Thunder Fire Cannon

Here's a quick write up of the Space Marine Thunder Fire Cannon. The pics are of my first attempt at painting one. The Techmarine is a pain to paint, so I'll get to him eventually lol.

Load Out: The unit consists of a Techmarine (50pts) with Servo harness (25pts) and the TF cannon (25pts) for a total of 100 points. This unit is treated as an artillery weapon/unit which means it must remain stationary to fire. Since it is not a barrage weapon it relys on true line of sight and deviates normally (2d6 + Scatter - 4bs).

Ballistics: The Thunderfire cannon has three types of ammunition that can be loaded.

Types of Ammunition

• Surface - 60" range | 6 str | 5 ap | Heavy 4, Blast
• Airburst - 60" range | 5 str | 6 ap | Heavy 4, Blast | Ignores Cover
• Subterranean - 60" range | 6 str | 5 ap | Heavy 4, Blast | Tremor

The ignore cover ability is pretty self explanatory; cover saves can't be taken against it. Units hit by the Tremor round will move as if in difficult terrain their next movement phase. This means that they must roll as if in difficult terrain for one round and if they are already in dif. terrain they roll one less d6. This can be very useful in slowing down mob armies and fast attack units. Vehicles hit by tremor rounds must roll a dangerous terrain test, including skimmers.

Deviation: With multi barrage artillery you will roll scatter normally on the first shot. The remaining three shots scatter from the location of the first. On a "hit" you can place those shots anywhere that is touching the area of the first template. With a 4 BS, though, you won't see too much deviation. Combine that with a 60" range makes it pretty effective.

Destroying the Thunderfire Cannon: Roll to hit as normal. On successful hits roll a D6 to determine what you attack; rolls of 1-4 hit the cannon (AV 10) and 5-6 hit the Tech Marine (2+ sv). More than likely the gun will be destroyed leaving the Techmarine to detatch and treating him as an Independent character. The entire unit is destroyed if the techmarine fails to save.

If the Cannon is destroyed then the Tech Marine is treated as normal, benefiting from the Techmarine rules. The Techmarine does not have the Independant character rule when attached to the cannon and therefore cannot add a Servitor retinue. He retains the IC rule when the cannon is destroyed and loses it when the cannon is repaired (which means any spquad he was attached to he automatically leaves). Other than this rule the standard Techmarine rules apply including Bolster Defense (adds +1 cover save to ruin building in your deployment zone) and Blessing of the Ommnisiah (ability to repair vehicles).

If you chose to repair the cannon then they will be treated as one unit again. If the Tech marine is destroyed in any situation then both the tech marine and the cannon are removed from play (as there is nobody left to operate the weapon).

Modeling: Assembling this pewter model can be a pain as the top (or "Jonny 5" as my friend mentioned) and the armor panels don't like to stay in place. This can be easily fixed with a little pinning work.

Painting this model was fast and easy. I primed with chaos black spray and did the armor plates in Ultramarine blue. The bulk of the vehicle was done with mostly boltgun metal or a mix with chaos black. After drybrushing I gave it a few coats of wash with Badab Black and Devlin mud and applied highlights with boltgun and 50:50 boltgun/mithril silver. Highlights on armor were done with codex gray and 50:50 codex/Space wolf grey

Overall: This model should be in every Space Marines arsenal, imo. Although it's not very powerful in terms of anti-armor, it makes up for that in utility vs. infantry such as Ork and Nid mobs. Tremor rounds can be very useful against opponents already in dif. terrain (as they roll 1 less dice). The Airburst Round is also handy against units behind cover. Add in the fact that you get a Techmarine with servo harness makes the Thunderfire Cannon well worth 100 points.

My "other" cannon lol