The delightful chaos of the siege cannon
Recently replayed HW:C for the first time in 25 years and I hadn’t realised how much fun the siege cannon is.
I played some sneaky shots in campaign but had an absolute blast against the CPU.
I hadn’t realised the fun dynamics that you can get by batting away the shots with the Dreadnoght repulsor field, or triggering it with the DF Frigate.
It’s also such a wildcard in the endgame - instead of one player starting to dominate and the game essentially being a foregone conclusion, the siege cannon means it’s anyone’s game right up to the end.
I saw the winning player’s mothership get oneshotted by an incredible sniper shot - immediate inversion of the player ladder.
And I moved in for the kill on a CPU player, only to experience the horror of seeing their siege cannon warm up. But I managed to get a Dreadnought inbetween them and bounced the cannon shot onto another player’s fleet. I genuinely laughed out loud.
I’ve also seen videos of the Beast tactic of hyperspacing a DFF on top of an enemy as they’re firing the cannon in order to trigger it as it leave the muzzle and turn it into a self-own.
I know a lot of games (including DoK and HW3) have nuke type weapons, but these tend just to be sniper-type weapons without much potential for defence or reversal.
HW:C brought additional dynamics that really raises the stakes for all players when it gets fired.
25 years since its release, and I can’t think of a game that did it better.