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Melta bombs are designed as anti-vehicle weapons, but fluff wise have they ever been use against infantry targets?
For example: Monstrous creatures like Carnifex or strong individual character like Chaos Lord?

Krak grenades are preferred against carnifexes - being commoner and all - melta bombs though appear to have been used against buildings in place of demo charges (all of these comes from the Blood Raven novels - Dawn of War, Ascension, Tempest, Dawn of War II).

Setting a meltabomb takes too long to slap them on a CSM lord, I'd imagine, but I'm not sure about the carnifex...

I think It's more down to the rarity and size of melta bombs that they're used less, rather than how effective they'd be.

However if it is for a fanfiction story, feel free to do it! It's 40k after all and anything is possible.

Thank you guys for your reply's.
But I thought that Melta bombs come in a grenade version, like the ones that Assault Marines carry, do they to need long time to activate?

Assuming a turn takes 15 seconds give or take , divide that into 3 for each phase for this purpose since melta bombs are used in the assault phase only, it would take 5 seconds at least and 10 seconds at most to use the grenade version and since you can indeed hit a moving vehicle with them, at least half the time if moving at combat speed, it would have to be able to place and arm almost instantly, i always imagined them being like plasma grenades from halo, they would stick to the vehicle, perhaps being placed instead of thrown, but still require virtually no set up time.

Brother Coa wrote:Thank you guys for your reply's.
But I thought that Melta bombs come in a grenade version, like the ones that Assault Marines carry, do they to need long time to activate?

Lets see,

Light the sacred incense of a machine spirit activation,
Recite the Litany of Activation thrice,
Swing the sacred censer around the bomb 6 times,
Light the sacred incense of proper detonation,
Recite the Litany of Proper Detonation twice,
Gently place bomb on target,
Recite the Litany of Activation,
Press the sacred rune of activation,
Done.

When I was learning to play with a friend, back at the beginning of 2nd edition, my friend would throw melta bombs at my army like crazy... And use them in melee against my infantry.
Of course he also put Terminator armor on his Imperial Assassin to claim a terminator save in addition to a displacer field save AND a 4+ dodge... And in hand to hand he would follow up as many times in one turn as it took to wipe out an entire squad. Needless to say he was a bit of a rules lawyer and things were poorly worded back then.

But I can tell you exactly how messed up and utterly broken it would be to use Melta Bombs in such a way...

From what I can gather, a melta bomb is the 40K equivalent of the modern-day thermite grenade, which is used to destroy vehicles and equipment. It doesn't explode so much as just melt through pretty much anything you put it on. Stacks of rifles and other hardware, the engine block of a car, the hull of an armored helicopter, no matter.

It doesn't have an appreciable blast radius, its total spread is like half a meter wide, and most of that damage is just from radiated heat, rather than any sort of chemical throw-off. In a melee combat, using one offensively would inflict casualties more by luck than by design, unless you managed to wedge it in someone's gear or something before pulling the pin. I suppose it could be used on a gargantuan creature, but then I wonder if its limited burn-life would be sufficient to do any real damage to such a beast, guess it really all depends on where you placed it and how large of a creature we're talking about.

Brother Coa wrote:Melta bombs are designed as anti-vehicle weapons, but fluff wise have they ever been use against infantry targets?
For example: Monstrous creatures like Carnifex or strong individual character like Chaos Lord?

The closest instance I can think of concerning what you are talking about happened in Nightbringer, where Uriel Ventris threatens the Nightbringer with Melta Bombs. However, they didn't pose much of a threat to the Nightbringer itself, but Ventris threatened to use them to collapse the Nightbringer's tomb, and in its weakened, starved state, it wouldn't be able to escape and would be trapped.

Hope that helped at all.

Sidenote:

I want my Bomb Squigs to have an anti-infantry use too..

Anyone who has played Space Marine has learned to dread the little fethers


Fluffwise i have no problem with the idea of chump-clanging a meltabomb to the top of a chaos lord's termie armour, or a Fex's armourplates, as long as the same license applied to other races antitank (like Tankbusta bombs and Bomb Squigs, EMP grenades etc...)