Tanks versus Artillery

Before I begin, I would like to let you know that another chapter for War Convocation has been uploaded, so have fun reading it. The next couple of chapters will be a lull period, meaning meetings, dialogue, world building and no action at all. So if you're looking for explosive firefights and awesome duels, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until the explorator fleet actually takes off. I'm sorry.

On the tabletop gaming side of things, as I said, my Skitarii army is nearly finished and consequently it means my entire Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation is almost done. Just one more Onager Dunecrawler to go. And I'll have an army of cybernetic warriors plus a Knight! I kind of wished I built three Knight Crusaders instead but hey, it doesn't matter.

I'll probably build a Reaver Titan for my next project, but right now I'm kind of stuck over something. I need to complete my Imperial Guard list, and it seems I need to add a Leman Russ Battle Tank and Leman Russ Vanquisher no matter what. If you've read the story I'm writing, you'll know it's part of the fluff. The Draconis Armored Regiment uses Leman Russ Vanquishers and Leman Russ Battle Tanks. I'm also quite the fan of parking my Leman Russ Battle Tank at the back and using it as pseudo artillery. However, I realized that my Knight Crusader and Knight Paladin can double as Leman Russ Battle Tanks - I mean, they have rapid-fire battle cannons that are essentially two shots of Leman Russ Battle Tanks. Of course, they're on the expensive side, because a Leman Russ Battle Tank only costs 150 points, and 2 of them being 300 points, still less than the Knight Paladin by 75 points and 130 points less than a Knight Crusader. However, a Knight Crusader with Stormspear rocket pod is easily worth 3 Leman Russ Battle Tanks because it fires 2 battle cannon shots, 12 Avenger Gatling shots and 3 krak missiles for just 20 points more. And I haven't included the heavy stubbers.

However, I'm still interested in doing an armored list for Leman Russ tanks, centered around the Steel Host formation. I don't know if I should build around my Leman Russ Vanquisher and Leman Russ Battle Tank or if I should build around my Leman Russ Executioners. It confers Preferred Enemy to the commander tank and all tanks from that formation that are within 12 inches of the commander. Now I'm trying to figure out what's the optimal build for this formation. I heard that Preferred Enemy does nothing for blasts and scatter. Well, the re-rolling ones to wound might be important, but re-rolls to hit? The blast guys are out, which means the Leman Russ Eradicator, Battle Tank and Demolisher are out. Then the Leman Russ Exterminator is twin-linked, so it doesn't get any benefit from the Preferred Enemy either.

It works for Leman Russ Vanquisher, Punisher and Executioner. The first two will land more hits while the Leman Russ Executioner will have much less chances of Gets Hot! results because I can re-roll the Gets Hot! rolls. Yay.

Despite that, I'm still wondering if I should just give the Preferred Enemy to the Tank Commander and his Leman Russ Executioner buddy and fill up the other slots with Leman Russ Battle Tanks. The 3 Leman Russ Battle Tanks will be placed at the back to serve as artillery.

The alternative is to build an all-Executioner list, and if it gets too expensive I'll swap a couple out for Punishers or stuff. I read that Exterminators would be good too, since they benefit from the Preferred Enemy's to wound rolls. That will cut the cost and allow me to ally in another Imperial Guard combined arms detachment.

I need advice and I hope you guys can give suggestions and advice on how to build the Steel Host formation. Thanks.