Hobby Update: Ostermark Cannon

After hobbying up the Siege Artillery, I figured I should do up a cannon as well. War Engines got some big balance changes in Third Edition, and a theorycrafting post could be worthwhile in the coming weeks. But to discuss all three, and without game, I figured the least I could do before blabbering about is to have at least hobbied on all three of the options. So here we are.

I have a whole box of unclaimed and unused Empire models. Many were hobbied on in my early Kings of War days, and have since been put in storage as I've gone to explore and enjoy other ranges. In that box I probably have easily a 2-3k Brotherhood/Brothermark army and around another 1k in potential League of Rhodia conscripts, with a lot of hand cannoneers and pistoliers and such. The League definitely likes their gunpowder, so I plucked my two old Empire cannon out of the box, grabbed a few minis to crew it, and had a quick afternoon of repainting recently. My Ostermark League (League of Rhodia) will use these.

A little backup for the Ostermark League... whenever they take the field next.

In Second, the Cannon was a pretty straightforward war engine. One attack at Blast D6+1 and Piercing 4. You shot at something you could see, and hopefully not Stealthy or in cover (don't wanna try to hit on a 6 if you can help it), and if the dice were favorable, you could do a fair amount of damage.

In Third, the Cannon is looking pretty darn strong. War machines got some balance changes to make the damage output more consistent (now firing two shots, but with a D3-based Blast), and the Cannon got a lot of unexpected buffs to boot.

The Cannon now ignores cover, which is great. If you see something you want to shoot, you can shoot at it without halving you change to hit! With the balance changes, you should even have a decent chance to do some damage 

It now gets a Grapeshot attack (10 Attacks with Piercing 1 out to 12 Inches), that always hits on 6's. The last bit threw me for a bit, but I think the intent was to get around something like Stealthy, Individuals, or some magical protection. When you're firing a shot that's supposed to spray an area... you wanna reflect that in the rules! Lone mounted heroes can be great war machine hunters, and grapeshot will give the crew a fighting chance. Very neat buff!

Lastly, the Cannon also gets the "Shattering" special rule, which was previously known to me as "Devastating" from 2nd Edition's Historical Rulebook. The gist is a ranged version of the Brutal rule. If the target takes damage, their Nerve check roll is increased by 1, due to the unusually debilitating attack. Devastating showed up on particularly potent Historical gunpowder units, like the Ottoman's Dardanelles Gun, Arquebusiers and Conquistadors. While I never played a Historical game, I liked this rule in the rulebook, and glad Mantic brought it along to Third Edition.

The balance changes to war machines make them much more attractive in general, and the cannon's new buffs make it particularly desirable. The Ostermark will definitely bring (at least) one of these along next time!