Now that wargear choices is free, you are of course going to take medpack, scanner, comms and special weapons on your Hearthkyn Warriors. But what basic weapon should you get? Lets put the Autoch-pattern Bolter and the Ion Blaster to the test!
Truth is, your Hearthkyn Warriors aren't really the heroes of the Votann army. They are fairly tough, have some useful abilities (especially dying in order for other units to avenge them), but they are not especially killy for the points. Do not expect great things. That said, we do want the most we can get out of them!
In the choice of basic weapon, one stat needs to be looked at in particular: The range. The Autoch-pattern bolter is clearly the winner here, with a range of 24" to the Ion blaster's 18. That said, a range of 18 isn't actually bad, but you can probably expect to get a few more shots off with bolters compared to blasters in a given battle. In my games so far in tenth, I've only had ion blasters be out of range (where the extra 6 inches would have mattered) two times, in one case there was a single blaster that couldn't shoot, in the other case it was 3. If your game hinges on 3 shots from a Hearthkyn squads basic guns, you probably have bigger problems. But lets keep range in mind as a tie-breaker.
Over to what guns are for, taking the enemy down!
Bolters have two shots at strength 4, no armor penetration. Ion blasters have a single shot at strength 5, with a -2 armor penetration. Both weapons hit on 4+, and do a single point of damage.
From these factors, it is obvious that the bolter will be better against low-toughness, weakly armored targets, but the question is where the break point is where the better strength and penetration of the Ion blaster starts being worth it - and whether various buffs change the calculus in any meaningful way.
Lets start looking at the basic case, with no circumstantial buffs for the enemy or the Hearthkyn.
Without buffs, the A-Bolter hits twice as often as the I-Blaster, by virtue of having twice the number of shots at the same accuracy. This means the blaster must be at least twice as effective at penetrating the target toughness and armor in order to compete.
A-Bolters wound T2- on 2s, T3 on 3s, T4 on 4s, T5-7 on 5s and T8+ on 6s.
I-Blasters wound T2- on 2s, T3-4 on 3s, T5 on 4s, T6-9 on 5s and T10+ on 6s.
The only differences are against T4, T5, T8 and T9. Lucky for the Blaster, several of these values are pretty common in 10th edition 40k. Lets look at the difference:
T4: The blaster wounds 4 out of 6 times where the bolter wounds 3 out of 6 times. This is a 33% increase in efficiency of the blaster when compared to the bolter as a baseline. Remember that the bolter stands at 100% higher hit efficiency.
T5: The blaster wounds 3 out of 6 times where the bolter wounds 2 out of 6 times. This is a 50% increase in efficiency.
T8 and T9: The blaster wounds 2 out of 6 times, where the bolter wounds 1 out of 6 times. This is a 100% increase in efficiency.
We see that against toughness 8 or 9 targets with _no armor_ (does such a target exist?) or with only an invulnerable save, the blaster is exactly as efficient as the bolter without taking armor penetration into account. In other cases, the blaster reigns supreme if armor is not taken into account.
So what about armor?
Bolters penetrate armor on their exact save values. Ion blasters at 2 point higher. This is a big difference every step of the way.
Save 7+: Neither weapon has a benefit.
Save 6+: Bolter penetrates 5 out of 6 times, blaster always, blaster is 20% better.
Save 5+: Bolter penetrates 4 out of 6 times, blaster always, blaster is 50% better.
Save 4+: Bolter penetrates 3 out of 6 times, blaster 5 out of 6 times, blaster is 66% better.
Save 3+: Bolter penetrates 2 out of 6 times, blaster 4 out of 6 times, blaster is 100% better.
Save 2+: Bolter penetrates 1 out of 6 times, blaster 3 out of 6 times, blaster is 300% better.
So what combinations of toughness and armor give us a 100% or more efficiency increase from choosing a blaster?
At T4, the save must be 3+ or better for the Blaster to be better. (With T4 and a 4+ save, the weapons are equally good.)
At T5, the save must be 5+ or better for the Blaster to be better.
At T8, the save must be 6+ or better for the Blaster to be better.
As most high toughness targets have good saves, this means that in the base case, if you are firing at something as tough as a Space Marine (T4 and a 3+ save), the Blaster is better, though the difference is marginal at that level. It increases beyond that.
Note that the ion blaster still isn't good against rhinos and the like. It does about 0.008 damage per point per activation against such a target. Dedicated antitank is often in the 0.03-0.05-range. But the bolter does half as much as the blaster, meaning that the ion blaster is better if you need to try to chip wounds off a tank with your basic guns.
At least we're not using lasguns anymore!
So, the ion blaster is better if we expect to be firing on targets at least as tough as a space marine. But that is without buffs. What happens if we actually get some of those buffs? The most likely buffs to apply to hearthkyn are +1 to hit and +1 to wound from judgement tokens, and possibly Lethal Hits from a Kahl.
The Kahl is easy to evaluate, as lethal hits simply nullifies the strength advantage of the ion blaster whenever you roll a 6 to hit. And you'll roll more 6s to hit with boltguns as you are rolling more dice. The exact value takes too much computation, but the blaster needs to significantly outclass the boltgun to be better under such circumstances, and most likely that needs to come from armor penetration. So unless you plan to hunt 2+ and 3+ targets with your basic hearthkyn weapons, take boltguns if you are taking a Kahl, from what we know now.
What about our tokens?
The hit buff affects both weapons equally. Without tokens, bolters get twice as many hits as blasters. With tokens, bolters still get twice as many hits. So we can ignore the +1 to hit for these purposes.
To wound may change things. The only T-values where the guns are different are still 4, 5, 8 and 9. But the difference is now like this:
T4, +1 to wound: The blaster wounds 5 out of 6 times where the bolter wounds 4 out of 6 times, a 25% edge for the blaster (where it was a 33% improvement without the buff).
T5, +1 to wound: The blaster wounds 4 out of 6 times where the bolter wounds 3 out of 6 times. A 33% edge for the blaster vs the 50% edge it had without tokens.
T8 and T9, +1 to wound: The blaster wounds 3 out of 6 times, where the bolter wounds 2 out of 6 times. This is now a 50% increase in efficiency from using a blaster, where it was 100% increase without the token.
So we can easily see that while blasters are still better against many targets, the bolters improve more from having judgement tokens, just like they improved more from the Kahl buff. But the Ion Blaster is still (marginally) better against Space Marines and up.
Feel-no-pains and penalties to hit affect both weapons equally.
Invulnerable saves that are at most one pip away from the armor save makes the Ion blaster worse, but doesn't affect the bolter.
Cover? Interrestingly, Hearthkyn often ignore cover because of their pan-spectral scanner. This isn't always the case, however, especially when you split a squad into two using a Sagitaur - only one of the smaller squads get the benefit of the pan spectral guy. So lets assume we're not ignoring it.
Cover in 10th edition is a bit weird. Models with a 3+ or better armor save do not get to benefit from it against AP0-weapons like the Autoch-pattern Bolter. But they DO get to benefit from it against other weapons, like the Ion Blaster. This means that against that kind of target, the Ion Blaster effectively has AP-1, reducing its advantage for penetration to 50% against 3+ saves. That makes the bolter exactly as good against standard space marines when they're in cover!
But conversely, against units with worse saves such as hearthkyn or guardsmen, it's as if their save was one better than it usually is, making the Blaster better compared to the bolter.
In the case of hte marine in cover, without cover the bolter does 2*0.5*0.5*0.333 = 0.167 damage against marines. With cover it does exactly the same. The ion blaster does 0.5*0.667*0.667 = 0.22 damage against marines without cover, but 0.5*0.667*0.5 = 1.167 against marines in cover.
Even without cover, we can see that the difference isn't huge. At current points values, you're unlikely to take more than 4 squads of Hearthkyn at the absolute most, meaning about 32 of these guns. They'll be out of range some of the time, and dead other time, but lets be generous and say each of those guns get 3 activations on average. That's... 21 dead marines with ion blasters, or 16 dead marines with bolters - or cover. It's not nothing, but it's also not THAT much, as the bolters will often be more effective when you're fighing such opponents as the eldar or guard.
So what does it all mean? The difference between the two weapons isn't actually all that large. They are just about equivalent against marines, the bolter is better against weaker targets, the blaster better against stronger ones. The range should probably make you pick bolters most of the time, unless your meta is all terminators and death guard, and then you should remember that your basic guys really aren't there to kill anything. To be honest, if you're on the clock I might even skip firing them a lot of the time.
But the calculations are making me lean towards trying bolters more.
On the other hand...
I have one last argument in favor of the Ion Blaster: At that moment when you're firing all your guns at a big, tough target with only a wound or two remaining, and you score that lucky hit and wound... In that moment, being able to tell your opponent that your basic infantry gun is AP-2, in an edition where AP is all but gone from that kind of gun for most factions... Is absolutely priceless!
The ancestors are watching.
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