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Aren't all these options outclassed by Grav Centurions in a Pod?

In my first company task force I run 5 Sternguard with 3 combi meltas and two meltas twice over. The extra meltas means tanks still have to be weary, and enemies have to choose between those meltas or the Grav cannons.

Also helpful against Knights, an extra round of some more melts fire or overwatched meltaguns can't hurt! Well, can't hurt you.

Thank you, that's actually really helpful. It's made me realise that my army could definetly do with a few more tanks. Right now I only have 1 tri las pred, so it might be helpful to have a vindicator to half the amout of fire they receive. As far as how these units fit into my list, the Blood Angels have a formation called the Sanguine Wing I think. Basically it allows 1 free combi weapon on each sternguard (must have 1 squad of 10) and a free power weapon for each vanguard (must have 2 squads of 10 men) I'm thinking of a 10 man squad of combi melta as my meta is very mech heavy according to the manager of lgs. Would this be overkill or?

zerosignal wrote:Aren't all these options outclassed by Grav Centurions in a Pod?

Grav cents in pods are good, but not without problems. First is access. Not everyone can use Cent suits. Dev/pred discussions can apply with a few caveats to any chapter. Second is price. A pod full of Cents is going to run you 285ish points. Which is roughly twice the cost of the other options here. It also requires a CAD, or other way of picking up a spare pod, so that cost might be higher if you want to count “tax” units. While they do put out a large amount of high quality firepower, they do have range and mobility issues. So after the drop, they might have problems selecting a second target (a problem shared with melta sternguard). LCs tend to cover the table. They also share a lot of the issues with Devs, especially being able to be locked into CC. It does not take much to commit them to a multi turn slap fight, and they are probably going to drop into charge range of something.

Cassor the Damned wrote:Thank you, that's actually really helpful. It's made me realise that my army could definetly do with a few more tanks. Right now I only have 1 tri las pred, so it might be helpful to have a vindicator to half the amout of fire they receive. As far as how these units fit into my list, the Blood Angels have a formation called the Sanguine Wing I think. Basically it allows 1 free combi weapon on each sternguard (must have 1 squad of 10) and a free power weapon for each vanguard (must have 2 squads of 10 men) I'm thinking of a 10 man squad of combi melta as my meta is very mech heavy according to the manager of lgs. Would this be overkill or?

I don’t play BA, so take this with a grain of salt. From what I recall from the discussion when it came out, that formation with all the free toys is nice, but requires a huge buy-in in terms of vets and stormravens. (if it’s the one I’m thinking about). And you need to deploy in them. So you end up with over half your army in reserves, with the potential of getting shot down. In larger games, it might be viable, but at most reasonable levels I think it might be too many eggs in one basket, despite the allure of all the free toys.

Being BA also skews the dev/pred discussion. Being fast gives you a lot more mobility then vanilla marines get. This also gives your Vindis a big leg up over mine. Podded melta spam sternguard works. I can’t say I love them, but that’s mostly the fluff talking. If you know you are walking into a heavily mechanized environment, they are probably a good idea.

Thank you' I've just picked up a Baal Predator and a vindicator so I can deal with infantry and then I can swap between devs, sternguard and tri las for anti tank

Plasma Cannon Devastators just got good again. For 40 points, you can get a Haemotrope Reactor, giving Plasma Cannons *Large Blast*. Yeah, yeah, they Gets Hot on 2s, but 4 Large Blast S7 AP2 shots is pretty great.

(Throw in a Librarian for Prescience and maybe even Ignores Cover, and you've got a real powerhouse.)

Waaaghpower wrote:
Plasma Cannon Devastators just got good again. For 40 points, you can get a Haemotrope Reactor, giving Plasma Cannons *Large Blast*. Yeah, yeah, they Gets Hot on 2s, but 4 Large Blast S7 AP2 shots is pretty great.

(Throw in a Librarian for Prescience and maybe even Ignores Cover, and you've got a real powerhouse.)

That's good but I'm not sure if it's 260 points good (Mastery Level 2 of course).

 axisofentropy wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
Plasma Cannon Devastators just got good again. For 40 points, you can get a Haemotrope Reactor, giving Plasma Cannons *Large Blast*. Yeah, yeah, they Gets Hot on 2s, but 4 Large Blast S7 AP2 shots is pretty great.

(Throw in a Librarian for Prescience and maybe even Ignores Cover, and you've got a real powerhouse.)

That's good but I'm not sure if it's 260 points good (Mastery Level 2 of course).

I mean, at that point I'd take a few extra body shields. I play Iron Hands, so these guys are also going to have 3+ armor, 4+ cover, and 5+ FNP. That's a pretty durable unit, and it takes out most tough squads pretty well. I can't say that it's the most points-efficient 300 points you'll ever spend, but it's significantly better than the 300 points you could spend taking two squads of 4 Plasma Cannons without any damage multipliers. It would be better if there was a way to get them Split Fire, though. (I'd suggest two squads with 2 cannons instead of one squad with 4, but then you don't get Prescience on both of them.)


I will say that the effectiveness depends on whom you're facing. I regularly play against a guy who runs Chaos Daemons, and against him... Yeah, this squad isn't going to do much. You don't exactly pay a *premium* for the AP2, but it is a large part of the cost, and going against 3+ and Invulns makes the expenditure a little wasteful. However, it seems ideally suited to dealing with units like Custodes or Terminators. Sure, it doesn't ID them, but it does take away their 2+ save and you can put down a lot of wounds with a Large Blast that will wound any heavy infantry on 2+. It's all a matter of context.

I'd like to chime in and ask a question here if I could.

Baring in mind I'm pretty much a 40k noob, but I like Devastators (I like running all infantry armies, partly because I like infantry, but i like having a lot of toys to move around.)

I play Blood Angels, and something that has worked out really well for me is taking my Warlord in CAD with the Veritas Vitae Relic of Baal. It gives me a 2nd Strategic Trait, and since I get to re-roll them both, I have a pretty good chance of getting 1 and/or 3 : Conqueror of Cities/Master of Ambush. The first gives me 'move through' cover and stealth: ruins, and the 2nd allows 3 non-vehicle units to have the infiltrate special rule.

I've used this combo to great effect with my devastators and my sternguard. Pick a ruin, put models in it, and basically use it as your base of fire.

So...in any event, that's *why* i like to use devastators.

My question is about composition. What is the generally advised makeup of the squads. Right now I'm shooting for 2 units of 5, each with 3 big guns in them. Sgt and 1 squad member for ablative wound. My preference for big guns is missile launchers in one and plasma cannons in the other. Lascannons always seem to roll 1's, Meltaguns have too short range (and anyway that's what my Assault Marines with inferno pistols are for), Heavy Bolters are...eh...got plenty of other stuff that can handle that job. So the only real question is the Grav Cannons (I might make a 3rd squad for Grav cannons), and how many actual big guns to put in a unit of 5 marines? (should I load them up with all 4 or is that overkill?)

The problem being that BA devastators don't have access to skyhammer, making grav cannons much harder to use. The rest of Imperial heavy weapons are largely pointless.

Sternhammer Heavy Bolter devastators have a damage output that slightly surpasses the Punisher Vulture without the mobility, but really they're an abberation in an other wise chumpy choice.

The Technosnail plasma amplifier remains to be see as good, it has a lot of potential but much like the grav/cent/pod combination, is lacking in mobility to be viable.

Not to say I won't be running 40 devs when I play SM once they're all built, but it's not and probably never will be a competitive choice - apart from sky hammer grav.

As for loadout, you really need a good reason not to max them out, since anything that will kill the ablative wounds reliably will kill the whole squad just as well. In such a case you're better eviscerating the incoming fire than trying to weather it.

White scar gladius with 1-2 Grav cannon devs in a free rhino. Outflanking GravDevs are scary.

I regularly run 1+ devastator squads for my friendly games. Either las or ML - i reserve heavy support slots for AT guns for my friendly games. Plonk them somewhere where they can see as much of the board as possible with a beefy HQ up front and create a big "eff you" zone for tanks (with they help of imperial fist CT).

I prefer using centurion devs though, better armour, mobility and more firepower relative to points cost (no matter what loadout IIRC - I'm kinda partial towards las/ml for non-competitive games).

For non-fist players? There are still a lot of ways to use them, you just need to get creative A friend of mine who plays ultras made an annoying little base with a firestorm redoubt and a nearby VSG, with a dev squad hiding in the bunker popping off shots while i was chipping away at the shields for two turns. The automated battlecannons didn't help.

If going for points efficiency there is never any reason to take HB devestators when you have the option of a unit of HB rapiers. 30 more points, 6 more shots, twinlinked (these two combined mean literally 100% more efficient shooting - 8 hits on average compared to 16), T7, 12 wounds, lose 5 wounds (3 marines up fromt and a 2 wound rapier) before losing any shooting efficency compared to the devs losing 5 wounds and being wiped. Also 6 attacks if assaulted rather than 5 (not a biggy the last one but still an advantage).

When I finally get round to putting together my Crimson Fists army in the new year, I'm considering a full-strength Dev Squad, combat squadding them, then having half sit around with two lascannons, and half cutting about in a rhino with two multimeltas.

 Nazrak wrote:
When I finally get round to putting together my Crimson Fists army in the new year, I'm considering a full-strength Dev Squad, combat squadding them, then having half sit around with two lascannons, and half cutting about in a rhino with two multimeltas.

If you are rolling in a rhino, grav cannons would serve you better. And if you have the slots in your formation/CAD, take 2x5 man squads in most cases. Gives you an extra sarge with the signum, for twice the guns shooting at BS5. The loss is the inability to field them as one 10 man squad in kill point missions. But if you are giving them disparate weapons, you wouldn’t want that anyway.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Nazrak wrote:
When I finally get round to putting together my Crimson Fists army in the new year, I'm considering a full-strength Dev Squad, combat squadding them, then having half sit around with two lascannons, and half cutting about in a rhino with two multimeltas.

If you are rolling in a rhino, grav cannons would serve you better. And if you have the slots in your formation/CAD, take 2x5 man squads in most cases. Gives you an extra sarge with the signum, for twice the guns shooting at BS5. The loss is the inability to field them as one 10 man squad in kill point missions. But if you are giving them disparate weapons, you wouldn’t want that anyway.

I'm not going to deny for a second that this makes sense, but for max old-school points I'm implementing a self-imposed rule of ten-man squads with one sarge.

For similar old fart reasons I'm a bit uncomfortable with the prospect of grav cannons, but maybe I'll look at magnetising the kit to make things swappable, and try a few things out.

Was also considering 2x LC, 2x ML, one of each per combat squad. Seems like it'd be versatile, but maybe a bit master-of-none? Maybe leave the MLs to the Tac squads.

40k really rewards specialization. If you are going to mix heavies in a 10 man squad, keep the similar weapons together.