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I currently have assembled:

7 morter teams
8 heavy bolter teams
5 Rocket Launcher teams
6 Auto Cannon Teams
6 las cannon teams

Would it be worth taking all of these in like a 2000 or 2500 point foot slogging IG army? If so how should I run them. If not, why?

Basically I have a ridiculous amount of Heavy weapons teams and I wonder if I can use them.

Note: Still have 3 HB, 3 Morter, and 3 Rocket Launchers still Unassembled...

One of my friends built an IG army around a HWS concept. It works well for him except for any army that wants to get into melee with him. DE eats him. Nids eat him. BA would probably eat him. Keeping your guys on the table are also a bit of a trick as well. You'd need a CCS to make them worthwhile (possibly Creed for the BiD orders), and either Kell or a LC to make them actually pass their orders. Even then, your overall gameplan for 66% of the time would be to hope you can blast the opponent off his objective before he can contest yours. You have incredible staying power on your objective, but nothing to grab land with. The other 33% of the time, you're hemorrhaging killpoints to multilasers and krak grenade launchers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So I looked over your list of stuff again. How many regular infantry do you have? This might actually work if you do something like powerblob the infantry and use the heavy weapons in lieu of tanks. Here are some thoughts:

- The mortars don't need LoS so they can be hidden and would be a suitable candidate for being left in an HWS on it own. Make multiples of 3 (i.e. don't make more than 9 unless you're making 12).

- The rest of the weapons I would put in their own HWS, but they would HAVE to be kept in cover, otherwise they would dissolve under any fire whatsoever. I'd do this because I look at static blobs as a waste.

- As it stands, you have roughly enough HWS for 2 platoons, and that's if you put almost none of them in infantry squads.

- My buddy puts Heavy Bolter HWTs in his infantry squads and static blobs with grenade launchers. He uses this to good effect against hordes and things like DE raiders. It always works well for him, though it causes him to not want to ever move.

- I don't want to start up the AC/HB jihad again, but Autocannons aren't that useful for IG in my opinion. Either take something lower strength with more shots, or something higher strength that can get the job done. We have enough mediocrity in our guys that we don't require more in our guns.

I'm not so sure HWT's would work en masse... they really need orders to be effective and with ld7, well, we know how well that works out.

And they are easily killed by your monkey's uncle via shooting, and less importantly, cc.

if you take 2 platoons then that still gives you the potential to take 10 squad which is 30 teams. You can therefore squeeze some more in your army!

In order to get HWS to work best they do really need orders and so I think you need to ensure you build a list around this. A CCS possibly with Creed and a Lord Commissar or 2 CCS and one with Creed and Kell is the best way to ensure enough orders get through to twin link the weapons that matter.

Essentially their targets will be MCs/transports etc (for the twin linking) and so the autocannons, missiles, lascannons will be the most optimal choices. Other teams are really set up for AI but the infantry squads can deal with them to a certain extent anyway. At 2,000 points expect to mainly meet mech armies and so mortars and bolters may be short on targets for the first two turns.

They wil be vulnerable to drop troops, but the CCS and mayeb some SWS can hang around and give some counter charge assistance. Either way with 10 teams spread out it will take a long time to work through ...

A fun tactic if they are likely to take a pouding is for 1-2 squads to go to ground and have "incoming" orders one turn and have "get back in the fight" the next.

Only time this is a real bad idea is on a kill point mission ...

HWTs are pretty subpar. They are mediocre shooting, pay alot for their weaponry, have bad LD, and are very vulnerable to S6 and higher weaponry and massed s3+ shooting. Mortars are ok to hide, and are low priority, but also pretty ineffective. Autocannons are good since the 2 shots help compensate for the BS3 and are good at shooting transports and killing HWTs (;-P). Missiles and lascannons aren't that great due to low BS and high weapon cost. Without orders, they aren't really viable at all.

I wouldn't waste much time with HWTs and would just use HWs in infantry squads, and then I generally suggest ACs. If you insist on running lots of HWTs, take plenty of infantry blobs to protect them, stick to cover, and keep the CCS nearby so they are mediocre instead of bad. Good luck claiming objectives, though.

Also to note, while HWSs give you the best bang for your buck, it's deceptively easy to let the points cost run up on them. It's not terribly difficult to get a slough of heavy weapons near 500 points once you count the costs of the carriers. That might be fine if heavy weapons are your ONLY support units, but if you're also planning on adding in vehicles or stormtroopers, or SWSs or something, you're going to start drawing points from your core and ultimately weakening your lists.

Tomb King:

Spamming HWTs is a competitive IG tactic, but the spam is generally limited to Autocannons and Lascannons - which get twin-linked by PCSs and CCSs.

I thought of throwing them in infantry squads to help improve their survivability. Morters and such and be deployed out of sight. However, I don't know how good the morters are they seem like a waste to me.

i have done this in the past. it works well early on, but, once they get assaulted, game over. i ran three squads, two fully autocannon and 1 fully lascannon.

advantages: when the twin link order is given, you can realy blow some stuff up. you have to park a lord commissar near them to make sure the order is successfull though.

disadvantage. you cant move and shoot. therefore you are a quick target for pie plates and the such.

I dont like hvy weapons in squads, just rather run 1 sgt, 8 troops, and one special weapon. just make the hvy weapon squads, and three of the same. i have mixed and matched, and, it is just a pain.

IMHO spamming HWS with autocannons are the best use for them. They're the same points as Hydras though they have no ISMF and not TL they're better at transport popping because they got same average hits as the Hydras but have a chance(small) to get TL with BiD. They have no stun/shaken results like the hydra and most likely you will be putting them in cover so they'll be shooting away and be giving headaches to opponents. They do die to CC but so does every other thing in IG, besides if they do focus on the HWS, your other units are being ignored and that would be game. On spamming HWT it is a viable strategy but for a gun line army I will probably be using max of 2 for the minimum 2 IS and then using HWS for the spam.

I'd say that lots of HWS can be very scary indeed, especially if you play with the right amount of cover. But you can't take all HWS and no big combined squads - you will end up being swept off the board by multi-assaults. I plan on taking 1 HWS for each 30-man blob. You should never, never take more than 1 HWS per infantry squad.

And for the record, I think that light vehicles are so prevalent it pays to take autocannon and lascannon HWSs. Missile launchers would also be acceptable. I can't see anyone taking HB teams, or more than 1-2 mortar squads, unless they face lots and lots of light infantry. The problem, for HB especially, is that with cover and BS3, flamers do a much better job of clearing out light infantry.