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I have been playing alot of games with my eldar rangers lately, and I am getting more and more amazed by the lack of flamers in peoples armies.  Can I get some objective reasons on why no one fields the weapon?

(If this keeps up, I might have to go make a damned witch hunter army just to prove a point)

Well, for myself I do use a few Flamers, but those are on any Dreadnoughts I field and I also have one in each of my Marine Assualt Squads.

The only reason I use them is to thin out enemy numbers just before I charge in for close combat. Otherwise I can't see the point of taking them for any other reason.

If your army is not setup for close combats but mostly shooty troops then I can't see a reason for flamers other than defensive against your own units being assualted by the enemy.

I think most people prefer the MEQ killing of plasma or tank hunting of meltas when it comes to special weapons. I find them great for preping an assault. Even marines are going to fail 2 or 3 saves when hit by 2 flamers. I'm a firm believer in giving flamers to any assault unit be it assault marines, honour guard, chaos marines and occassionaly guard. While it may not measure up to the other 2 ubiquitous special weapons its cheap, is great to level the cc field prior to chrging and will not blow up in your face.

Love the flamers, even if I am not playing in COD, but especially when I am playing in COD.

I have no idea. They're my preferred weapon for any squad that has speed and is meant to assault.

Templar Crusader squads tend to favor Meltaguns as their special weapon of choice, but that has a lot to do with the fact that Templars tend to be between 15 and 20 models strong, and usually pack a Power Fist, thereby giving them all the softening power they need (19 bolt pistol shots, 1 meltagun shot, and then 56 S4 attacks on the charge with 3 PF hits to follow up). Flamethrowers (I tend to digress from the term "Flamer") are quite valuable, and I like fielding them when I play in tight zones, like Cities of Death, or when I'm fighting horde armies that don't pack a lot of anti-tank.

CK

Flame on, baby, I field several in my SOB, and my COD marine list has a bunch as well, as well as my assaulty marines (2 flamers per assault squad).

yes flamers can be effective and heavy flamers more so. the problem is that flamers are best fitted in assault units or fast units that can survive to get close enough to use them. sisters do it very well because it is thier strong point. marines can do it well with bikes, podding dreads(especially if you use the FW siege dread) and jump troops.   it realy depends on how a person kis thier army. my ravenwing bike squads all have 2 flamers.

I've never seen an army have flamers available to them and NOT seen at least a few used.  Heck I love my one Flamer marine from my Divergent chapter... His whole squad got eaten alive by a damned assassin with the neural shredder... damned six 6's... only marine that got outta that turn alive was the flamer marine and he made it to the end of the game.  And took out his fair share of enemies too!  Thus he got ALOTTA purity seals added after that game
Aztralwolf

I remember flamer pistols in 2nd Edition with teeny little templates jst right for toasting 2 or 3 enemies... of course back then heavy flamers had extra big templates too.

I don't tend to use flamers (except ork burnas) that much - I'd usually rather fill my special weapon slots with melta/plasma

I use Flamers against 'nids. Enough said.

I usually take at least a couple. I used heavy flamers for the first time in my last battle. It was against Close Order Drilling Guard crammed into cover. God Emperor! It was incredible, the destruction I wreaked! I will never underestimate the Heavy Flamer vs. the Assault Cannon again (though, I admit, it was an ideal situation)!

To me, they where something that I always thought Plasma or Melta's where a much better choice for. Then the new Eldar codex came out, and the damn Pathfinders with their 2+ cover saves... Oh yeah, I made sure I started bringing some flamers after a few games of that.

Oh, forgot to mention all the skorchas in my KOS list, but they're just as much in the units as a spare pw, frankly.

They aren't that much used...but look at the face of your opponent when the "quasi-invulnerable" cover save suddenly disappears.

Priceless.

Sadly, Eldar don't have that much flamer options. But the Destructor Warlock is my personal favorite. Even though i never played them, the days when Warp Spiders all had flamer templates must have been very fun indeed...

Greets
Schepp himself

Oh, good GRAVY they were scary in 2nd Edition.  I do seem to remember that they were one of the few weapons that didn't have an armor save modifier, though.  It's not like they needed it;  all those templates would do a number on darn near anything.

I run 2 PHQ w/ between 2 and 3 flamers based on army size in my guard army. I also use a couple heavy bolter/flamer squads as meat shield/counter attack. Flamers are good for an effective counter attack in cheap command squads.

Heavy Flamers on podding Dreads are well worth their points.

I think the reason you see fewer flamers than other weapons is simply their limited range and their akwardness when paired with a Heavy weapon. Once a flamer is in position to fire, it's a great weapon. The problem is in getting it there.

I suspect that DA combat squads may help flamers become more common. The heavy half of the squad can sit back and shoot while the mounted half can take a flamer and advance on the enemy.

Posted By blue loki on 02/12/2007 10:00 AM
Heavy Flamers on podding Dreads are well worth their points.

I think the reason you see fewer flamers than other weapons is simply their limited range and their akwardness when paired with a Heavy weapon. Once a flamer is in position to fire, it's a great weapon. The problem is in getting it there.

I suspect that DA combat squads may help flamers become more common. The heavy half of the squad can sit back and shoot while the mounted half can take a flamer and advance on the enemy.

I think you've summed it up pretty nicely.  Plasma guns are just too good to pass up as a take-all-comers weapon- good range, can hurt anything, and shoots twice at short range!  The flamer can be good if all the stars align properly, but 90% of the time I find they aren't used, or if they are, a plasma gun would do as well or better.  Plus, you get caught up in trying to set up the perfect flamer situation for your unit, where a unit with a better ranged option can just sit back and fire away for several turns.

Now, if you want to talk about flame templates you can project (hellhounds), that's a different story...

I haven't played my marines for a long time, but I could see flamers being handy for assault squads.  I never used them, prefering plasma pistols, but there is a definite danger of getting swamped by large swarms, and a pair of flamers on a highly mobile assault squad can really cut through swarm troops.

Air burst gun from Tau makes rangers/pathfinders sad.