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Reasons I don't take flamers:

1. They are an "anti-horde" weapon. As most hordes are CC oriented the use of a flamer would place me too close to the unit allowing them (or me) to charge the next turn. When fighting a horde it is best to shot the crap out of them before they reach your gun-lines (unless you are Bad A in CC like BA Death Company). The only horde army that comes to mind that a flamer would work best on is an IG gun-line army.

2. If I wasn't fighting Horde odds are I'm fighting Tau, monstrous creature Tyranids, or MEQ armies. When fighting an army like these a Plasma-Gun or Melta-Gun is preferable to shoot through 2+ armor.

3. Vehicles in 5th is the new black. A flamer does crap to a vehicle. I would prefer a Melta in this instance.

4. I started playing Drop/Footslogging marines (mostly because it is different from my mech/DOA Blood Angels) and a flamer doen't come in handy as often as a regular Bolter. I stopped taking special weapons in this army in preference to my Dreadnought and Devastators doing the job that the special weapon would do.

As for Flamers in a Chaos army

My Chaos Marines have a two Meltas or Plasma guns riding in a rhino. this created a mobile 12'' gun platform of protection for the squad and works well for me (or a 24'' stationary platform for plasmas).

In Chaos If you want your HS choice to do most of the killing. I run 3 Vindicators in large games and they are fearsome to behold as they romp through most enemies, be it horde mech or meq. The vindicator isn't prejudice.

One Issue Chaos has is that it's becoming more like Eldar in the fact that you have a squad and you need it to do a specific chore or it may get overrun by the enemy.

Chaos, as mentioned, has access to lash--at least until the new codex comes out--and also to doom sirens. So that makes infantry-based flamers/doom sirens potentially really deadly.

On my mech guard army I always put the hull heavy flamer on every vehicle that's capable of taking it. The armies/units that need to get close to my vehicles and assault them (orks, nids, daemons, SM and SW scouts) are also the most vulnerable to flamers. So with a flamer on every tank, there's no way the assaulters can avoid them.

But also putting flamers on the tanks allows me to spam melta in the squads, because if I run up against a horde army I can just use tank shocks and bait vehicles to get target units bunched up for the heavy flamer shots. Last week I took out a mob of 20 boyz in one shooting phase by baiting them into assaulting a fast-moving tank (it was shaken, but just drove away) then lighting up the mob with 2 heavy flamers and finishing off the last few boyz with shooting from the hatches.

I like flamers and heavy flamers with my Eldar. Usually I will tank shock through a unit as I am re-positioning my Eldar and that will usually cause a squad of guys to bunch up.The way I do it is by declaring my tank shock distance, which usually puts me right on top of the squad I want to use the heavy flamers on, forcing them to bunch up. Then I will bring in my Seer Council with 6 heavy flamers and position it for shooting. Then in the shooting phase I kick in the Star Engines of the Wave Serpent and get out of dodge. Then I shoot my heavy flamers from the Seer Coucil at the bunched up unit which usually kills most if not all of it. If I get assulted next turn by the survivors I usually end up winning combat and then consolidate closer to where I wanted my main army anyway.



I think they can be worth it sometimes.

I'm not really a fan of flamers, for the reasons people have already stated. They simply don't do enough damage to make up for the risk of using them unless you've got more than 5 in a squad. (a la burna wagons, etc).

That's not to say I don't like template weapons though. I'm a big fan of Breath/Wind of Chaos, Warp Rift (for penning vehicles), and any twin-linked or high-S or 2+ to wound template weapons. With those, I'm almost always satisfied with the results, since they can much more consistently whittle down enemy units to the point that they're no longer a threat. (Obviously, they're a bit situational though).

I went through a period with my old (2nd) Guard army about three-four years ago where my opponents where either Orks or Tyranids.

I ran two special teams with three flamers, set up either behind terrain, or behind units likely to be charged, to get a counter flame hit after the cc round was done.

It worked really well, and in general, both units where disliked by my opponents. Its not that hard to keep them out of harms way, and for the small ammount of points, they can do some awful damage to a Horde army, especially when combined wih other units fire.

I'd take them quite often, also the fact they are gauranteed hits is always a bonus for Guard. (Not as much as with Burna Boyz, but nice none the less.)

If I was playing Marines every game I'd agree they are not as effective, but against the right opponent, I'd never leave home with out at least a good handful.

Xca|iber wrote:I' high-S or 2+ to wound template weapons.

Flavius Infernus wrote:Chaos, as mentioned, has access to lash--at least until the new codex comes out--and also to doom sirens. So that makes infantry-based flamers/doom sirens potentially really deadly.

On my mech guard army I always put the hull heavy flamer on every vehicle that's capable of taking it.

Right, so these are three times when template weapons are okay

1.) when their statline is such where even touching just one model would make them still worth it.

2.) you can move your opponent's models into nice little cone-shaped wedges.

3.) you get them for free.

As for people who still like flamers, I'm curious, how effective do you think they would be if your opponents deployed and move like I do with my guardsmen?



If you flame and then try and assault, I'm just going to take away the models closest to you. given that these units are placed 1.5-2" apart, you really only need to kill like 2 to wind up with you out of assault range altogether.

If you deepstrike next to them, and you're close enough to do damage, and you don't mishap (already less than 50-50 chance here), how many models are you really going to kill? Furthermore, you are guaranteed to be close enough for me to charge you next turn, in which case (especially if you're a tau player, lol) going to lose your units to my assault.

If you're going to tank shock, you have to contend with the fact that I keep meltabombs and meltaguns in strategic locations at the front face of the blob. Any tank shocker is going to suffer a death or glory attack which, against melta weapons, is iffy, at best. Even if it does succeed, the models are so spread out that you're not really going to cluster them together all that much. Then, just like with the deepstrikers, the next turn the vehicle is going to be blown up by melta and the guys inside are going to lose to an assault.

And all of this assumes that I didn't just shoot the transport and/or kill the units with flamers back when they were over on your side of the field with my long-ranged weapons. Were I really afraid of your flamers, they wouldn't make it out of your deployment zone.

It's easy to talk about the hypothetical awesomeness of flamers (and all blast/template weapons) in absolute ideal circumstances. Your opponent, however, can do a tremendous amount to make your circumstances far less than ideal (cf. the picture above). If you're doing lots of damage with your flamers, it's likely because your opponent kept his units bunched up and unsupported ever so conveniently, and let you have your way with him.

To be fair, if your opponent had a flamer in that squad, I see at least one place he could probably get 3-4 of your guys.

Then again, if he DID have a flamer, you could have easily corrected that one spot. Also, it looks like you have him dead to rights there. No amount of flamers will help 5 guys surrounded on most sides.

Assuming that all of those models are apart of your force, I can spot at least three, possibly four different places where a flamer would hit at least four models. And losing the deep striking unit is not the issue, almost everyone who fields a single deep striking unit uses them as a sacrificial unit. The idea behind them is to inflict damage greater than or equal to the value of the deep striking unit, which usually happens depending on the player deepstriking said units.

Ailaros wrote:And all of this assumes that I didn't just shoot the transport and/or kill the units with flamers back when they were over on your side of the field with my long-ranged weapons. Were I really afraid of your flamers, they wouldn't make it out of your deployment zone.

Such a blanket statement. Do you honestly think I don't have long-ranged weapons of my own?

It's easy to talk about the hypothetical awesomeness of flamers (and all blast/template weapons) in absolute ideal circumstances. Your opponent, however, can do a tremendous amount to make your circumstances far less than ideal (cf. the picture above). If you're doing lots of damage with your flamers, it's likely because your opponent kept his units bunched up and unsupported ever so conveniently, and let you have your way with him.

It's not 'hypothetical awesomeness' when people actually do it in practice. And hearing the same over-glossed defense about staying the maximum 2" coherency does not work with me, because I've been playing 'Ard Boyz players with the same mentality for a while now. Barrage weapons (Blast Weapons) would never miss in a spread out blob that big and leave nice holes where the men should be. Basilisks, Colossus, and Griffons. Manticores and Death Strikes. Thunderfire Cannons. Mortars. etc. would definately be effective since you don't use cover either.

Ailaros wrote:

3.) you get them for free.

They're not free--you have to give up a heavy bolter to get them. The HB pairs with hydra ACs and multilasers better, when you're sitting still, than a heavy flamer.

And they're more mobile on hellhound variants than in infantry units.

And you don't need lash to shape the enemy into little cones. I'd deal with clustering up the troops in your picture with a couple of tank shocks (using fast vehicles) to drive them into a cluster, then flame them with the follow-up vehicles.

Ailaros wrote:

If you're going to tank shock, you have to contend with the fact that I keep meltabombs and meltaguns in strategic locations at the front face of the blob. Any tank shocker is going to suffer a death or glory attack which, against melta weapons, is iffy, at best. Even if it does succeed, the models are so spread out that you're not really going to cluster them together all that much. Then, just like with the deepstrikers, the next turn the vehicle is going to be blown up by melta and the guys inside are going to lose to an assault.

Because everything you want to use a flamer on has meltabombs and meltaguns. Ooooh meltagun totting genestealers and ork boyz! I guess they can take 5 PK nobz on their squad to scretanks out of doing DoG, wheeee~!

And all of this assumes that I didn't just shoot the transport and/or kill the units with flamers back when they were over on your side of the field with my long-ranged weapons. Were I really afraid of your flamers, they wouldn't make it out of your deployment zone.

And all of this assumes that everything that every army you're gonna play with EVER that you can use a flamer effectively on has long-ranged weapons or can crack any tank with said weapons.

It's easy to talk about the hypothetical awesomeness of flamers (and all blast/template weapons) in absolute ideal circumstances.

And it's easy to assume that you're correct in your hypothesis by providing one example out of a hundred examples.

As a Salamanders player, and especially a rare breed of Salamanders player that spams a lot more flamers and heavy flamers than meltas then I obviously think flamers are great. It's part of what attracted me to build a Salamanders army, a bunch of pyromaniac space marines toasting people. Can't get better than that.

For those arguing the point about not taking flamers as they are anti-horde and you wouldn't want to be letting them near you in the first place - take a flamer and charge them before they charge you. You kill a lot of them then charge and deny them their bonus attacks for charging. Its quite simple really. Long range weapons in seperate squads and flamers in advancing squads complement each other perfectly

Flamers are the weapon of choice for dealing with the troop choices of eldar, dark eldar, tyranid, ork, tau, and guard. For all the melta spam out there - good luck shooting meltaguns at wyches or boyz

As for anti MEQ - in a Vulkan army flamers are deadly against MEQ for obvious reasons but I realise we're talking about flamers as a whole in the game - they are pretty awesome and certainly kick ass, not necessarily for anti MEQ without using Vulkan, but against almost all other troops they are fantastic. Especially for most Marine squads of varying varieties as they get them for free or very cheap

I like flamers against horde armies, because my SM bolters don't tear apart hordes good enough, they kill the guys they hit but i need templates to take out the swarms.

Again though, almost everyone who has come out in favor of flamers has not done so on behalf of the flamer itself, but because of some other army specific special rule or other synergy bonus.

I gotta say, as an Eldar player I'm not real concerned about tank shocking a unit of guys with Melta weapons with my Wave Serpents. And I don't have to point my tank so it goes over anyone with a Melta weapon either. But I also admit that I don't like flame weapons as much as others, I like them, but not love them.

Its not because I have a vulkan army that I think flamers are great. I use them regularly in my CSM armies and where I can with my orks too. They certainly have a place dealing with lightly armoured troops no matter what army your prefer.

Obviously a lot of the time meltas and flamers compete for a spot in a squad with most forms of marines. Since they do completely different things there is not much point in comparing them. But the flamer complements the anit infantry weapon (in bolters) that the rest of the squad is armed with, whereas a melta doesn't really.

Flamers=fun
I play Orks, and I basically put flamers in any squad that can take them: nobz, buggies, kommandos, and of course, burnaboyz!
They are not always the most effective weapons against mech armies, or marines, and there are times when using them is bad: denying assaults and such. However, when you do get a chance to use them it is beautiful, just watching those low armor troops roasting in thier terrain feature... My FLGS also has a bunch of buildings, and vehicle mounted heavy flamers just destroy guys hiding in them.
The point is: they are weapons of opportunity. Sure your opponent can get out of the way or spread out thier troops, but not everyone does that, or mabye they are expecting to be tied up in combat with your guys, but miss the charge... stuff happens.
I remember flaming two different squads of Dark Eldar because the guy's anti tank didnt crack my vehicle, and then because, after it was popped, his guys were half an inch out of assault. [Edit: In a seperate game] I also remember my burna boyz getting targeted and killed pretty early on, leaving my nobz to get to his gunlines: even the threat of flamers is sometimes enough.

I love em. They are probably the best thing point for point for taking out infantry at close range which as a general rule happens pretty often. For my Templars, my standard tactic is let him deploy first, deploy my mega CQB squad of doom opposite and watch the fun unfold. Now if you sling a Flamer or 2 in the entire plan goes to all of a sudden I don't want to get close in case I arrive on his turn. They are excellent deterrents to CQB oriented units not so much by the power the possess but the psychology behind them

starsdawn wrote:

Ailaros wrote:

It's easy to talk about the hypothetical awesomeness of flamers (and all blast/template weapons) in absolute ideal circumstances.

And it's easy to assume that you're correct in your hypothesis by providing one example out of a hundred examples.

Exactly. Because people don't need to move, there are no objectives, we appear to be attacking that guardline with just flamers... It's a joke.

daedalus wrote:Again though, almost everyone who has come out in favor of flamers has not done so on behalf of the flamer itself, but because of some other army specific special rule or other synergy bonus.

This is because you never judge a weapon simply on its own characteristics. You judge it by its stats, the hands that wield it, and its usefulness in various situations.

Jihallah wrote:

starsdawn wrote:

Ailaros wrote:

It's easy to talk about the hypothetical awesomeness of flamers (and all blast/template weapons) in absolute ideal circumstances.

And it's easy to assume that you're correct in your hypothesis by providing one example out of a hundred examples.

Exactly. Because people don't need to move, there are no objectives, we appear to be attacking that guardline with just flamers... It's a joke.

Yes. Each weapon has its purpose. It is silly to judge them based on a single local meta, a single situation, or a single opponent. Let's say you make a tac list. Would you replace all flamers with meltas, or vice-versa? I'd take a few of each, because they each perform different tasks, and are dangerous to different units.

And I have yet to play a game where I've been able to keep all my footslogging boyz exactly 2 inches apart. Plenty of factors bottleneck my troops: assaults, tanks shocks, TERRAIN. I play on very terrain heavy tables.

Personally, i dig them. I put a lot of them in my siege guard army because they're fluffy and I like the models.

Also, the way I powerblob against some opponents dictates the use of flamers, and I have abysmal luck with plasma guns (as in, a 1. Every time. Without fail.) , so if I need to do some high-speed low-drag killing before i close in, that's my weapon of choice, since I'm not rapid firing a platoon's worth of lasguns on the charge.

Also, when combined with abilities, they become lots of fun. A combi flamer in my Sternguard and their dragonsfire rounds took out a squad of DE in ruins that would have been very hard to shift had I needed to deal with their cover save.

Of course, they were bunched up on an objective, but that's a great part of why flamers can be so effective!

In response to the picture of the spread out Guardsmen above-

That is why I like running Lash of Submission. I move towards you, you dance towards me. The dance is much like an actual party. Everybody is raving in a tight circle, jammin' out to their favorite tune. In this crazed state they are too enraptured in the dance to notice the bloodthirsty squad of Chaos Space Marines toting two Flamers and a Combi-Flamer. Fire and bolts later, let's see if I even need to assault. Let's not mention that if you are playing Mech Guard, which is quite common, those Flamers will make mince meat out of the sad squad clustered in their crater.

Sentinel is right, you can't just look at a statline and make a blank statement about something. Look at the old Necron book and what DashofPepper did with it. He took a "bad" book and won tournaments with it. You can't just look at something in a vacuum and try to see the results. If I'm playing a game that ends up looking like the above picture with five Marines against two Guardsmen platoons no weapon will do you good.

Personaly, i see a place for flamers in all armis, but maybe not as a main weapon, more likely as a conversion peice, a sort of underbarell/arm mounted flamer, akin to a grenade launcher and a dreadnaught respectively. Im a tau player, and one of my battl suit squads has just this sort of a conversion, flamers mounted under barrel to plasma rifles, giving the unit a nice upgrade. I supose amongst a squad though, like CSM, then amybe its better to take it as its own weapon, and as far as its actual killing ability goes...the flamethrower was invented and deployed in real wars because of how effective it is at its job, that is to say, killing lots and lots of lightyl armored enemies. And that is its niche in warhammer 40,000, its the opposite end of the spectrum to say a lascannon for example

Sentinel wrote:

daedalus wrote:Again though, almost everyone who has come out in favor of flamers has not done so on behalf of the flamer itself, but because of some other army specific special rule or other synergy bonus.

This is because you never judge a weapon simply on its own characteristics. You judge it by its stats, the hands that wield it, and its usefulness in various situations.

I'd generally agree with that, but the premise of the discussion appeared to be around the weapon in general, or perhaps specifically in CSM or IG Vet squads. I really don't like the idea of putting them in Vet squads, as that wastes precious BS4. CSM I have no personal experience with, but I will concede that it would probably be awesome if you can fzorgle your way into having two flamers mop up a squad.

I guess what I was trying to say is that the forms of synergy listed, like LoS or tank shocks, really speak more to the greatness of the ability, not flamers themselves. My reason for saying this is because for those, you can replace the word 'flamer' with 'blast weapon" and the tactic is just as solid.

In some of my CSM builds I like running a 5-man infiltrating chosen squad with 5 flamers. Against stuff the rest of my list has problems with (overwhelming numbers) they solve problems (and then die).

Personally I wonder why the heck there's a flamer in my codex.

Then again I play Tau.

i can answer that for you jefffar....when points get tight and I have everything else that I need to take down what I'm fighting, then a Crisis suit with t/l flamer & burst cannon, a suit with a t/l burst cannon & flamer, and a 'vre with h/w target lock, h/w multi-tracker, flamer and t/l burst cannon can do some damage.....i took out a unit of genestealers, a group of gaunts, and a group of gants with that one unit.....it was a GLORIOUS day


Automatically Appended Next Post:
and itz mad cheap

I like the flamer, its useful for chaos to do what they want, you know "Kill, Maim, BURN!"
There is a lot of talk about situational, true this whole game is about that. We can spend all day playing the rock, paper, scissors game. The flamer is fun too use when there is a good opportunity, and nice when it works great, but not build a strategy around.

You the good player will remove the guys closest to me so I cant charge.
Me being the good player knows ur a good player and decide not too shoot at all because I know ur plan and I want to charge.
If ur guys were set up and I felt I could do more damage with the flamers then thats when I'd shoot. Options. In that picture with all those guardsmen I wouldnt shoot at all so I could get stuck in and hope to not wipe you out in 1 turn.

But mostly for me I like the idea of the flamer as well as how it looks on the model. I build armies around the visual aspect and then make it work in tournies. People overlook things during the game if they find it a "non-threat". Im not taking any side here though, I would really like to enjoy a game with people from both sides of the story to get a perspective that way, I like to learn even if it means losing. I learn nothing from a game by waffle stomping the enemy...

I like running my CSM chosen with 5 flamers. If I can infiltrate intelligently then I'll usually end up in a good position to drop a crap ton of hits with the templates.

Here's another take on the coherency point:

So say I bring flamers embedded in each of my squads, or at least quite a few. Sure, the good opponent will just spread his men out as far as possible, and try to deny me assaults.

But, I have forced him to do so. Just as you are forced to maneuver behind a terrain piece when the enemy drops six lascannons right across from your Leman Russ, you are forced to take action against these flamers. Sometimes a piece of equipment is not useful simply for its killing potential. The ability to dictate your enemy's movement or hinder his original plan in some way is often just as useful.

Arguably the movement phase is the absolute most important phase of the game. Remember, 66% of standard games are not based on kills but objectives. Weapons are not taken into account solely during the shooting phase. If you have tools to hamper enemy movement.....

spending 5 points on something (from an IG perspective here) or 20 points for the heavy varient, when I can spend 5 points on a grenade launcher (5 points) or a las/auto/missile/plasma/melta (20 points) really has never worked for me.

Grenade launchers can essentially do the same job as the flamer at a longer range, or higher strength (you can choose!) minus the whole ignore cover thing. S4 AP 5 isn't killin much anyway with the flamer....

Now from a space marine perspective, there is nothing more fun then a heavy flamer hitting a bunch of annoying guard/orks/whatever sitting in cover thinking they are hot gak. (Drop pod dreads always come to mind)