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I wanna see you win...
AGAINST BA LR SPAM!!!

Vaktathi wrote:There's many reasons why plasma is much rarer. First is cost, it has become almost universally 15pts for most armies instead of 10. It still also retains Gets Hot!. Additionally, cover saves are far more prevalent in this edition, negating the usefulness of the AP2 in many situations. Finally, it can't kill vehicles anywhere near as well as it could in the previous edition, and melta does a superb job of killing vehicles, and is cheaper and can ID T4 HQ's and the like.

Gets Hot! at this point is a relic of 5pt 3E Blackbook plasma guns that the Design Studio just can't get over, and honestly serves no game balance purpose anymore at this point other than to be punitive simply for the sake of being punitive.

So what would make you take plasma?

A point reduction and/or lose the gets hot rule?

only if meltaguns became 15 points- even then it'd be a tough choice.

Th3ee Legged Dog wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:Plasma sucks. In most armies, you can just take melta for equal of less points. It's bad at infantry killing, it's bad at tank killing. Plasma just isn't good.

Until you realize that it's easier to kill termies and similar with plasma than with melta...

Not really.. At all. Plasma doesn't meet the double strength requirement. And while that doesn't really matter because they have an invul save, it DOES kill every other MEQ unit that doesn't. Melta is much better for those guaranteed kills. I think. Yeah, you get one more shot. But it's rapid fire, so you're gak out of luck in assault even if you do score something good in shooting.

See, I understand this but with rapid fire plasma you are forcing two invulns instead of one. So for my drop pod tactical squads, which are not assaulting anyways, forcing two invuln only saves is rather nice.

Obviously it is all about utility and application but I see no reason why plasma cant pop lightly armored tranports with as much efficiency as long as you are rapid firing.

Ah, that's true. But I guess it all comes down to cost, really. And I'll admit plasma is GREAT for taking out DE, tau and rhinos (anything AV11 or 10, really). Those extra shots can really make the difference. But with all the meq floating around, plasma can't pop land raiders and vindicators....

Regardless, any good army should have a little bit of both, I think. Plasma Cannon Dreadnoughts are great, and Multi-melta devastators are good as well. Chaos has pretty good access to both, and the points are relatively close, so I can build for either of them.

Th3ee Legged Dog wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:There's many reasons why plasma is much rarer. First is cost, it has become almost universally 15pts for most armies instead of 10. It still also retains Gets Hot!. Additionally, cover saves are far more prevalent in this edition, negating the usefulness of the AP2 in many situations. Finally, it can't kill vehicles anywhere near as well as it could in the previous edition, and melta does a superb job of killing vehicles, and is cheaper and can ID T4 HQ's and the like.

Gets Hot! at this point is a relic of 5pt 3E Blackbook plasma guns that the Design Studio just can't get over, and honestly serves no game balance purpose anymore at this point other than to be punitive simply for the sake of being punitive.

So what would make you take plasma?

A point reduction and/or lose the gets hot rule?

Losing Gets Hot! would go a long way, especially for IG. Making more cover 5+ instead of 4+ would also help. In many places keeping it 15pts would be fine, but it should be 10pts in some others, although some armies don't really pay much period (e.g. Space Wolves...)

Also another thing I forgot was that you can also fire a meltagun and assault, not so with a plasma gun, hence why you rarely see them on many units that have the option of a meltagun as well (e.g. Grey Hunters).

Gets hot! gets to be silly sometimes for IG. I mean, of course, you usually take it on either russes or sentinels, but it's a pain in the butt when you actually need it on you CCS of PCS or whatever you're putting it on. I love my executioners

shrike wrote:I wanna see you win...
AGAINST BA LR SPAM!!!

My list also has razorback spam. Plus everyone at my store does that now. SO I stopped going. Because everyone used blood angels.A Sad day :(
Not only that but All the Marines Players are only vechiles and Terminators now. So My plasma list was killing every single one of them.

Th3ee Legged Dog wrote:
See, I understand this but with rapid fire plasma you are forcing two invulns instead of one. So for my drop pod tactical squads, which are not assaulting anyways, forcing two invuln only saves is rather nice.

For many armies (rather then units) plasma is not twice the shots its 4 shots vs 3 (30 points buying two plasma guns or three meltaguns), and trading away that one shot gets the meltaguns a lot of other bonuses.

Jack

A tactical squad can only get 1 plasma gun/Meltagu

Nulipuli2 wrote:A tactical squad can only get 1 plasma gun/Meltagu

combi-bolter
your argument is invalid

so 2 Plasmaguns and 2 meltas, jacks argument is invalid still

Nulipuli2 wrote:so 2 Plasmaguns and 2 meltas, jacks argument is invalid still

Stuff like Grey hunters and Ig command squads and such can take 2 (or more)

OP said he was going to use it for a drop podding tactical squad, he has enough AT in his army, so he wanted to know what target priority his tactical squad shuold have if he used plasmaguns, since he hasnt had succes using flamers and meltas.

Nulipuli2 wrote:OP said he was going to use it for a drop podding tactical squad, he has enough AT in his army, so he wanted to know what target priority his tactical squad shuold have if he used plasmaguns, since he hasnt had succes using flamers and meltas.

Bingo Bango.

Ran them this weekend with mild success in two games against SW's. Mild because I didnt really see much of a differance between this and the melta.

Between both games I only got one "gets hot" which was promply saved. I was able to clean up the marines that my AT popped so it worked for me in that regard. Still testing different things but if I run into high model count armies I am hosed.

Will be playing today against a leaf blower gaurd army and maybe a foot-slogging eldar army so I will let you guys know.

Nulipuli2 wrote:so 2 Plasmaguns and 2 meltas, jacks argument is invalid still

There was a reason I said "for many armies (rather then units)".

Jack

Plasma is also stellar for MC-hunting, but my meta has tons of bugs so I might be biased.

Well I played my SW roomie and got destroyed, but none of this was attributed to the Plasma and in fact the plasma worked admirally for what they accomplished. Did not lose a single marine to the unstable ancient technology.

The leaf blower gaurd list just out shot me before I had a chance to really react or utilize anything on the table. Damn outflanking Vandetta's full of nasty melta vets. In this game specifically I lost two marines to exploding plasma cores...then again I wasnt successful at all in any of my endeavours.

Either way in any of the situations I cant attribute the losses to taking plasma and I dont think I found myself in any situation where having a melta would have been better.

For me personally, I run a developing drop pod list so just got a lot of tweaking to do.

Thanks everyone for your input!

I still use it on my crisis suits but not a single one of marines has it other than a plasma pistol on my DC reclusiarch(potential kill shot if a fast vehicle is kiting them.) A lot of ork speed freaks where I play.

I find melta has overtaken plasma and next edition it may be something else but for now the only argument I can find for Plasma is the cannons. As there is only one Melta Cannon on the Devil Dog. Especially as Melta Pistols are now the rage in BA and WH, which army next?

I run a few but mainly on my LR Executioner - 5 S7 AP Small Blasts is nasty even at 230pts.

Plasma cannons is my fav weapon on my Ven Dreads (especially my Bjorn count-as). Insanely accurate and devastatingly effective.

Well they need to drop the 'gets hot' and then either:
make melta more expensive by 5 pts, drop the price of las cannons (and make SM devs more like BA devs... that' was a cock up) and probably drop cover back to 4+ That will balance melta, and then by proxy balance plasma.

Unless you are Tau. I load most of my battle suits up with Plasma Rifles!

I'm betting Necrons are going to have Tankpopping as their gimmick. Just watch as plasma guns suddenly become very valuable again.

Plasma weapons are awesome against armor saves.
Meltas only live up to their potential at half range