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I got a landspeeder kit and was wondering what is the most points efficient way to use one. I am thinking of going MM and Assault Cannon. At 100 points it's a little expensive, but also very effective at a bit of everything. Any thoughts?

What does the rest of your force look like?

The things you need to remember about landspeeders are:

1. They're fragile. With only AV10 all round, even S4 small arms can bring one down, or break its guns.
2. They're fast. A Speeder can move 12", and still fire one weapon S5 or higher. So, your proposed multimelta/assault cannon version will have to sit still to fire both weapons.
3. They can make their own cover. Speeders can move flat out, and give themselves a 4+ cover save. Problem is, you're not shooting that turn.
4. They can ignore intervening terrain. You can hide speeders outside LOS behind a building, wall, cliff, whatever, and in your turn, pop over it and light up a target.

They're a tricky unit to get used to. You're going to spend many turns stalking a target for the perfect shot.

The most popular builds for Speeders are a Multimelta/Heavy Flamer setup, or the Typhoon setup. The MM/HF is relatively cheap, and has a weapon for any target. Multmelta for vehicles, or heavy flamer for infantry.
The Typhoon is my personal favorite. 48" missile range eliminates most of the small-arms threats. Two missiles per turn. You can even move 12", fire the heavy bolter AND two frag missiles, since frag missiles are S4, which counts as a defensive weapon! Brutal against hordes of Nids, Orks, or flak-armored Guard.

Typhoon or Attack bikes IMO.
If you run Vulkan, then the MM/HF become nastier.

In addition as suggested by TheRhino, the speeders are not only used for offensive purposes, but they have many unorthodox ways of usage.

Storm Rider
Multi Melta and Heavy Flamer: a land speeder with this loadout can devestate tanks and light infantry alike, and is set up to take full advantage of Vulkan's twin link ability. It's a cheap, flexible, and extremely dangerous unit.

The typhoon missile launcher loadout is popular too. I don't care for it because I feel it makes the land speeder too expensive without really increasing its capability. The extra range is nice though. Anyway alot of people swear by it so it must have something going for it.

Whatever you do don't put a heavy bolter or assault cannon on it. The heavy bolter is crap, and the assault cannon is waaaayyyyy too expensive for what it does.
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:
Whatever you do don't put a heavy bolter or assault cannon on it. The heavy bolter is crap, and the assault cannon is waaaayyyyy too expensive for what it does.
AF

Just to note, not a responce to AF, that that build was favored in 4th edition when you could move 12" and still fire both weapons. Therefore min/maxing output of shots. It was mean, it was awesome, and it was. In the now, it has lost it and therefore not around as much.

You can still move 6" and shoot. It's not all bad. If you take vulcan, most people take HF/MM speeders, but I'm one of the few advocates of the double MM speeders if you take vulcan.

I have seen double heavy bolter speeders work, but you need lots of anti-mech somewhere else. As speeders are one of the few places to get a mobile multi-melta, you don't see double heavy bolter very often.

One thing to remember is that it's fast enough to be very good at flanking. This makes it quite nice for an anti-vehicle role.
This is because flanking has no effect against Infantry, as they are the same all around, but if you can flank a vehicle successfully it could mean the difference between putting a shot into AV13 or AV10.

Hence, I recommend anti-vehicle duties for the fast ones, and leave anti infantry to the more front-on types.

I am leaning towards MM/HF. Cheap for what it can do, only down side is that it MUST get close to really maximize it's damage potential.

My force is a bit nebulous:

Captain with Magnetized arms (he can have lots of goodies)

Terminator Chaplain

Honor guard with magnetized special weapons trooper (melta, plas, Flamer), Apothecary, Company Champion, Seargent with bolter, Standard Bearer

Sternguard Squad Combi-melta, powerfist, 4 bolters.

10 man Tac Squad, PP & PF for Seargent, Plasma and ML

5 man assault marines Power Weapon & PP for my Sgt. , PP and BP's and CCW's for everyone else

Predator with Twin Linked LC, heavy bolter sponsons.

I have scouts, but their the old ones and I haven't decided what their role will be.

It's small, and I've barely played marines, I just like painting them up to make them look really nice.

About the Predator: the lascannon and the heavy bolter are weapons geared towards taking on different targets. I think you should focus on the anti-armor role by taking lascannon sponsons, or else the anti-infantry role by taking the autocannon turret.

While the HF/MM speeder is excellent, judging by your forces you would be much better served with the Typhoon speeder to start.The reason is simply you don't have the concentration of vehicles to give it time to turbo boost and deliver its weapons. Most likely you will find it dies too early all the time.

On the other hand with the Typhoon/heavy bolter you can play keep away and fire its missiles from 48", maneuvering as necessary to keep your opponents heavy weapons out of range. Remember that if you are firing at infantry, you can move 12" and fire both the heavy bolter and S4 blast frag rounds from the missiles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AbaddonFidelis wrote:About the Predator: the lascannon and the heavy bolter are weapons geared towards taking on different targets. I think you should focus on the anti-armor role by taking lascannon sponsons, or else the anti-infantry role by taking the autocannon turret.

This is very true. Autocannon/lascannon sponsons for anti-vehicle (the TL las turret is too expensive to justify - I learned this after using it for a long time) or Autocannon/heavy bolter sponsons for anti-infantry.

Depends on what you really need them for. You can use MM/MM speeders if your army has general lack of melta weapons. The same is true for HF (SM's only true answer against units in cover).

The greatest advantage of a land speeder, IMHO, is that it would be able to move 12 and shoot a specialized weapon, it is imperative you move 12 becoz its most potent weapons are short ranged and land speeders are all about positional advantage, This setup allows you to flank from the side and shoot.

On the flip side, you can put 2 weapons on them and move 6" to shoot both, also allowing you to employ them as deepstrike suicide units. In my experience, though, giving them 2 weapons raises their priority in the opponent's shooting phase (AV10 AV is easier to neuterl than a 10-man guardsmen out of cover).

And then there's the typhoon. At 90 points, you get a reliable missile launcher platform. The true beauty of the typhoon is that it can move 12" and fire 2 of its deadly krak missiles. You can flank with it to hit side or even rear armor. You can even be a shameless git and hide 90% of the hull behind cover with only the missile launcher hanging out as you fire at your targets. Another obscure thing to note is that most of the time, the typhoon would be 48" away sniping tanks or whatnot, the only real answer to them would be another missile launcher, lascannon type weapons, or the dreadful autocannon. It would be a tough choice for your opponent when you have preds and vindis on the board.

I prefer to use the vanilla and typhoon variants as they tend to no get shot at often.

Dracos
well yeah, it's like anti-armor or anti-infantry. pick 1. 60 points is definitely alot to pay for a lascannon.

As was already said there are just two viable set ups for speeders:
1. MM/HF The "up close and personal"-alrounder, you turbo-boost it in round 1 to get close to the enemy and to get a 4+ save while trying to hide behind LOS blocking terrain. Then you either go tank hunting with rear/side shots within melta range or you attack infantry formations (especially GEQ in cover). If you're not playing against a Logan Wing you'll find always a use for it no matter which army you're playing against.

2. Typhoon/HB. As was said it's both the cheapest and most mobile way to get MLs in a Vanilla list. Good at both duties and tends to survive ways longer than the closer quarters versions as it can only be reached long range AA fire (if you keep moving away from other enemy units).
I play a very effective SW shooting army consisting of 3 Typhoons and 3 Long Fang packs backed up by 3 Rhino mounted Hunter squads, a CC/Rifleman Dread and a pack of flanking Scouts in my 1500 pts. list. While having many KPs in my list, the many MLs and 3 lascannons are a serious pain for most enemies.

My tip: Magnetize the speeder so you can switch between the different equipment types.