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Quick fluff related question with respect to melta guns.

I usually drill out the end of my gun barrels (for everything except bog standards lasguns) and I've done it here on the vet squad I'm working on:




But I was thinking, should I be drilling out my melta barrels?

Obviously grenade launchers, flamers and plasma guns are fluff-correct with drilled out barrel apertures, but are melta guns? I can't find any specific fluff relating to meltas other than one of the HH novels mentions they are microwave based, in which case I'm wondering if I should just leave a solid end?

What are your thoughts? What do you do?

im not sure fluff wise but the drilled out ends look pretty cool.

Pretty much every gun barrel looks better if it's been drilled out. Even without knowing exactly how meltaguns work, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that the death-ray is generated somewhere back in the gun and directed towards the target, traveling at least some distance through a hollow barrel. The only exception I can imagine would be if it were a laser-based weapon, with the barrel terminating in a lens. Since you'd want to protect that lens, though, even laser weapons would likely have a hollow barrel of at least some length. Not to mention the fact the ends of the guns as they appear on the models are flat and boring, suggesting that there isn't some cool mechanism (just a nice, big target for your drill bit).

I would assume that the barrels need drilling seeing how the MM's that come with devestators come with barrels hollowed.

Well, if you don't have an opening in the front, how does the melta-juice get out? Out of the sides?

Whoa! What are those helmets?

From a fluff standpoint the barrel should be drilled out IMO. A meltagun fires a submolecular stream of heat that literally melts the target. To me this means it needs a barrel. A lasgun on the otherhand is just a really big laser pointer, so it doesn't need the drilled barrel. Come to think of it, why don't guardsmen carry laser pointers instead of the guns? Its probably the same effectiveness

susejo239 wrote:Whoa! What are those helmets?

I believe those are Pig Iron Production's System Trooper Alternative heads

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod1570027

Flip through the images till you find the Dreadnought.

If GW has done it, then by the Emperor, you shall do the same.

Those are sick heads, man.

I believe there are 2 types of melta-gun, depending on what the fluff writers were smoking at the time. One uses a superheated stream of gas while the other uses sub-molecular agitation more like microwaves. Hence you could realistically support either standpoint. However I personally feel that if the barrels aren't drilled out they make the model look a bit unfinished.

Thanks for the feedback, I will stick with the drilled out barrels

@susejo: yup, they are the pig iron heads imriel posted and they are great quality items for the price!