So with the recent clarifications (I am new to FWW, but not wargames, my primary is Infinity) to the walked fire rules I am having trouble justifying the minigun or gatling laser in Battle Mode. It’s marginally better than a damage 2 rifle vs armor 1, but lacks the ability to outright remove light targets at range which many other heavy weapons can.
Does it get better up close? Marginally. But it becomes awful vs anything in cover.
So I guess my questions are Who are you taking these weapons with, When would you consider them a reasonable choice, and Why take them over the higher damage guns?
I’m having a hard time justifying their use in NCR, Enclave, BoS, or Mutants.
The gatling laser Is a great weapon on the right model. Since energy resistance is normally low, you score your hits there. With the enclave and their synergy, you got a pretty hard first shot.
Where both weapon suck is against strong armor or models with high armor.
Here is a link to a pretty good weapons tier list. Check it out
Odds are you are better off taking a Combat Rifle or other 2-3 damage weapon (other than the basic Incinerator, that thing is worse off…). Better to apply bonus dice to a single high damage shot than one low damage shot followed by a bunch of unmodified low damage shots.
The idea that these are bad against models with strong armor is a problem - it’s a heavy weapon, it should work against heavy targets. If you only get your bonus dice to the first attack, the defender should only get their strong armor against the first attack as well.
I noticed one small thing tho. For AoE weapons you said you “center the AoE on a model” - you CAN center it on a model, but you don’t HAVE to.
You can target a piece of terrain or even just the ground if you want to snare more than one unit in an AoE.
Of course you’d lose any extra damage for targeting a model (ie: missile launcher), but this tactic becomes hugely important when dealing with stealth boys (Coursers, nightkin, etc.)
It’s also a great way to avoid things like cover modifiers. Oh you’re behind some stuff, be a shame if I just shot next to it to negate that -2 and still get you in the AoE.
AoE weapons are so flexible in target selection, that plus the high base damage just makes them the kings of heavy weapons.
