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I've been wondering why don't space marines have 'shooty' commanders (excluding master of the forge)? I mean, force commanders and chapter masters have all these close combat options, but why not a lot of gun options? I mean, why don't they allow commanders to become more shooty (unique weapon, like an AP 3 heavy bolter or something, and maybe something to boost their shooty ability)?

Bolter or combi-bolter with hellfire rounds.
Better yet, Bike with TL bolters and hellfire rounds.

Else... yea the MoTF. He shoots 2 guns!...what's wrong with count as?

Anyway, everybody knows shooting is crazy uncool and you want uber weapons to impale your enemies with...

A Combi-Melta mounting an Auxiliary Grenade Launcher and loading Hellfire Rounds can be an amusing waste of points.

Mind you, an Orbital Bombardment is kind of like shooty. I like to think of it like the Colonel in Akira (the manga, not the movie).

Nurglitch wrote:A Combi-Melta mounting an Auxiliary Grenade Launcher and loading Hellfire Rounds can be an amusing waste of points.

Who are you and what have you done with Nurglitch

I agree that an army that is tactically trained for both- the commanders only seem to know how to hit things over the head with over-compensatory weapons...


But then, we could do the Combi-Flamer, underslung auxiliary grenade launcher, with single-shot rocket, with tactical scope... and a TL melta pistol.

So modeling the weapon would look like;
Scope
Bolter
Flamer
Grenade Launcher
Rocket

In one hand.

What was that about over-compensatory weapons?

Oh sure the 'counts as' is nice, but the commanders should have access to better shooty options. He also lacks an invulnerable save.

Nurglitch: I was hoping for a shooty commander that isn't a waste of points. I'll agree with you on the orbital bombardment statement.

A Space Marine Commander has access to the best weapons a veteran Space Marine could ask for. What more do you want?

Nurglitch wrote:A Space Marine Commander has access to the best weapons a veteran Space Marine could ask for. What more do you want?

A plasma gun.

Brother SRM:

Let me figure this out. You want to spend 130pts (Plasma Gun and Power Sword) so that you can shoot a Plasma Gun instead of charging, rather than spending 130pts so that you can shoot a Plasma Pistol, and then attack with five attacks ignoring armour?

Don't get me wrong, a BS5 Plasma Gun would be something. That's pretty much what Ahriman gets when he casts Warptime and Doombolt. But Ahriman costs a Land Raider, and not one of the used ones knocking about the second hand yards of the Eye of Terror, the ones with the out of date pintle mounts and the daemonic infestations; one of the brand new ones just rolling off the assembly altar on Mars.

Nurglitch wrote:Brother SRM:

Let me figure this out. You want to spend 130pts (Plasma Gun and Power Sword) so that you can shoot a Plasma Gun instead of charging, rather than spending 130pts so that you can shoot a Plasma Pistol, and then attack with five attacks ignoring armour?

Don't get me wrong, a BS5 Plasma Gun would be something. That's pretty much what Ahriman gets when he casts Warptime and Doombolt. But Ahriman costs a Land Raider, and not one of the used ones knocking about the second hand yards of the Eye of Terror, the ones with the out of date pintle mounts and the daemonic infestations; one of the brand new ones just rolling off the assembly altar on Mars.

Is your Rhino ruined?

Predator just lacks that kick?

Come on down to Jimmy John's Used Land Raiders!

We got red ones!
Blue ones!
New and Old!
Only a 125 pt Down Payment and you are on you're way
YEEEHAW!!!

(Down payment subject to credit approval)

Personally I wish CSM and SM HQs could at least purchase a flamer. *sigh* From a Chaos collectors perspective warptime is a bit pricey and Huron Blackheart sucks

You can purchase a Flamer or a Plasma Gun or a Melta Gun. It's just the one-shot variety, which is okay because they can get Hellfire Rounds for the Bolter part of the weapon.

Both Vulkan and Huron both have Heavy Flamers, although Huron can apply Warptime to his WS6. He can also apply Warptime to either a Power Weapon at I5 or a Power Fist at I1. How you can honestly say he sucks just amazes me.

Combi weapons are all well and good but a flamer would still be nice.

Huron sucks in comparison to other HQ choices for the same cost. You can get get a more streamlined killy HQ for the same/less points. It's one of the reasons why you never see his name appear in any of the chaos lists advertised on this site (or warseer for that matter) and I never see him being used in any FLGS I go to.

Maybe my opinion of why he sucks is a little different as it's more of a sucks in comparison to and not Fabius, Lack of power weapon, suck.

The idea is that the commander has bigger things to worry about than maintaining a steady rate of fire, like commanding the army.

When the fighting gets serious and melee starts the heroes come to the fore, so it makes sense that he's given plenty of options for close combat.

But command units as proxy heavy weapons... no.

I think there may be some Daw of War 2 influence with the Force Commander picking up heavy weapons along the way...

Otherwise...I guess the only HQ with 'Heavy' Hvy weapons was the OLD space wolves...

Well, if you played DoW II, (not trying to say that that game has any real bearing on the way 40k actually works) you could equip your commander with a heavy weapon. If you upgraded his ranged stats he could be a beast, not to mention his rate of fire with a PC was pretty epic, lol.

Now I know that DoW II takes a wacky, almost skirmish based approach to 40k, but some of the new things in the game got me thinkin. I too wondered why marine commanders couldn't lead from a ranged position, looking out over the battlefield while watching the ebb and flow of battle to better direct his forces and laying suppressive fire from some huge gun. Granted, being super-human SMs makes them not NEED to sit back and watch, because they can process the flow of battle and lead from the very front, but that's not saying that all of them necessarily have too.

Still, sticking a SM commander with a devastator squad and giving him a HB or a PC would be pretty cool. Though the weapon / stats would probably have to be adjusted slightly to demonstrate his superiority with such weapons, but still, I think it would be a decent idea and would add another level of depth and customization to a SM army.