Ridgerunners have some interesting weapon options, from the relatively reliable Achilles-pattern missile launcher to the variability of the heavy mining laser and the heavy mortar. But what should we be shooting at who?
Ridgerunners may be one of our fast attack options, but they’re also one the ways we can get big guns on the table. Those guns come in three flavours – Achilles missile launcher, heavy mining laser, and heavy mortar (plus the stubbers, but we always get those). Each option has its strengths. The missile launcher is consistent – always 3 shots, always 3 damage; it’s not flashy, but you know what you’re getting. The heavy mining laser brings strength 9 (and matches the missile launcher’s AP-3), but also brings randomness into the equation with d3 shots and d6 damage – luck out, and you could drop 18 damage on something; roll low, and you might regret that lack of consistency. Finally, the heavy mortar sacrifices AP and damage for d6 shots, increased range and the option to fire indirect.
As ever, the pressing question here is about choice. Which options give me the best chances of killing the enemy? There’s only one way to find out, so let’s get into it.
CRASH TEST DUMMIES
First up, let’s put all three weapons into the usual spread of suspects – guardsman (T3, 5+), marine (T4, 3+), gravis captain (T5, 4++) and Leman Russ (T8, 2+). At this stage, we’re just interested in the number of damaging hits each option causes (that is, attack sequences that lead to a failed save (or no save)). And to keep things simple, we’ll take the mean average number of shots on the mining laser (2) and the mortar (3.5).
Unsurprisingly, the mining laser is the best option into heavy armour. Elsewhere, it’s not great, neutered by invulnerable saves and overkill. The mortar is superficially the best option (for damaging hits) into the captain; the low AP effectively ignores the Iron Halo, and weight of fire adds up; but that changes once we remember that it causes less damage than the other two (which is why the missile launcher gets the nod in this comparison). And interestingly, the missile launcher inflicts the most damaging hits on both varieties of line infantry (the combination of shots and AP working fairly efficiently into both).
Factoring in the damage caused by each weapon, we see the missile launcher’s edge into marines is extended - with flat 3 damage, every damaging hit kills a marine. The mining laser, however, has a 1-in-6 chance of failing to kill an unwound marine. Given the 0.69 chance of scoring a damaging hit in the first place, the overall odds of killing a marine drop to 0.58.
Against the captain, the missile launcher inflicts 3 wounds half the time. We can think of that as an average of 1.5 wounds per attack sequence (which is artificial, because we’ll either cause 3 wounds or nothing, but it’s helpful here). The mining laser has a slightly higher mean average damage, at 3.5, but a lower chance of inflicting any damage at all in the first place. Overall, it boils down to an average 1.16 wounds per attack sequence. [To out-perform the missile launcher we’d need to roll 5 or 6 damage every time, to offset the decreased number of damaging hits.] Curiously, whilst the mortar has the best chance of damaging the captain, it still falls behind the other two weapons here due to its low damage, averaging just 0.58 wounds per sequence.
And, as we already saw, the mining laser is the strongest option into heavy armour – not only does it cause the most damaging hits, that high average damage extends the advantage further. Any damage roll of 3 or higher leaves us better off.
LAUNCHER vs LASER
Putting the mortar to one side for a moment, we’ll run the other two guns head-to-head. They have the same range (36”) and the same AP (-3); the mining laser is stronger, averaging less shots and (slightly) more damage, but it’s also unpredictable – even assuming that every shot hits, wounds and beats the save, a mining laser could cause anywhere from 1 to 18 damage. That’s quite a range, which isn’t reflected well if we simply reduce it to a mean average.
So let’s move away from averages and look instead at variance. This tells us the likelihood of any particular outcome. For example, both weapons can cause a maximum of three hits. But the missile launcher is more likely to hit that maximum, because the mining laser only has three shots a third of the time. It plays out like this (I’ve shown regular shooting on the left, and Crossfire (+1 to hit) on the right):
The missile launcher will land two or more hits half the time, with a 12.5% (1-in-8) chance of getting all three. In game terms, assuming you can manage four rounds of shooting per game, you’d expect to score a triple hit once every other game, a triple miss once every other game, and an even spread of ones and twos the rest of the time. With Crossfire active, there’s a 74% chance of 2 or more hits, and 96% of at least one.
The mining laser, however, will miss completely almost a third of the time. It lands two or more shots just 25% of the time, and only has a 4% chance of hitting all three times. Even with Crossfire in play, it has less chance of making two or three hits than the missile launcher without Crossfire. Returning to those hypothetical games in which the Ridgerunner fires four times per game, the mining laser would expect to score three hits just once every five games, and manages two or more hits just once per game (including that triple hit).
We already know that the missile launcher is the better option into infantry, and learning that it’s also more consistently accurate does nothing to change that. But does it affect how useful the missile launcher is into something like a Leman Russ?
Reliability vs Armour
The missile launcher has a 0.13% chance of inflicting the maximum 9 damage on a Russ. The mining laser has a 0.27% chance of scoring at least 9 damage from three damaging hits, which is fractionally better than twice as likely (plus a further chance to score 9+ from just two damaging hits). We should bear in mind, of course, that both of those outcomes are ridiculously unlikely.
The missile launcher is three times more likely to land three hits. But that advantage is overturned once we reach the wound rolls: S6 into T8 has a 1-in-27 chance of three wounds; S9 into T8 gives 8-in-27, making the mining laser eight times more likely to land all three wounds. The mining laser also has a 74% chance of matching or exceeding the maximum 9 damage of the missile launcher.
Following that line of thought, and given that the hit and save rolls will be the same for both weapons, we can see that if the mining laser’s wound rolls are sufficiently better than the missile launcher’s, the disadvantage of only having d3 shots is removed. But that won’t always be the case. For example, into T6, the missile launcher has a 1-in-8 chance to land all three wounds; the mining laser remains at 8-in-27. That’s equivalent to 27/216 and 64/216, meaning that the laser’s wound advantage (here, slightly better than double) is no longer enough to cancel out the consistent three shots from the missile launcher.
Broadly, we’d expect the mining laser to do better into T7 and T8, and worse into anything T6 or lower. This is a gross simplification, but I think it’ll hold up in general terms.
HEAVY MORTAR
What about the mortar? We’ve already seen that it underperforms in a direct head-to-head with either of the other options (although we’d expect it to edge out the missile launcher in the vary specific case of 1-wound targets with a 6+ or worse save, where the AP and damage advantage of the missile launcher is wasted, allowing the 3.5 average shots of the mortar to make the difference).
However, there are circumstances in which the mortar is the most effective. The first is against targets between 36” and 48” away; the second is against targets we can’t see. In both cases, the mortar wins, hands down. The range advantage isn’t a huge one – unless you’re building a plan around keeping your opponent in that pretty specific range-band, it probably won’t help all that much.
Indirect fire is much more useful. It’s going to be less effective than direct-firing either of the launcher or laser, but we already knew that, given that the mortar is already worse when it fires direct – throwing in -1 to hit won’t help. But if you can’t otherwise hit a particular target, then indirect fire can be golden. I’ve seen comments that indirect fire is a waste of the heavy stubbers, but bear in mind that we don’t have to hide the mortars out of sight at the back of the board – they can still push up, threaten light infantry with the stubbers and drop mortar shells on a different target. It’s not necessarily tactically sound, but it’s an option.
CONCLUSIONS
Once again, the balance of the Cult codex comes to the fore. The Ridgerunner comes with three main weapon options, and all three bring something to the table.
o The Achilles missile launcher is the strongest into infantry and light vehicles (T6 or lower). You know what you’re getting, and won’t suffer the frustration of putting a single wound onto a 2-wound target and wasting the next shot’s damage.
o The heavy mining laser is the best choice into armoured vehicles (T7+). It’s not consistent, but over time the combination of S9 and the high damage ceiling count in its favour.
o The mortar has the longest range, and the ability to fire indirectly. It’s the weakest weapon in terms of damage output, but can hit most of a battlefield from behind cover, which isn’t insignificant.
There’s no universal solution here. The mining laser does provide anti-tank capability that we don’t have an abundance of elsewhere in the codex, and when taken in numbers we’ll see some smoothing of the variance. The missile launcher feels more generally useful, unless you know you’ll be facing a lot of tanks. It’ll potentially worry units like terminators (especially with Crossfire and Exposed in play), where a 2+ save will be knocked back to the 5+ invulnerable, and every failed save will mean a dead terminator.
Personally, I’m inclined towards the missile launcher, perhaps with a single mining laser in a unit of three. I just like that consistency. Yes, the mining laser has the potential to hit harder, but it also has the potential to roll a single shot and then miss, or to land damage and then roll 1s. Pragmatically, I'll sacrifice the chance of the Hail Mary play for slightly less punchy stability.
As I write, I have my second Ridgerunner on the painting table, with another in the queue, so I’ll be able to put that into practice soon enough. For the time being, though, the uprising calls – back to the tunnels, everyone.