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Hey all, I'm new to wargaming, and I'm assembling a 500pt Catachan Imperial Guard list, which includes counts-as ratlings and a custom-made Guardsman Marbo.

I managed to get my paint, supplies, and miniatures for little to no cost by trading in D&D books and scrounging supplies from my parents' tools, so I'm trying to keep the army as cheap as possible. Using the three heavy weapons teams from the Catachan battleforce box, I see that I can stretch out the parts to make three autocannon/lascannon teams, three mortar teams, three man-carried missile launcher teams, and three man-carried heavy bolter teams (or two and a Gunnery Sargeant Harker!), by being creative and using extra soldiers and 40mm bases.

Normally I know it is advisable to avoid heavy weapons teams in general but I don't want to miss this oppourtunity to fill up a lot of points.

So, my question: In particular, is it even worth it to assemble Missile Launcher teams and Heavy Bolter teams? Originally my plan was to put Autocannon teams in with my Infantry Squads, but if I can make all of these different HWTs, I'm wondering whether it would be better to put Missile Launchers with my teams to give them a modicium of anti-armor while still giving them anti-infantry punch, a heavy bolter team to exclusively give them more anti-infantry dakka, or stick to autocannons,

TL;DR: Say I have 3 of every heavy weapon team except lascannon. Which do I stick with the three infantry squads I have and which do I form into independant Heavy Weapon squads?

Heavy bolters are pretty useless no matter where you put them.
Autocannons are good in squads or as HWTs.
Missile launchers are ok as HWTs.
Mortars are ok as HWTs.
I generally stay away from lascannons because vendettas are a much cheaper source. One shot on a BS3 dude for as expensive as they are just isn’t that great.

I really, really, really, really recommend you avoid Teams, but if you absolutely must take them... take as many Autocannon teams as possible, and don't look back. The other options are either too expensive (Lascannons), or too wimpy (Mortars, Heavy Bolters).

Stick them in combined Infantry blobs, if at all possible.

Most people generally do not like hvy wpn teams at all because they are expensive and can be easilly killed by about any weapon. I personally love my hvy weapon teams, but that is because I use a large quantity of them (8 teams of 3) This makes it hard for my enemy to choose what targets to destroy, my two large power blobs (40+ guardsmen w/ power weapons and commissar) or my large number of autocannon teams. I would only stick with the autocannon teams or the missile teams. The bolters are not worth their points because you can take autocannons for the same price. Missile launchers are good because of their flexibility. Las cannons are too expensive for what they do. Bs 3 means their will be a lot of misses. I would reccomend saving your points for antitank by buying a lehman russ instead of lascannon teams. I dont have any experience with motar teams, so I'm not sure if their worth their points. Good luck with your guardsmen!

I'm starting a Vostroyan Army, and I'm also looking to get together 500-600 points using a large amount of heavy weapon teams.

My problem is that Vostroyan Heavy Bolter teams are *really* common (since they come in the infantry box... =() and Auto Cannons are not even made.
The reason why this is a problem is why would you ever want a heavy bolter? s5 with 3 shots is pretty much worse in every way than s7 with 2 shots. The auto cannons can knock out transports, and wound SM bikers on a 2 instead of a 4. They also wound most MCs on a 3 instead of a 5! Auto Cannons are just better weapons, and I have no idea why they are the same price...

That said, this is the 500 point list I would run if I had just a few more models, as it stands I'm short on auto cannon teams... (but don't worry I have heavy bolters coming out the nose), and 1 GL short.

ccs- las cannon
pcs- plas pistol
is- commie, 2 power weapons, flamer, auto cannon
is- power weapon, flamer, auto cannon
vet squad- 2 grenade launcher, auto cannon

i play with heavy weapon teams in my large 2500 point army. when you assemble them, dont glue the heavy bolter, auto cannon, or lascannon to the tripod. then, you have at least three options on each.

odorofdeath wrote:I really, really, really, really recommend you avoid Teams, but if you absolutely must take them... take as many Autocannon teams as possible, and don't look back. The other options are either too expensive (Lascannons), or too wimpy (Mortars, Heavy Bolters).

Stick them in combined Infantry blobs, if at all possible.

Are you saying that for my moneys worth, it is better to take the models required for HWTs and make them into more guardsmen?

akaean wrote:I'm starting a Vostroyan Army, and I'm also looking to get together 500-600 points using a large amount of heavy weapon teams.

My problem is that Vostroyan Heavy Bolter teams are *really* common (since they come in the infantry box... =() and Auto Cannons are not even made.
The reason why this is a problem is why would you ever want a heavy bolter? s5 with 3 shots is pretty much worse in every way than s7 with 2 shots. The auto cannons can knock out transports, and wound SM bikers on a 2 instead of a 4. They also wound most MCs on a 3 instead of a 5! Auto Cannons are just better weapons, and I have no idea why they are the same price...

That said, this is the 500 point list I would run if I had just a few more models, as it stands I'm short on auto cannon teams... (but don't worry I have heavy bolters coming out the nose), and 1 GL short.

ccs- las cannon
pcs- plas pistol
is- commie, 2 power weapons, flamer, auto cannon
is- power weapon, flamer, auto cannon
vet squad- 2 grenade launcher, auto cannon

You could always convert the heavy bolters to look like autocannons. At least the plastic autocannon ammo cases come in halves, so you could stick one half onto the side of a HB and use plasticard or a Q-tip to extend the barrel into an AC barrel.

martin74 wrote:i play with heavy weapon teams in my large 2500 point army. when you assemble them, dont glue the heavy bolter, auto cannon, or lascannon to the tripod. then, you have at least three options on each.

Good call, even though I really doubt I'd need the Autocannons to be temporal, considering it is the only HWT people agree upon. The only way I see Lascannons as good is if you could put them into a squad and twin-link them with a CCS.

You can always put the heavy weapons individual models into a veteran squad if you don't like heavy weapons teams. They'd be BS4 and have 8 extra wounds to get through before they get killed.
Or if you like cheap and cheerful you can have them as separate units. 195 points for 9 autocannons is pretty sweet.

I like heavy weapons teams because they allow my infantry to move with covering fire. I would run a heavy weapons team with 3x Autocannons or 3x Missile Launchers. Autocannons are great for higher toughness troops and light vehicles while Missile Launchers are great for softening troops and good at getting rid of a fair amount of vehicles in the game.

The only heavy weapons you should acknowledge for any reason in the Guard codex are autocannons and lascannons.

Lascannons for big scary stuff, autocannons for everything else.

Missiles aren't good enough for one shot weapons, heavy bolters are sub-par compared to autocannons for the same price, and mortars are just meh at everything. If they ignored cover, they'd be alright, but now they're just poor choices.

The inconsistency of advice given only makes we want to assemble all of these heavy weapons teams even more, to experiment and see what works. Hell, in the beginning I'm going to have trouble filling up points as it is! Of course I'm playing mostly foot-guard, my plan is to eventually attain some Hydra Flak Cannons and artillery pieces for heavy support, and have two main Infantry platoons: One that is deployed to start and contains a lot of heavy weapons and long-range special weapons, and an 'assault' platoon led by a custom counts-as Captain Al'Rahem, with a main powerblob with power weapons and a commissar, and special weapons teams with flamers. It fits with the stealth/ambush theme I'm going for.

Oh yeah, and as soon as I find appropriate dirt bike/ATV models, I'm assembling custom Catachan Rough Riders and there's nothing you can say to stop me

Talore wrote:The inconsistency of advice given only makes we want to assemble all of these heavy weapons teams even more

These are some of the most consistent responses I’ve ever seen. Autocannons good. Heavy bolters bad. And a fairly narrow bandwidth of opinions for all the others.

No two people, even two very good players, are going to have the exact same answer. You need to pick up on general themes and then figure out what is most true for you and how you play.

So, heavy weapons themselves aren't always just bad straight away, depending on the kinds of opponents you face, and heavy weapons squads aren't bad in and of themselves depending on what you do with the rest of your list.

As for how to assemble them, I'd recommend making a gun chassis. That way you have swappable weapons and it takes very few minis to do it. With one of those 3x boxes of heavy weapons and a box of regular guardsmen, you get...

3 gun chassis
3 generic loaders
3 generic gunners
3 guys holding mortars
3 guys holding missile launchers
3 mortars

Of course, you'll be left with some problems with finding enough bases, but that can be fixed either by bitz-ordering bases (which I would highly recommend, a bag of 20x 20mm bases is cheap from the war store and they will also give you something to build objective markers on), or not putting the assembled mortars on bases, etc.

Then all you need to do is flock the three big 60mm bases, and you'll be good to go.

As one last note of tactical advice, heavy weapons squads do not have target saturation with platoons, but they do with vehicles. They can also take orders, and count as scoring units. They're fragile, but they can be made to work, and they free up your infantry squads for more mobile work.

Ailaros wrote:So, heavy weapons themselves aren't always just bad straight away, depending on the kinds of opponents you face, and heavy weapons squads aren't bad in and of themselves depending on what you do with the rest of your list.

As for how to assemble them, I'd recommend making a gun chassis. That way you have swappable weapons and it takes very few minis to do it. With one of those 3x boxes of heavy weapons and a box of regular guardsmen, you get...

3 gun chassis
3 generic loaders
3 generic gunners
3 guys holding mortars
3 guys holding missile launchers
3 mortars

Of course, you'll be left with some problems with finding enough bases, but that can be fixed either by bitz-ordering bases (which I would highly recommend, a bag of 20x 20mm bases is cheap from the war store and they will also give you something to build objective markers on), or not putting the assembled mortars on bases, etc.

Then all you need to do is flock the three big 60mm bases, and you'll be good to go.

As one last note of tactical advice, heavy weapons squads do not have target saturation with platoons, but they do with vehicles. They can also take orders, and count as scoring units. They're fragile, but they can be made to work, and they free up your infantry squads for more mobile work.

That's some cool stuff there, but I don't see the point in making gun chassis (other than a different look) compared to just putting a tripod on a base, and swapping out weapons like that. I do plan on getting more 60mm bases somehow, because I'm uncomfortable with putting HWTs on three 20mm bases each regarding "the rules."

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

Talore wrote:The inconsistency of advice given only makes we want to assemble all of these heavy weapons teams even more

These are some of the most consistent responses I’ve ever seen. Autocannons good. Heavy bolters bad. And a fairly narrow bandwidth of opinions for all the others.

No two people, even two very good players, are going to have the exact same answer. You need to pick up on general themes and then figure out what is most true for you and how you play.

Well, Missile Launchers are rubish for obvious reasons but Heavy Bolters are actually better at taking down MEQ.
Heavy Bolter-
3 shots
1.5 hit
1 wound
0.3 dead

Assault Cannon
1 hit
0.83 wound
0.25 dead

That's just nitpicking though really, since really you'd want the anti light vehicle capacities of the autocannon more. But I felt like pointing out Heavy Bolters are not completely useless.
Especially given the absurdity of them being the same price. If Heavy Bolters could be swapped for free with the mortars rather than +5 points, then it'd be more of a choice.

The autocannon has better range, so with it's extra turn of shooting it is actually the better MEQ killer :0P

If my opponants had the good grace to make their marines wander aimlessly around the battlefield then I'd disagree.
Unfortunately the cowards insist on cowering in transports and trying to kill me ):

Talore wrote:
Oh yeah, and as soon as I find appropriate dirt bike/ATV models, I'm assembling custom Catachan Rough Riders and there's nothing you can say to stop me

I've been looking too.
Best I could find so far was this...

http://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/tamiya-135-modern-japanese-motorcycle/

rob-or-ross wrote:

Talore wrote:
Oh yeah, and as soon as I find appropriate dirt bike/ATV models, I'm assembling custom Catachan Rough Riders and there's nothing you can say to stop me

I've been looking too.
Best I could find so far was this...

http://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/tamiya-135-modern-japanese-motorcycle/

Ooof, that price tag hurts. I think I'll stick to lurking dollar stores and hobby shops, and work with greenstuff if I find something in the right scale.

Talore wrote:That's some cool stuff there, but I don't see the point in making gun chassis (other than a different look) compared to just putting a tripod on a base, and swapping out weapons like that.

I hate to tell you this, but the distance between the mounting pin and the back of the gun on the heavy bolter, autocannon, and lascannon are all different. If you glue to the tripod down, and a guy holding onto the trigger in such a way where when you put a lascannon in the tripod it will fit just right, then there will be a gap between the gunner and the back of the gun if you swap in an autocannon and a huge gap between the gun and the gunner if you put a heavy bolter in.

The only way around this is to give each gun a gunner glued on in once piece, or to make it so that the tripod isn't glued to the base. I'll tell you though, getting a gun to balance on a unanchored tripod, and have that sit properly on a flocked base is a serious pain. So much so, that making a gun chassis wound up being less work over all.

The difference isn't that big between the Bolter and Autocannon isn't a game breaker.

The Lascannon is a bit of a bigger gap but what I did and what worked very well was to cut the plastic nub off the bottom of the gun and put a little metal pin in each so they are properly interchangeable.

There is also a 1:32 scale quad bike out there, it is called the Honda Fourtrax 1:32, it seems to be out of production but you could look for that too.

Joey wrote:Unfortunately the cowards insist on cowering in transports and trying to kill me ):

Making the case for the Auto cannon all the more....

I run las cannons in vet squads. The only way I've made HWS work is if I keep them near an officer that can use "BRING IT DOWN" so I can re-roll against tanks and large targets.

The 1 BS point with vets is worth it IMO.

http://www.vendio.com/stores/SteadfastCycles/item/diecast-toy-vehicles-vintage-m/honda-motorcycle-cr-125r-dieca/lid=19589788

thats a $6 cycle at 1:32 size im not sure what size 40k is at but a little paint and you got some bikes

Isnt 3 Lascannon HW Team only like 100pts?

100 pts for 3 S9 AP2 shot is amazing imo

good for killing vehicles, fnp etc

I've found two cases where missile launchers are useful:

1. In very small scale games, like 500 points, you can barely fit a CCS and two units of mechvets in chimeras with melta, and there are about 40 points left over. Throwing missiles into the BS 4 units gives you some long-range fire support that can be antitank or antitroop, which flexibility is important in very small games like this.

2. I have seen 1850-2K lists with 15-18 or even 21 missile teams in heavy weapon squads and regular squads. That much missile saturation--and the ability to go either krak or frag--capitalizes on economy of scale that you can't get from autocannons (because they struggle against AR12+) or lascannons (because they're expensive).

You could put the missiles in the infantry squads, swapping two regular guardsmen to have the missile launcher (one standing on a 1"base with a missile launcher without bi-pod, the other holding some rockets or something). You could then make your heavy weapon teams as you like. In this way, you get 3 missiles and 3 whatever other weapons, giving you missiles in the infantry squads supported by HWT's. In effect, you get more heavy weapons for your monies (not to mention that missiles look pretty cool without the bi-pods).

Sorry to bring this old thread up but i'm still working on my guard list and was thinking of incorporating HW teams into my list.

What i'm thinking:
x1 or x2 Lascannon HW team(s) just behind/to each flank of a 30-50 power blob (with lord commissar attached in the middle for the ld 10 plus re-roll, x3-6 power weapons and x3-5 autocannons) with a Colonel Stracken CCS just behind this blob and 12" away from each lascannon team on both flanks.
Straken gives the lascannon HW team(s) twin-linked with the 'bring it down order', as well as the 'first rank fire...' order for the power blob, and counter-attack...and furious charge...oh and the lord commissar gives stubborn. This makes the power blob an absolute bitch to kill, and gives the lascannon team(s) next to it a re-roll on missed hits on vehicles with Straken's orders, making it quite effective at anti-vehicle duties.
I think in this case it also adds to the purpose of the power blob, which is to distract the enemy, giving them something they cant ignore, and soak up damage whilst the Russ's, Mechvets and griffons do the real damage...

Definitely autocannons, with guards lower BS3, you need the double chance of hitting with each shot. With out a CCS near by to issue orders, the Lascannon in a HWS imho isn't terribly effective at the same time being terribly expensive. Unless you have them attached to a Vet squad or the CCS itself I would avoid the Lascannon. The lascannon can be very effective on a LRBT to maximize on the move and shoot two weapons rule they have, but we are talking about HWS.

The mortars seem like a good idea at first, especially since you can walk them in on to your target and cause pinning (i think...) but I have had very little success getting either the necessary wound to cause a pinning check, or the ork hoard is fearless anyway. Plus the mortar being a regular blast template you rarely get more than three (if you're lucky) per hit.

Missile launchers are are multi-purpose, but their one shot combined with low BS3 means they are quite literally hit-or-miss.

To maximize what you have, I would start with ac teams, then make yourself both a missile launcher team and a lascannon to put into CCSs or vet squads.

Good luck with your decision, but keep in mind if you make all of those potential HWSs, there is a good chance a number of them will be sitting out each game, trust me I am speaking from experience! What I have discovered is us guard guys are always looking for more troops.

I don't run Heavy Weapon *Squads* as they are obvious targets that die really quickly, and aren't good at taking orders at ld7. I put an autocannon in every infantry squad I run, so with my normal combined 40 unit I have 4 of them. Remember that the loader has a lasgun, so if you want to move you still get one flashlight shot from the Not much of a loss considering what that AC gives you. I usually put a lascannon team in my CCS if it is going to be static, which it nearly always is. I will often run a static vet squad with one as well, both units getting a vox. You always want those lascannons to be getting "Bring it Down" or "Fire on My Target" orders with BS4.

I haven't been able to see the usefulness of heavy bolters and mortars. I could see running missile launchers if you had a lot of them, like 9, but even then you could be better spending those points elsewhere.

BB