Wouldn't the High Explosive Shell category include HESH?
Since 40K is British, I'd expect them to use a characteristic British shell.

But can I ask exactly where you got these from?

I always thought that the High Explosive Shell was anti-infantry, like a large Frag Shell.

Depends because even though they are primarily British, they borrowed heavily from the American and German military from WWII and they also tend to use more common military acronyms. I see your point but then again, with the whole "We make our own lore as authors so take it with a grain of salt" I guess it's really in the wind as to what real acronym you want to use. They all have the same meaning in the end: You're fucked if this hits you and your armour is below this threshold.

Edit: Caught the grammar mistake early....the German military form WWII....because we all are painting Germans now lol

HESH = High Explosive Soft Head (Squash Head). The round squashes up against the target and explodes. Brilliant on Bunkers and Fortifications, plus causes internal spalling when used on armoured vehicles.
They're a British invention. The British developed Armour-Piercing Discarding Sabot from a French invention.
And HEAT was developed independently by British, Germans, and Americans from a Swiss design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_squash_head
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour-piercing_discarding_sabothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_anti-tank_warhead

Yes but in terms of use they follow the same pattern as a Demolisher round fired from a Baneblade when you look at how they're implemented in Dawn of War despite the shell looking like a Sabot round.

Imperial Armor Second Edition Volume 1, page 152. The Minotaur is a super-heavy artillery vehicle with two Structure Points (the super-heavy equivalent of hull points).

You really need to stop talking out of your ass. You also basically admitted that you were comparing apples and oranges, and you STILL cannot tell the difference between "can fight" and "is better than".

First of all, the Leman Russ' front armor is 150mm. Its turret armor is 200mm Take note of all those spots where I highlighted armor values less than 150mm. Of course, these are just raw thickness values rather than RHA equivalent, which makes the comparison somewhat worthless, but since it's safe to assume that whatever the Russ uses is stronger than RHA (one would hope), its RHAeq would obviously be higher. Those weapons cannot actually penetrate the front of a Leman Russ unless the stars align and the Emperor smiles upon them, invalidating your claim. Again, talking out of your ass.

Turns out I have Imperial Guard sourcebooks. Turns out your google fu isn't as strong as you thought it was.

Second of all, take a look at how many of those belong to the Battle Cannon or the Leman Russ itself. A Leman Russ or a Baneblade can kill a Leman Russ? Well gee willy, tell me something I don't know!

The Leman Russ is better than other tanks in its weight class because when you pit them against each other on the tabletop, the Russ will win more likely than not. When you pit them against each other in DoW, the Russ will win more likely than not. When you pit them against each other in any Warhammer 40k game that has ever been made, the Russ will win more likely than not.

And considering the Imperial Guard can take them in squadrons of three where other factions are limited to one at a time, it's obvious that the Imperial Guard has more than enough logistical capacity to handle the demands of getting them to the field.

This makes the intention of the game designers glaringly obvious, whether their artists and their fluff writers can back it up or not. Unless you'd like those Sisters of Battle/Grey Knight/Eldar walkers I mentioned to become AV10 Open Topped to reflect their models?

Oh right, judging based on artwork instead of stats only applies to the Imperial Guard, because reasons.

Where the art and the stats disagree, the art should bend to the stats. Not the other way around. Make models that don't suck, instead of declaring that because the model sucks the stats should too.

The only standard MBT that is a significant threat to it is the Hammerhead, which is a glass cannon. That makes it a bit of a toss-up because the winner comes down to distance, terrain, and who lands the first hit. The Fire Prism, despite its impressive main gun, is still at a slight disadvantage overall because it's even glassier than the Hammerhead and less of a cannon.

One more time, just to get it through your thick skull: Just because a tank has counters and can be defeated in specific circumstances, does not make it a bad tank.

Can an Imperator Titan or a Baneblade kill a Leman Russ? Of course it can, it's a bloody Titan/Superheavy! That does not make the Leman Russ a bad tank. The fact that the Russ has the same front armor value of them though, should be a clear sign that the Russ IS quite beefy for its weight class!

There are hundreds of degrees in between "worthless trash" and "utterly invincible". If you can't see the difference, then you really should just stop participating in balance discussions. You remind me of people on Planetside 2 forums who went, "(pre-nerf) ZOE isn't strong, you can theoretically still kill a ZOE MAX if you use a couple Liberators!" or "The (pre-nerf) Vulcan isn't strong, you can still theoretically kill a Vulcan Harasser if several of you concentrate fire!"

Why don't you use a single example outside of TT where you're held back by re-balanced dice rolls or even take a realistic approach from modern day armour. They don't have to penetrate the full thickness to destroy a tank. There are several factors that consider a tank to be destroyed or out of commission such as immobilized, crew killed from internal concussion force of a shell, destroyed and/or damaged weapon arrays.

You do realize a battle cannon is the generic terminology for any vehicle that uses a standard cannon between 75mm-300mm which covers Orks, Chaos, Imperial Guard, and in a few cases the Tau when they have Imperial elements and the Kroot who have an artillery piece. Just because the Leman Russes gun is called a Battle Cannon doesn't mean that it's the only one in existence.

You also didn't even read what some of the shells do since some have behaviors that allow them to hit where the armour is weakest such as listed on the Hunter variant it hits on a flat armour value of 20mm on a Leman Russes hatch which would 100% instant kill it with a self detonation of the magazine. You also haven't even acknowledged the main statement of EFFECTIVENESS in which compared to other factions, can the Leman Russ even be replaced at a cheaper K/D and requisition cost than another factions. A tank which performs well overall can be considered to be poor in effectiveness if it takes more man power and cost than its performance returns.

In this case the Leman Russ is one of those in that scrap-cobble Ork wagens with AT guns and Looteds can take them out with a crew of 2 and about a third of the cost it would take to field a Leman Russ meaning that you're facing three times the numbers with the same equal crew it would take to man a Leman Russ over those three vehicles. Can said Leman Russ be rebuilt in the field from scratch? No it can't. It has to be shipped to the battlefield. The Orks can just keep building new ones off the battle scrap and in the field which means their overall production costs are extremely low and their effectiveness even if they die in large numbers higher because they can deal more economic damage than they sustain.

So you've written over eight different lore supported ways to kill a Leman Russ at economic costs lesser than what it would take to replace it which has already proven its effectiveness isn't the best even if its performance is greater in certain category's which is what you fail to understand. Have you ever even looked at this scenario from a logistics point of view as I have? Not to mention that if Necrons get implemented how are you going to justify the cost effectiveness of fielding a unit that can't even phase out of reality when it's damaged or instantly negate all armour value at roughly double the range of an Leman Russ.


Since you keep saying I'm going off a diagram I will now do so:
Let's see where the Leman Russes front armour doesn't apply, oh I don't know how about on the turret itself if you hit the barrels mounting? Since most Leman Russes don't tale a dozer blade you have that .5 meter section behind it where the undercarriage of the main hull is a primary target. The upper hull where the turret mates to it is not the same sloping nor thickness as the rest of the tank. The treads themselves are vulnerable and if you have an AP shell that's adamantine tipped or its equivalent you can essentially shoot through the forward track and kill the sponson gunner and if you add a delayed explosive shell to that well then there goes the crew.

Actual Leman Russ Armour thicknesses per the standard variant:
Frontal:100-150-180-200 (Basket, primary hull, frontal sloped superstructure, turret frontal sloped)
Side: 150 (Sides)
Rear: 100 (Rear Armour)

That's a lot of areas it can be hit by an AP or HEAT shell and be destroyed by any decent layer and gunner even when sighting by naked eye alone. I've personally led Abram tank crews which could lay a shell down range at 3-4kms and hit a target the size of a pineapple using nothing but the standard vision optic scope and telemetry range chart so a 40k tank crew is more than capable of doing the same.

Let's look at that crew as well, a whopping 6 personnel for a fully optimized combat tank compared to a Predators 2 man crew or an Ork Wagens 2-3 crew members. That's less than half the personnel you need per vehicle and in the Orks case much cheaper requisition costs when they can field 75-80mm AT guns capable of penetrating that 150mm which oh no, is in four areas, two of them massive targets.

To answer you case on walkers, yes they should be held back by the fact you can kill the operator very easily. But then again since you keep using TT stats then of course they shouldn't die by your estimations since they should obviously have Feel no Pain from their drug enhancements even when logically you shoot the operator through the skull they die even if the device continues for another few seconds off the last received commands.

Sentinels being immune to flamethrowers? Why not since TT allows it even though logically the pilot would die a terrible death with the promethium melting their sloughing skin off. Or what about the fact a flamethrower would kill a tank crew through their vision port if they aren't completely buttoned up? Nope, completely ignore that logic because according to TT a flamethrower can't penetrate a tank even if the hatch is blatantly left open. Better right off taking a meltagun to the hatch and dropping a grenade into it as well since according to your beloved TT argument you can't do that or that a dedicated AT weapon is impossible of penetrating a vehicle on the front hatch because it automatically takes the maximum armour value even when it's thinner plating and not even sloped.

You know what a good way to fix open hatches being a vulnerability to flamethrowers is? Slap your artist and tell him to close the damn hatch. See how much easier that is than making your game unplayable?

Suspending your pilot from the front of your mech like Christ on the cross makes them vulnerable? Slap your artist for being an idiot and tell him to give that thing a proper armored cockpit.

For the thousandth time, just because GW's art department sucks doesn't mean the Imperial Guard should be punished for it. Giving the Russ a facelift so that the artwork supports it having the highest armor the game allows you to have would be perfectly acceptable. Nerfing the Russ to AV12 (the strength where autocannons actually start to become threatening) just because that's how you interpret the artwork is not.

Seriously, allowing your art team to dictate your game's balance is the fastest way to throw the whole game into the trash bin. And that's what you're doing: demanding that artwork override balance.

That's dumb. Balance first, then fix your bloody artwork so it actually makes sense.

For example, the LR's turret in artwork is too small to actually hold the tank commander (or its gun breech for that matter). The barrel is also too huge to actually be 120mm. Should the LR kill its commander and rip the backside out of its turret every time it fires? No, that'd be stupid. Enlarge the turret a bit, shrink the gun so it actually fits, then compromise on the caliber and change the entry to 210mm or something.

See how much easier that is than trashing the stats on a perfectly good tank just because the artist has no idea how large a millimeter is?

In the War hammer 40k novel Gunheads, The Orc forces kill a Leman Russ by using shaped charges in there missiles. This alarmed the Senior tank commander, that their Mek boys had thought about how to conquer IG Armour.

There's nothing wrong with their designs allowing technological advancements from now until the 41st millenia. There's nothing wrong with having martydom units and Ork Killa Klans are effective as they are armoured but they have an open vision slit where you will eventually get lucky enough to headshot the driver, there's nothing wrong with that design and in fact in most cases, it's no different than a standard exo-skeleton soldier.

Same with the way (those stupid) Grey Knight....things....have a Grey Knight just dangling in the middle, not really that bad of a design considering the enhanced abilities given to the wearer but it's a situational terror unit just like the Sisters of Battles version. Regular humans would break under normal circumstances when you see something like that in an induced drug rage charging at you but against a veteran fighting force it would do poorly unless it ambushed them. Kind of like how you wouldn't field Sentinels against a dug in AT emplacement if it was more than capable of tracking their movement.

I have no quarrels with the Leman Russ in itself, it's the concept of it being the best MBT that is the problem. The practicality of fielding them cost effectively is questionable especially depending on how many Regiments are on Arkhona and what the infrastructure is if there is none that support their production. That's why I'm saying that compared to other factions, the Leman Russ should not be the only medium tank fielded, and instead of medium tank spam, utilize a lighter mechanized approach with artillery that isn't directly going to be in the line of fire where you're constantly having to repair or replace them.

I've played too many games where tanks like a Leman Russ get spammed like crazy where it's like a zombie survival game where you're thinking....we've destroyed/lost over three armies of these things and we still have more!? without a logical way of replenishing them. Remember that warp travel no matter what the authors state is still a big giant cluster fuck, entire Regiments and even Astartes strike forces have gone MIA from warp transits gone wrong. So you can't just assume you're going to get a fresh detachment every week, more like every month or two.

Don't forget the first DoW cinematic where an Ork killed a dreadnought by slapping on a magnetic AT mine onto its arm (which I still find slightly impractical as it should only of blown its arm off and maybe staggered it onto its side, would of been better placed on the actual engine block on the back but whatever) so Orks do have many ways of countering them...not to mention their missile spam...they don't need vehicles when they can just use essentially mass SCUD missiles against you though only the Emperor alone knows where they will land.

AT mine? That was a meltabomb, that should have actually disintegrated a large chunk of the dreadnought, not blown it up.