I've always thought that the whiteshields in Cadian armies were meant to have pretty good (indoctrinated) morale but poor fighting skills (I still remember a fluff piece back from rogue trader era about some whiteshields, pre-cadian admittedly, charging a bunch of ork dreadnoughts!).

I've found that with initiative 3 but autocannons the whiteshields arent doing much but sitting in defensive positions, which they hold just as well as veterans. This seems wrong to me, especially as I've always seen FF value as a factor of unit cohesion and tactics (hence low ork and cultist FF).

Hence count me for firefight 6+ whiteshields, but also count me for Initiative 2+ whiteshields. I want to see youth army charges!

Regarding heavy weapons, if they have them in 40k I would still say drop them to having 1 shot per 3 stands in epic. This uses the same logic as SM having 1 shot per stand despite having as many heavy weapons as IG - the number of shots is affected by the efficiency of the unit.

If they dont have access to heavy weapons in 40k then they can do without here.