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I have an imperial guard army roughly 1500pts and would like to know which weapons are most useful to equip my heavy weapons squad with. I mostly fight marines and orks as my friends have them i generally use them as autocannons but i wondered are lascannons better for taking out tanks as they only have 1 shot not 2 and if heavy bolters would be more usefull for taking out infantry well mainly orks. Any help will be well received. I also have a these in my army: Vendetta, LR, LR Demolisher, Creed + Knell, Chimera, Storm Troopers and obviously IG troops 2 squads unbuilt, 2 squads built (one with missile launcher) and the 2 heavy weapons squads undefined weapons. I could also add heavy weapons to my normal squads that are unbuilt.

Generally most people say Vendetta are better ( cheaper in points for las cannons ) as well as melta vets

People like missile launcher and auto cannon out in the open center field because squads can take more punishment, and keep both infantry and enemy armor hugging terrain to not get shot at.

Yeah sorry i did not update in time i already have a vendetta for my anti armor but last game i played it got shot down! up untill then it had survived about 10 games but people love trying to shoot it now as it is the best painted thing in my army.

For all-round Versatility, Autocannons I'd say.

I tend to run the following,

In HWS: Mortars, HB and Auto cannons

In Infantry squads: LC and Missile launchers

The reason behind this is that the more expensive/less shots the heavy weapon the more bodies I have to protect it, as well as the 1 shot weapons almost always having the re-roll through orders with vox, remember HWS don't get vox, and with creed you'll be making the most out of your orders. LC and ML in HWS can work but become a huge and easy target for ordinance/sternguard.

Think I'll defiantly go with autocannons but still not sure about HB.


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Also putting missile launchers in my 2 new squads i think i haven't started building them.


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Also are you sure they do not get vox orders i thought all ground troops do.

You could always not glue them to the weapon handle and tripods to swap them out if you ever want to try them or change your list abit.

I will be taking mostly autocannons, and some missile launchers. Autocannons are a more efficient and flexible tool against vehicles, but missiles can really make the difference against MCs and space marine type infantry.

Lascannons are expensive, I would bury them in infantry squads (or take vendettas) before using them in HWS.

Heavy Bolters are objectively worse than autocannons.

Mortars are the unloved stepchild of heavy weapons. They are focussed on light infantry (a very under-represented type of unit in most 40k groups, this trend also hurts heavy bolters) and lack any kind of punch. Mortars could have been S5 AP5 and still not taken that often. Such a shame, they are so cool in real life.

Magnets, magnets everywhere.

Auto Cannon > Heavy Bolter

I like using Autocannons or Missile Launchers in Gunline blobs. I'm dead against Lascannons in Blobs because dedicated anti-tank is much more effective and abundant in the Guard Codex.
Although i'm always one to point out the many weaknesses of Heavy Weapon Squads i do tend to take at least one Lascannon HWS but that's mostly because i don't have Vendettas and i play with alot of Infantry so it fits my army.

Also HWS can recieve orders but they cannot take a Vox-Caster which really limits their effectiveness with Ld 7

Peace Out!
Jonny!

backing up MrWhippy here - autocannons/lascannons/heavy bolters can all be pegged, pinned, blu-tacked or magnetised onto a tripod. You could then use normal infantry and some 50mm bases to build additional missile and mortar teams.

Heavy bolters are good in 2 situations(that must both be true):

1) you need Anti-troop

2) you take them in numbers.

I use 2 of them in a 20-man blob with grenade launchers as the back-up special weapons. It is an anti-troop unit that only ever takes either the 1RF,2RF or Fire on my target! orders. A bigger blob, or exchanging them for ACs and putting my HB in my 1 HWS(currently 3ACs) would be better

They are not necessarily worse of a choice than Auto-cannons, but they are far less versatile. Heavy bolters cannot shoot at tanks and expect to do any damage, unless said Tank is Av10(and preferably open-topped). Where they outshine Auto-cannons is against infantry, the extra shot more than makes up for the -2S(which rarely matters that much against non-MCs/SMbikes)

That said I am toying with the idea of swapping my AC HWS 1-for-1 with a Hydra. I get 1 more total shot, and the 4 AC shots are always T-L with significantly longer range(and ignoring turbo-boost/skimmer flat-out cover saves), that plus while a Single Krak missile can take out the whole squad, a Single multi-laser isn't even that likely to get so much as a glance(as opposed to nuking the whole squad) unless it gets to the side/rear. I tried it today; and while it did not single-handedly win me the battle, it did survive the game and added a few kills(bad match-up for that tank against 2+ heavy BAs; Side armor shots to the Baal pred did kill that first turn). I am still on the fence with it though as it would require an additional purchase, and the rest of my guard force is in the middle-painting stages(excepting the last 2 additions of LR executioner and Valk).

I think lascannons in line squads are better than MLs, but neither really belong in HWS. Autocannons all the way. But in general, you are better off trading both for vehicles unless you have few to start with. Hydra > AC HWS most times.

I am going to build 3 HB and 3 AC with LC in my 2 normal squads but i will build my normal squads after as i am still uncertain but the heavy bolters will be good against orks and the AC is recommended by everyone.

Firstly, voxes require a sender vox and a receiver vox in order to work. As HWSs can't take voxes, then can't receive an order through them.

Secondly, I've found that the main strength of heavy weapons teams is that they always function the same and they more or less cost the same. This means that they are easy to swap around based on what the rest of your army looks like and what your local meta looks like.

For example, I took some missile launchers for awhile, and then the new DE came out. Once this happened, what few monstrous creatures that were on the field disappeared practically overnight, and there were more AV10 skimmers to deal with. Lo and behold, they made a quick and easy switch over to autocannons.

Just make sure that you never glue anything down, so that you can actually take advantage of this flexibility. Click here to see my particular solution to this.