in order to use this weapon, the area that the Inferno Gun covers means that it will hit plenty of targets and will make even spread out infantry suffer from its flames.

General Effectiveness: Of the four Warhound weapons, the Inferno Gun is probably the least generally effective of the group and has the least amount of versatility.  This is due to the fact that it serves only one purpose: infantry slaughter.  The Inferno Gun, while capable of handling light armor, only fares so well against medium armor, and cannot hurt heavy armor at all.  This means that it's a dedicated infantry killer.  However, due to its ability to cover many enemies at once, it is the most effective anti-infantry weapon the Warhound possesses.  It will kill infantry that doesn't have an invulnerable save 5/6 times and slices through almost all armor.  It will struggle against elite infantry often as this opponent tends to have 2+ armor that will negate the AP of the weapon.  Using this weapon against an enemy with 3+ armor or less is practically a death sentence.


Effectiveness Against Titans: The Inferno Gun is going to be the least effective option for a Warhound to deal with another Titan.  The simplest advice of using an Inferno Gun against a Titan is: DON'T.  While it can damage another Warhound or even a Reaver, the odds are slim and put the Warhound squarely within the sights of other Titans and Super-heavies. 


Recommended Deployments: This weapon is best used against enemy infantry (preferably with lower invulnerable saves), especially light infantry with power armor or worse.  The Inferno Gun will struggle against elite infantry (2+).  The weapon is very capable of killing hordes and soft opponents and is the only area at which it excels.  A Warhound equipped with an Inferno Gun is ill suited to carrying two of the weapon is it gives the Titan no versatility.  A Warhound that has an Inferno Gun may be well suited to having a Vulcan Mega-Bolter on the other side in order to keep it from being swarmed by ground troops.  However, Titans carrying the Inferno Gun will likely wish to bring a Plasma Blastgun or Twin-Barreled Turbo Laser Destructor instead to provide it the opportunity to tackle infantry and tanks alike.



Image Source: https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-US/Mars-Pattern-Warhound-Titan-Inferno-Cannon

*NOTE: The Forge World Website refers to the weapon as the Inferno Cannon, the official Apocalypse book refers to it as the Inferno Gun.  These weapons are indeed the same.


Summary: The Inferno Gun is probably the least versatile weapon that a Warhound Titan can carry.  However, while it lacks the ability to kill vehicles and can only moderately handle light armor the weapon excels against light infantry and hordes.  This gives the Warhound Titan the chance to clear enemy infantry in order to allow your own infantry to push forward with little resistance and allows other Titans to focus on larger threats.  This weapon is best paired using another weapon type that has range and punch to give the Warhound versatility and the ability to deal with other threats when needed.


Please comment below to discuss the Inferno Gun. 



4 comments:

  1. Knight acheron is a better choice for a flame weapon. Only way I'd personally take this for my warhound, is if they update it and give it torrent at least. Maybe an extra point of strength since it's a larger, titan, flamer.
    Keep the articles coming! These are great!

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    1. Torrent would definitely help this weapon with the range issue. A Hellstorm template that's right at the barrel practically begs to catch a power fist to the ankles from some angry terminators or haywire weapons.

      And we'll be doing more Collegia Titania, no worries there. We have a backlog of Titans to put up and plenty of other things going on. Plasma Blastgun is next (among Collegia Titanica anyway) and then we may move to the Reaver weaponry afterward.

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    2. Awesome, looking forward to it. I really like these write ups.

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  2. Its definately not the best weapon. Since its primary weapon though it does roll 2d6 and pick the highest for armour penetration so can do some damage to light vehicles.
    I would've liked it to give a wall of death rule to the warhound. Its supposed to be used to clear heavily dug in trenches where larger engines might be unnecessary so being able to roast some marines with a powerfist on the charge would be sensible.

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