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This weekend I was in a small tourney at the FLGS and won the first two games. However, the last game was the local ball crusher with his 10 year old DE. He's been playing these guys forever and is the hardest opponent in the area.

So of course I play him in the last game and during all my turns of shooting, while I had shooting left, I was concentrating all my efforts on those bloody raiders and ravagers since they have Dark Lances. Those things are scarey and accurate, they must go right?

Well... Not so fast!

The real killers, once my rhinos were popped(I play vanilla marines and yes, the lances did the popping!) were the venoms with the 12 shots each.

I think in future games vs this guy and all the rest that play similar lists, I will focus on the vemons first. I may lose rhinos and dreads to the lances in the meantime, but 1-3 dark lances at marines isn't that scarey, even if a couple are focusing on them.

What does the Dakka say?

Well, sounds good. The Venoms are more killy against infantry than single dark matter shots when the enemy gets cover saves.

Venoms are good units, I agree. But I think that anyone who relies to heavily on a single unit to win them games is going to get caught off guard by that player who has worked out how to respond with an all-comers list. My army relies on a bit of everything to more effectively counter players who depend on things like MSU builds to work, and has some success.

As a DE player, I say it doesn't matter what you shoot. The rest will still kill you.

j/k Really, I am a venom spammer and people have developed a swift respect for them. They torrent Marines and everything lesser off the board very nicely.

I love venoms, although I would never spam them. Most of my lists have 2 or 3 venoms, accompanied by 3 or 2 raiders respectively. I mostly use them for moving my HQ first turn and then acting as fire support, or in tandem with blaster Trueborn as a super-fast vehicle hunter.

Venoms are powerful; especially against armies that rely heavily on MC's or high toughness units.

That being said, if the blasters and lances fail to take down the armor, then venoms are pretty useless. Just learn to play with that in mind; keep stuff in tin cans and knock out the stuff that can easily get you outta em. I've learned very quickly that poor pen rolls for dark lances can swing a game very quickly; which is why I pack 19+ lol

I think for Marines this isn't a terrible idea. Really it sort of depends on your list and his list as to whether or not it's optimal targeting. I don't think there's a true universal answer of whether to gun for anti-infantry or anti-mech first.