Hellhounds

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**Vulkan_He'stan**

Right Dakka I need your help as quickly as possible

Which variant should I use
-Hell hound
or
- Bane wolf

which front weapon should I take
-Heavy Bolter
or
-Heavy Flamer

Just building the model now so need the help ASAP any help would be appreciated

**Chaos Lord Gir**

Always use the Heavy Flamer no matter what, so if the enemy knocks off your flame thrower on the tank, you still... have a flame thrower.

And it depends on your local meta as to which to make, I love hellhounds since I play alot of Orkz and Tyranids, so throwing that flame template can really get some damage done on Orkz (Take that KFF!) and it's such a harrasment unit it HAS to be killed.

I find the banewolf just misses too much to be of use. Slagging terminators could be a possible use, but for the cost of the tank, IG have MUUCH better ways of getting anti tank and melta into the squad, but throwing a damn nice flame weapon template 12" is pretty fun.

**Vulkan_He'stan**

Banewolf is the poisoned one
devil dog is the melta one I think you have the two mixed up?

**Nungunz**

Which variant you use depends on the rest of your list. Generally though the Hellhound is more versatile and should probably have the heavy flamer or the muli-melta for the hull gun.

**Chaos Lord Gir**

Yep my bad, been awhile since I played my IG.

**Vulkan_He'stan**

I think I'll just pin the main weapon and try switching it round and see which I perfer

**Coolyo294**

If you play against MEQ a lot, take the Banewolf.

**Brother SRM**

Don't glue the barrel in, you can swap all three out very easily.

**Veldrain**

Banewolf makes my marines cry.
Flamehound makes pretty much everything else cry.

**Brother SRM**

Banewolves do sound scary, but if you want to get that close to my meltas and power fists be my guest

**Vulkan_He'stan**

Found an easy way to make the weapons interchangeable with little work,
On the square little socket thing, on the back of each weapon option, stick a thin roughly 1cm long bit of sprue, you might have to file the sprue down a bit but it stays in pretty well.

**BlapBlapBlap**

Should be in Tactics.

**Billagio**

Basically Banewolf if going up against MEQ, the only prob is getting it there. The regular hellhound for almost everything else.

**Panzerboy26**

I would have said Banewolf all day long for TAC lists about a month or so ago.

Then I saw the Necron book, and what people were doing with Scarab Swarms.

Now, for Mech IG, I think that for TAC lists at least one Hellhound is pretty much required simply to have some hope of being able to put the Swarm down before it can eat too many of your tanks.

**schadenfreude**

Regular hell hound is far better against dark eldar and necrons as S6 instant deaths scarab swarms and ignores FNP on T3 models.

I'm not sold on the bane wolf. A single bane would would just end up on the top of the target priority list when going up against a MEQ army, and the gun has a very short range.

**Roboute**

schadenfreude wrote:I'm not sold on the bane wolf. A single bane would would just end up on the top of the target priority list when going up against a MEQ army, and the gun has a very short range.

Basically this. The Hellhound's extra range means it doesn't have to expose itself as much before firing, and the rules for placing the template mean that you'll generally get more models than you would with a regular template weapon. It won't be nearly as effective versus MEQ, but at least it can still put the wounds on without becoming too much of a threat.

The only situations I'd consider taking a banewolf would be a) if I had more than one of them, and I built a list they synergized well with, or b) if I outflanked them using CREEEED!, as that would allow them to get the alpha strike on their intended targets.

**schadenfreude**

Bane wolves alrwady come with a built in scout move, so no need for creed. Outflanking is going to be the way to go. A banewolf will be short on targets on turn 1 due to meq still being in rhinos, and after a rhino is popped meq are not going to disembark in front of a chem cannon. Better to roll onto the board on turn 2/3 when plenty of meq are out of transports. Plus as previously stated all long ranged firepower will go into a banewolf if it is deployed on turn 1.

**Flavius Infernus**

schadenfreude wrote:Bane wolves alrwady come with a built in scout move, so no need for creed.

Would be awesome, but not actually true. I think you're thinking of valks.

**alarmingrick**

Flavius Infernus wrote:
schadenfreude wrote:Bane wolves alrwady come with a built in scout move, so no need for creed.

Would be awesome, but not actually true. I think you're thinking of valks.

Agreed with F.I. Would be awesome, but they can't.

**schadenfreude**

Brainfart, was actually thinking of flame baals.

Reserving them still might be the right answer to meq. They are going to get in your face anyways.

**Ailaros**

The answer of when to take ANY hellhound variant strays dangerously close to "never".

With the banewolf, you're putting an awful lot of faith in your opponents both clumping their units into very close formations and not bothering to expend any firepower to threaten them. Most opponents won't be so kind, and they'll do little, if anything. The vehicle may be fast, but it still comes with a weapon that relies on templates, and has, at most, a 7" range.

With the devil dog you're spending HOW much for a single melta shot per turn? Sure, you can give them a hull multimelta, but still, why not just take meltavets in a chimera, or a vendetta?

The hellhound proper is the only one I can see as vaguely worthwhile. Its relatively long range and ability to angle the template however you want cuts down on the worst problems of flame template weapons. After that, it's still S6, and it still ignores cover, making it useful in lists that are otherwise light on anti-horde, like meltavet lists. The real problem is that hellhounds compete against lasguns and plasma weapons which tend to come in much greater quantities and on scoring units to boot.

**schadenfreude**

Ailaros wrote:The answer of when to take ANY hellhound variant strays dangerously close to "never".

With the banewolf, you're putting an awful lot of faith in your opponents both clumping their units into very close formations and not bothering to expend any firepower to threaten them. Most opponents won't be so kind, and they'll do little, if anything. The vehicle may be fast, but it still comes with a weapon that relies on templates, and has, at most, a 7" range.

With the devil dog you're spending HOW much for a single melta shot per turn? Sure, you can give them a hull multimelta, but still, why not just take meltavets in a chimera, or a vendetta?

The hellhound proper is the only one I can see as vaguely worthwhile. Its relatively long range and ability to angle the template however you want cuts down on the worst problems of flame template weapons. After that, it's still S6, and it still ignores cover, making it useful in lists that are otherwise light on anti-horde, like meltavet lists. The real problem is that hellhounds compete against lasguns and plasma weapons which tend to come in much greater quantities and on scoring units to boot.

I think the base hellhound and most of the variants are decent tanks, but they can't compete against the vendetta which is about 30 to 60 points underpriced.

**Flavius Infernus**

Well, one flaw that vendettas have is that they're pretty much impossible to hide or get a cover save for--unless you move fast, in which case you're not shooting. Most players I see start their vendettas in reserve because they are so quickly shot down as high-priority.

So one big advantage that all the hellhound variants have is that they can move behind chimeras and get cover saves. The hellhound and devil dog can even advance with a chimera wall, fire past the front of your moving line, and not have to slow down.

I run 2 devil dogs in my standard IG list, and I find that my opponents will often shoot at them instead of my chimeras for the first couple of turns--even though they're obscured--because they are such a threat at midranges, and so good at clearing/contesting objectives in the late game if they survive that long.

Also one thing that might not be obvious about DDs until you've actually played them is that, even if your shot scatters partly off the target, you can still kill vehicles with a half-strength +2d6 hit at AP1. Rhinos are fairly easy to kill at 24" (30+ effective with moving 6" behind chimeras).

But Devil Dogs aren't for beginners. If you send them rushing up on their own without coordinating with your other units in the right range bands, they're melta bait.

**Byte**

Hellhounds get my vote.

**mal**

Hellhounds will find more use, banewolves are more effective against meq;
both are more effective when you subscribe to av12+ spam.
For example, I find my 4 banewolves most useful when combined with 3 demolishers.
Preying on priorities...

**The Crusader**

Banewolves with hull multi meltas are a menace to everything and they work well