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How do people feel about this? I know it generally good practice to have a power fist in every infantry squad when playing chaos, but I feel that it really takes away some of their effectivness since you waste the I5 you get from furious charge + the attack from having a pistol. I usually give my skull champions power weapons + meltabomb for this reason, and they still have krak-grenades if I dont have 5 points to spare. I did however see the drawback of not having a power fist in my last game, when my berzerkers was charged by an Ironclad.

So am I in the minority with this preference?

Limbo wrote:How do people feel about this? I know it generally good practice to have a power fist in every infantry squad when playing chaos, but I feel that it really takes away some of their effectivness since you waste the I5 you get from furious charge + the attack from having a pistol. I usually give my skull champions power weapons + meltabomb for this reason, and they still have krak-grenades if I dont have 5 points to spare. I did however see the drawback of not having a power fist in my last game, when my berzerkers was charged by an Ironclad.

So am I in the minority with this preference?

Pretty much. Main reason for the fist is so if your Zerkers get locked in with things like Sentinel, Dreads, and the like, they have some chance of getting out of there.... because trust me; I'd have no qualms running a dread into some non-fisted zerkers and tying up your 200+ pt squad lol

Limbo wrote:How do people feel about this? I know it generally good practice to have a power fist in every infantry squad when playing chaos, but I feel that it really takes away some of their effectivness since you waste the I5 you get from furious charge + the attack from having a pistol. I usually give my skull champions power weapons + meltabomb for this reason, and they still have krak-grenades if I dont have 5 points to spare. I did however see the drawback of not having a power fist in my last game, when my berzerkers was charged by an Ironclad.

So am I in the minority with this preference?

Whenever I play CSM, I always run power weapons in my zerker squads. I find that more often than not I'm using my zerkers as a (relatively) inexpensive, hard-hitting close combat squad. I want them to kill as many models as possible at I5, and I've never been happy with their damage output when given the powerfist.

Now, without the fist, Dreadnoughts and other walkers are going to give you trouble (even if you have meltabombs). That means you need to play smart so walkers can't assault you. You're trading a bit of target versatility for increased damage towards berzerkers' primary target type, so make sure to use them with that in mind.

If you play in an environment that is really heavy on high-T monsters/walkers, then the power weapon probably isn't a good buy, but in the majority of games I've played, I've never felt handicapped by taking the power weapon.

P.S. On other squads (Plague Marines, etc) I take the fist.

Fist, it handles what the berzerkers can't.

I run a Power Weapon on my Berzerkers. I'm just careful to keep dreads away with melta-armed Kaaos Spehss Muhrens. I used to run the fist, but I wasn't needing it often.

i run Fists for safety reasons, as i dont want to get locked in combat with somthing i cant even hurt, then get killed and waisting 200+ on somthing that was actually good

but if people ran footsloggers more, i would use power weapons and get those extra kills

No, because your only getting an extra attack with the PW over the PF. Sure you might attack last, but the S9 fist is worth it if you enemy is packing Walkers, LRs, MCs, T4 ICs or tough infantry.

Keep in mind that Berserkers are the only unit where having a Powerfist is a good defense against Walkers. At WS4 S8, you have a 17% chance of penetrating with each swing. It would take 4 or 5 rounds of combat to reliably kill a Dreadnought, at which point he's slaughtered your squad. At WS5 S9, you double that. On top of this, a Skull Champion has more attacks, and that same Dreadnought is toasted 2.

Yup. IME the Fist also helps the squad be reliably deadly against marines squads even after the berserkers have gotten shot up and taken several casualties. IIRC the WS5 and the extra attack make the Fist on a Skull Champion inflict, on average, twice as many wounds against other Marines than a Fist on a regular WS4, 2A squad leader.