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I think the missle launcher anti-infantry capabilities is over-rated, its str 4 ap 6. Lets say you get a total of 10 marines from your templates thats only 5 saves and I am being very generous with the number of hits. I agree it is the best overall heavy weapon for marines but it is not a good anti-infantry weapon, what do you guys think?

I think your right...That's why the emperor granted us flamers. hehe

i've templated terminators off the map with frag templates. I disagree with ML being a bad anti-infantry weapon.

Basically, missile launchers are flamers that give up the ability to ignore cover saves for an extra 40" of range.

Missile launchers are good against some types of infantry, though, like SM commanders, tau suits, ogryn/grotesques, etc. That and monstrous creatures. Basically they're sniper rifles, except they almost always wound on 2+ instead of 4+, ignore most armor ALL the time (instead of just when they rend), cause instant death to T4 things, and are even decent against light vehicles in a pinch.

its good depending on how many you have, if you have just one its ok, but if you have a squad of 3 typhoons all shooting frags, thats 6 templates

6 templates or 6 "I Don't Care What You Are" missiles. Not ignoring cover saves, not hitting on the 3+ and against most folks who see it coming spread out... Barring some odd situation you'd be fortunate to even get 6 under the templates... I can honestly say I almost never use the template shots. Not nearly so good against Termis or the like, but ignoring most FNP and armor? Not bad... 'course, YMMV...

Oh, right, they also ignore FNP.

6 guardsmen with missile launchers rip through a 10-dude squad of plague marines in three turns with a little help. That makes a very scary squad of space marines, a "meh" squad of space marines.

Same is true about wraithguard...

... and wraithlord...

MLs are EXCELLENT anti-infantry capability. We discussed this at length in another thread. Some players seem not to have much luck with them, but for me they routinely wipe squads.

I was wracking up 10-20 hits a turn with mine in the tournament I played in yesterday, and that is normal in my experience. The key is to fire lots of them at once, as if you are putting down 4-6 templates on a single squad in one go, you can really stack wounds on a squad. As a single fire weapon in a tac squad for example, the results will be a lot less impressive.

Dev squads, typhoons and HWSs are where you will get the most utility out of these weapons.

I think ML's are the best heavy weapon period. They are the most versatile of the heavy weapons, with only the autocannon coming close in utility, but I would rather have the extra point of strength/ap and the option of the weaker template (possibility for more hits) than the second shot.

A missile launcher is a great weapon because it can do both roles well, while melta guns kill vehicles dead faster and flamers kill most infantry dead faster, sometimes being able to do both means you aren't wasting points.

... or it means you're ALWAYS wasting points...

I'd consider any time a weapon shoots at something it is very unlikely to do damage to a waste.

The missile launcher is still worth taking because it's specialized to do certain things well, not because it does several things very poorly (not unlike, say, lasguns...)

I used to not care much for ML, until the game that I took a 4x ML dev team and dropped 4 templates on a bloodletter squad that just deepstriked and rolled a 1 to run. Put 12 hits on it, wounded 6 times killed 5, the remaining 3 were bolter bait.

Against Meqs the ML isn't all that great in frag mode. But against Geqs, and other marginal save T3-4 units, they do just fine.

Though the argument can be made that the enemy will just spread out, how about when they derp strike? Get out of a moving vehicle? Climb out of a destroyed transport? These are times where you can really rack up the wounds on even Meqs.