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Hi all,

New member here doing my best to play by the rules, and this seemed appropriate for this forum. As I put together my first IG Hellhound I'm trying to decide what weapon would be best to mount on the hull. I'm thinking the Heavy Bolter seems most appropriate because I'll likely be targeting troops and lightly armored vehicles and it could prove most versatile. My experience playing is limited to one game with pretty much just infantry thus far so any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Magnetise it, and swap them in and out depending on your opponent. No real reason to stick to one.

Multimelta for the Hellhound, Heavy Flamer for the Devildog. Either/or for the Banewolf.

that or just don't glue it down. The heavy weapon actually fits rather snugly in the hole in the chimera chasses even without glue. Just make sure you don't lose one of them, as with both dry-fitting and magnetizing, they can still get knocked off rather easily.

As for which to try first, I'd probably say heavy flamer. the hellhound is a fast vehicle that's going to be getting close to stuff anyways, so it's probably the best vehicle (other than perhaps an outflanking sentinel) to take this hull weapon. HB's are nice for picking off stragglers, but it's probably a fair guess that the rest of your army will have some capability to do this (and if it doesn't, then take an HB).

I'd go for the Heavy Flamer: As the Hellhound is a Fast vehicle, you're going to want to get close to the enemy to get in range of the main weapon as soon as possible. Taking the Heavy Flamer will allow you to fend off any enemy assault squads that come too close.

While the Heavy Bolter has a range of 36", you still have to roll to hit at BS3, which means that you won't get the full impact that you were hoping for.

Valk

Valkyrie wrote:I'd go for the Heavy Flamer: As the Hellhound is a Fast vehicle, you're going to want to get close to the enemy to get in range of the main weapon as soon as possible. Taking the Heavy Flamer will allow you to fend off any enemy assault squads that come too close.

While the Heavy Bolter has a range of 36", you still have to roll to hit at BS3, which means that you won't get the full impact that you were hoping for.

Valk

Except you already have a Hellhound Template that can be used either at range, to fend off enemy assaulters, and has more strength. To fire both templates means you aren't moving at Cruising Speed, setting yourself up to be killed in assault, and should the enemy have enough mechanized elements that you can't get a good flame shot off, a Multimelta adds a modicum of duality to your tank.

I like the multi-melta. The turret weapon is already one of the best anti-infantry weapons in the game, so upgrading the hull to a MM gives the vehicle some versatility.

Yeah, but this means that you're spending a lot of points on something that you're really not likely to use. The entire time it's alive, you're always going to be asking yourself "is this a poorer quality than is possible anti-tank weapon, or a poorer quality than is possible anti-infantry weapon?"

a hull MM is just going to tempt you from shooting individual MM shots when the better answer is almost always going to be to shoot the superflamer on the turret. Better to give your tank one role and give it a backup weapon for that role if the turret gets knocked off than to give the tank two roles and always being in a state of confusion where you sometimes waste a bunch of points worth of firepower.

No. You build multiple layers of threats into each vehicle so that you do not create a split between "Dedicated Anti-infantry" and "dedicated Anti-tank" and solve your opponent's target priority issues for him. There will be turns where you cannot Inferno infantry.

The gunships are more suited for specialized death at any rate.

Well the HB is out! I am going to try and just fit it in for now until I can get myself some magnets. I like both arguments for the MM and the HF so I'll probably just try both and see what works better. It comes down to tactics and the opponent I'm facing I suppose.

Thanks all for the input! I like the paint scheme Ailaros, it's something different from most of what I've seen before for Guard.

MagicJuggler wrote:No. You build multiple layers of threats into each vehicle so that you do not create a split between "Dedicated Anti-infantry" and "dedicated Anti-tank" and solve your opponent's target priority issues for him. There will be turns where you cannot Inferno infantry.

When you specialize you make target prioritizing easier for you and for your opponent in equal measure. Likewise with generalization and making it tougher. If this were the only thing to consider, it would be a wash.

Except it's not. When you mix weapons, you are weakening your effectiveness against whatever you happen to be shooting at in any given turn. For example, if you faced off against a horde with some armor support that had broken into your lines and you had two hellhounds with MMs, you would be forced to bring both tanks to bear against the infantry, and you don't have anything to shoot at the armor, or you have to do nothing to the horde in order for both tanks to shoot at the armor, or you are only shooting one at one group and the other at the other, meaning that you're only doing half damage, while the other weapon on the vehicle is useless. If you had a devil dog and a hellhound with flamer, on the other hand, you'd get two shots at the infantry AND two shots at the tank rather than two shots at the tank OR two shots at the infantry, or one against each.

In short, if you mix, you can engage twice the number of targets, but you're half as effective, which means that you need to bring twice as many, while wasting half your firepower.

The only reason to engage in this kind of waste is if you're afraid that you won't be able to get the right specialized units to the right place at the right time, but this is a fast vehicle we're talking about, here.

Can we stop with broken arguments? The very purpose of having fast vehicles is to prevent your lines from being broken into, to threaten enemy advances, act as a fast tank-shocker (Last I checked, you can't turn after tank-shocking a horde into nicely compacted formation), etc. If you're using your Hellhound for slow gunshipping, why aren't you using a gunship?

Any of the three has a decent argument behind it.

The HB lets you shoot at a distance is nobody is close enough to burn, but lacks impact.

The HF lets you double up on blazing death and specialize, but often requires you move 6 with infantry nearby.

The MM lets you try double duty and threaten vehicles too, but you'll have 'oops, maybe I should have shot the other gun' moments pop up and it's really easy to hang yourself unless you are good. When all you have is a hammer, you'll hammer nails without question. When you have a spork, sometimes you'll end up forking something you should have spooned.

I always mount a Multi-Melta on it nowadays.

When I first ran them, I used a Heavy Bolter (Heavy Flamer is unneeded redundancy that means I'd have to move combat speed to fire). That was alright, and certainly chipped in a bit when it came to shooting, but in my experience the Hellhound's speed would always see it either away from the main force or in the very front, and as such would spend an exorbitant amount of time near Land Raiders it couldn't hurt. Multi-Meltas let the Hellhound threaten Heavy Tanks now, and it doesn't lose much at all when it comes to anti-infantry.