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I picked up 3 Cadian special wpn packs for a great price, and also got 2 command squads, giving me 5 meltas. Are they worth painting up?

To a certain extent it depends upon what is in the rest of your army and whether or not you are trying to max out on plasma. I have used and seen meltas used successfully in several different roles.

Deep Striking Tank Hunting: x3 in Vet squads or x4 in Command Squads with Sharp Shooters (it goes without saying that nothing in worse than rolling 4 ones-and nothing is more satisfying than rolling 4 ones followed by picking them up and rolling 4 4+'s). Effective if you can get in range, and it can be psychologically useful against your opponent if they know it is coming. Beyond the raw fear of it, it may also limit their manueverability by forcing them to hide their direct fire vehicles or surround them with infantry that would be better used elsewhere on the field.

This works well with gunlines or as a drop army component.

Gun Line Mobile Reserve: Give command squads a mortar and two meltaguns or four meltaguns as above and hide them somewhere until a big juicy target that needs killing reaches your line (terminators, bikes, Wraithlords, whatever), pop them out and shoot. Also works well with hiding them to use Iron Discipline as well.

In my Armored Company I sometimes give them to Stormtrooper squads as well in case bad things happen to the Vanquisher.

So yes on the whole bring them on!

Personally, I've never made a Guard list without meltaguns. They're great for deep-striking squads (as has been mentioned) as well as finishing off nasty things up close that you can't manage to take out at range such as HQ choices, Monstrous Creatures, etc. So I'm pretty much just enthusiastically echoing Alpharius I suppose.

Guard have too much access to special weapons NOT to use meltas.

I only use them on deep striking squads.

The 'mobile' counter unit is less effective against models with wounds as opposed to vehicles at close range.

ok thanks guys. Most of the lists I see seem to concentrate on plasma, I'm glad I can use these without wasting points.

The new Plague Marines can really shrug off Plasma fire with Feel No Pain, but Meltas kill them dead dead dead. A squad of 7 PMs will generally run about 200 points: 2 melta command squads (160 pts) combining fire will kill 4 of them on average. The remaining PMs should wipe out one of the two squads in their own turn, leaving them hanging to be melta'd again by the second squad.

Overheats from plasma (esp. rapidfire) really suck for guard, I always lose 1-2 guys in a dropping plas squad from overheating. With melta squads there's no overheat, so you can try to drop them into cover and maybe get 2 rounds of fire out of them.

yes yes yes i run with grenadiers put them in a chimera with 2 meltas knocked a cople landraiders with these guys run up 12" drop ramp and boom to melta shots to the face hit on 3's

They really help against Tank Shock.

I give my command squads one flamer and one melta.

They are not there for offensive power, but leadership so their positions on the battlefield are more or less static. Thus I split the roles. Sure one melta is less threatening than two, but its a meltagun, IF it hits what it hits is in trouble. Hence it has a deterent effect.

The flamer is truely there because there is nowhere else to put one, and its nice and cheap. Frankly I would be better off with just one melta, but the loadout pays off directly from time to time, and has to be accounted for all the time.

I've only really seen melta guns in IG armies if they are either in drop pod squads or in chimera transported command squads. Anywhere else and they tend to not be able to get where they need to be inorder to be effective.