Venator Catapult Crew

While the Skorne embrace cannons, they value catapults as tools to slaughter massed infantry. Venators prefer to fire a heavy ball packed with explosives and steel shards, which creates an earth-shaking explosion and sprays deadly fragments through the surrounding area. The catapult lobs projectiles high over intervening obstacles and has proven devastating to both warjacks and warbeasts caught in the blasts.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Gunner
  • Template:Man-sized
  • Template:Mobile Artillery
  • Template:Take Up

• Grunts
  • None

Weapons

• Gunner
  • Catapult - 18" range, 4" AOE, POW 16 ranged attack
    • Template:Arcing Fire
    • Template:Burst Fire
    • Template:Inaccurate
    • Template:Minimum Range
  • Sword - 0.5" reach, POW 3, P+S 8 melee attack

• Grunts
  • Sword - 0.5" reach, POW 3, P+S 8 melee attack

Theme Forces

• Template:Winds of Death - this unit gains Reposition [3"] and may be taken as a requisition option in this theme.

Thoughts on the Venator Catapult Crew

The Venator Catapult Crew in a nutshell

The Venator Catapult Crew is a long-ranged model that can either hurt heavies or throw some fairly high-powered blasts at infantry. In short, it does about what you would expect from a catapult.

Its fantastic range is offset by how slow it is and its minimum range ability as it has Reposition 3 in the only theme it can be taken in its better to walk than run turn1 and pick out a nice spot where you can take pot shots for the remainder of the match. Like many weapon crews, there isn’t much to write home about defensively so screening the catapult is quite important.

Combos & Synergies

• Anything with a major RAT buff/DEF debuff so it can hit targets. It's firing at an effective RAT 1 before modifiers (but that template's gotta land somewhere).
  • Venator Slingers get Flare
  • Lord Arbiter Hexeris gets Black Spot - which is excellent because it can give them a second attack
  • Various feats, notably Dominar Rasheth and Lord Assassin Morghoul
• Anything with knockdown abilities.
• Venator Dakar - veteran leader, the ability to speed the catapult crew up, and the ability to get it to reroll its attack rolls on the rare occasions you might actually stand a chance of hitting.
• Morghoul2 - feat + mortality offers a -6 to Defense and -2 to arm allowing it to hit heavies despite being inaccurate and attack at effective pow 20

Drawbacks & Downsides

• Try not to shell your own troops
• Hard to hit non-knocked down targets.
• It is Slow, this is offset by Reposition3 and desperate pace as well as it's fantastic range.
• Lots of stuff resists blast damage
• Most weapon crews have this issue but the 2 grunts are fairly redundant on their own it's all about the gun.
• The minimum range rule makes placement key in late turns.

Tricks & Tips

• The Catapult Crew has a threat range of 22". And you might as well take a pot-shot on turn 1 as that template has got to land somewhere and it's unlikely to come back and get you. Also running only gains you 2" whereas reposition gains you 3" if in Winds of Death.

Other

Trivia

• Venator means "hunter" in latin.
• Released in Hordes: Evolution (2007)