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So, I just got my CSM battalion going, and I'm mostly playing with my friend who plays Orks.

Last game I tried skipping the plasma guns and heavy bolters and instead went for just flamers, 2 in each of my two squads and a heavy one with my termies.

Being a newbie I still lost, but I took down a whole lot of Orks on the way, much thanks to my flamers.

So, fire is evidently effective against greenskins, but when does it not work at all? I have yet to face any other armies, which ones are more flame resistant? What would be a good alternative in such cases? I also have Missile Havocs and meltagun Bikers so I am quite prepared for tanks with this setup already.

What do you think? Are flamers the way to go?

Flamers are effective against horde armies with poor armor saves. They are not very effective against MEQs or SOBs.

Against MEQ flamers are not that hot (Pun intended.). They work well against hordes with low armor, but that's it. They work great against greenies and various cannon fodder units, but they are not your go to weapon when you need to take down something with armor. Also, any type of armored vehicle will laugh at flamers. It is of note that they are quite good against enemies in buildings and hiding in cover, though you must get quite close, which is not always a great idea, depending on the target.

Actually Heavy Flamers are okay against very light vehicles, but that's pretty much it. A nice thing about flamers is that can become very effective when you drop 4+ templates on a MEQ/SOB squad that is huddled up, but they are definitely not anti MEQ weapon.


Be very afraid of Sisters with Flamers though...or is that not true anymore?

I think they more or less take Meltas more now, the boost to the price of the Heavy Flamer throwing it out of favour and the fact we can't make them rending anymore as well I guess.

All of the xenos sans necrons run screaming from flamers. I have lost many a fire warrior or space elf to the template.

If you plan on taking them, make sure the unit with them is alright to get into an assault, because after you drop a template you want to be charging.

Also what's good to remember is the template is 8" long, it does help at times.

Flamers can be effective against marines if you bunch them up, ie rhino rush.

Think this way, flame 8 marines up to 8', half wounded, you are likely to get a kill or two. Plasma gun is two shots up to 12', hit on 3s and wound on twos, and maybe a cover save. Yes range and deployment matter, but then the flamer is also far better against hordes.

You are right to be happy with flamers as csm are great in close and you have assault weapons. So long as you have your melta capability somewhere I reckon you will be effective.

If your asp champ can take combiflamer and fist for third template even better.

BBQ stealer for lunch!

Flamers are defensive weapons. With a 0" range on their weapon, it's too difficult to get into range given that their opponent have a great deal to say it. As a defensive weapon, on the other hand, you can certainly catch stuff that just piled out of a successful close combat and rolled poorly for consolidation.

They're a little futzy, though, because of the relatively exacting circumstances for their proper use. If you can consistently get your orkish opponent in these circumstances, then all the power to you. Otherwise...

I agree, though on a dedicated assault squad you can see the merit of charging into an enemy in cover after softening them up with it first. Provided you have assault grenades of course.

And your opponent won't see that coming? Flamers, moreso than other weapons, give your opponents options to mitigate damage.

If you've got the ability to deepstrike flamers next to someone, perhaps, but you're not going to be able to just charge up at something and get solid flamer hits unless your opponent is pretty clueless.

Flamers are best used from a transported squad. When you disembark you get to place the flamers anywhere within 2" of a hatch, to set up the best possible shot. You can also pivot your transport before you disembark the squad, again to set up the best possible shot.

Tank-shock can be used to force enemies to bunch up. Even nastier is lash. When horde foot Orks were a common army I used to run two Chosen squads in Rhinos, each equipped with three flamers and two meltaguns. I fairly easily scored 40+ flamer hits on a big unit of Orks by driving up, placing my guys, and then lashing the orks into a big teardrop shape.

Even against space marines, flamers are pretty darn good if they're bunched up. A pair of plasma guns rapidfiring at close range averages around 2.28 dead marines with no cover. Two flamers each need to cover about six-seven models to equal that. And if you lash or explode a transport, you can frequently cover more than that.

What flamers are not good at is killing vehicles. Which is the main reason I don't run them that much. In 5th you tend to need a good amount of melta to reliably pop enemy transports and tanks.

Precision placement of terminator squads with heavy flamer and combi-flamers can also do pretty well. Though again, meltas tend to be more widely-useful, allowing your squad to take on a wider variety of targets and cripple enemy mobility.

Ailaros wrote:And your opponent won't see that coming? Flamers, moreso than other weapons, give your opponents options to mitigate damage.

Strange, I still hit more models per template than shooting an assault weapon. It doesn't over heat, nor wastes a strength 8 shot by shooting into cover. I'd rather keep my flame templates and get three-five automatic hits with each one.

If you've got the ability to deepstrike flamers next to someone, perhaps, but you're not going to be able to just charge up at something and get solid flamer hits unless your opponent is pretty clueless.

If the board was completely devoid of cover, if transports didn't come with ways to obscure cover in the open, and if somehow I'm fielding only transports with flamers in them, this could possibly be true. Because, you know, using cover and the 8" of movement from an idle transport is completely worthless...

Agreed with Ailaros, yet again. Pack some missile launchers and autocannons to reliably deal with hoard armies from a safe distance. I cannot comment on termies with heavy flamers deep striking, though, as I've not tried it. Seems like there's some room for ambushes there, though. If you have a squad that you are planning to use in assault, especially with a transport, why not bring a flamer or two? It's gonna work out alright. They can potentially deal a lot of damage, just don't rely on them. Playing against someone that's not seen a flamer before is going to work great every time, but after you've done it, they'll catch on fast. My friend runs orks and it one me a game the first couple of times, but after that he really dug into the rules and came up with counter tactics. Spreading out is fairly easy to do, and works great against flamers. Enjoy the bonuses, but don't use them as a solution.

No one has "not seen a flamer before". You use flamers against people when they are forced to bunch up. Like in an Exploded transport''s crater, or when deep-striking, or tank-shocked, or lashed.

Mannahnin wrote:I fairly easily scored 40+ flamer hits on a big unit of Orks by driving up, placing my guys, and then lashing the orks into a big teardrop shape.

Ow...

Ow...

Mannahnin wrote:Even against space marines, flamers are pretty darn good if they're bunched up.

I don't know, 3 flamers with 5 hits apiece (which is pretty dang good for most circumstances) still only downs 2 or 3. Not nothing, but not fantastic either.

KplKeegan wrote:If the board was completely devoid of cover, if transports didn't come with ways to obscure cover in the open, and if somehow I'm fielding only transports with flamers in them, this could possibly be true. Because, you know, using cover and the 8" of movement from an idle transport is completely worthless...

Can you do things using player skill to make flamers get more hits? Certainly. The problem is that your opponent can do things to make your flamers get fewer hits. This is especially true on weapons that suffer from opponents displacing.

You can't make an argument that says good players can use skill to make a weapon good while ignoring the fact that you have an opponent, who has skill of his own, who is going to be working against you. This is especially a problem for weapons that are more susceptible to opponent mitigation of damage, like template weapons.

As such, the only way that you, using skill, are going to make flamers good is in an environment where you have much more skill than your opponent. Thus my comment that flamers require crummy opponents (or some other circumstances, like deepstriking flamers or using lash as above, etc.)

Eh, hitting MEQ with anything less than 4 Flamers is kind of pointless unless you have awesome rolls and you're opponent rolls more 1s than Dash.

Flamestorm templates are my newest fun toy.

Melts marines. Can even melt lighter armor. Funny occurance was that it melted a land speeder going flat out for a cover save. No saves against the template though. Also good vs bikers, pathfinders, jetbikes to deny their save.

sudojoe wrote:Flamestorm templates are my newest fun toy.

Melts marines. Can even melt lighter armor. Funny occurance was that it melted a land speeder going flat out for a cover save. No saves against the template though. Also good vs bikers, pathfinders, jetbikes to deny their save.

Im trying to make a list that can have 3 Baal predators with FSC and as much Redeemers as possible ( with MM )

Ailaros wrote:Can you do things using player skill to make flamers get more hits? Certainly. The problem is that your opponent can do things to make your flamers get fewer hits. This is especially true on weapons that suffer from opponents displacing.

Regardless of displacement, the flamer is still going to get more automatic hits than any other assault weapon (Imperial Army wise). You can certainly hit more if you try tank shocking with empty Chimeras/Rhinos or blowing transports up, but for its points, the flamer practically pays for itself.

You can't make an argument that says good players can use skill to make a weapon good while ignoring the fact that you have an opponent, who has skill of his own, who is going to be working against you. This is especially a problem for weapons that are more susceptible to opponent mitigation of damage, like template weapons.

I'm not ignoring the fact that I'm playing against skilled players. You're just assuming that my opponent has never used the same tactics against templates that's been in existence for the two Editions I've played through.

Thus my comment that flamers require crummy opponents (or some other circumstances, like deepstriking flamers or using lash as above, etc.)

Its a weak statement.

Grey knight heavy incinerators are the way forwards. Shunt a dreadknight towards the enemy, stay about 13 inches away and hit them with the ranged flamer.

Slightly more on topic, flamers are extremely useful against things with VtB/T such as scarabs, and units like the vindicare assassin. Better to force a 4+6+ than have them use a 2+. Melta is over rated in that respect, it may be good against tanks, but too much melta leaves you wide open to being violated by foot armies/cheap expendable units that a flamer would otherwise annihilate. Regardless of whether the other player can displace their units to minimize the damage, better to force a few armour saves than to just kill one model.

Ailaros wrote:You can't make an argument that says good players can use skill to make a weapon good while ignoring the fact that you have an opponent, who has skill of his own, who is going to be working against you. This is especially a problem for weapons that are more susceptible to opponent mitigation of damage, like template weapons.

As such, the only way that you, using skill, are going to make flamers good is in an environment where you have much more skill than your opponent. Thus my comment that flamers require crummy opponents (or some other circumstances, like deepstriking flamers or using lash as above, etc.)

You conclusion is incorrect because your premise is flawed. Some tactics are easier to put into play than others. Some situations are near-unavoidable. If your opponent has transported units, getting an Exploded result will happen at least some of the time. If your opponent has any units, lash (remember the OP asked about chaos marines) will bunch them up absent absurdly bad dice/no terrain on the board to cover daemon princes. Carefully spreading units can mitigate flamer placement, and reduce the impact of unit-bunching via tank shock, but it can't completely eliminate the danger. Yes, your opponent will play to minimize these situations and opportunities, but you can and will create some of them anyway if you try.

Mannahnin wrote:

Ailaros wrote:You can't make an argument that says good players can use skill to make a weapon good while ignoring the fact that you have an opponent, who has skill of his own, who is going to be working against you. This is especially a problem for weapons that are more susceptible to opponent mitigation of damage, like template weapons.

As such, the only way that you, using skill, are going to make flamers good is in an environment where you have much more skill than your opponent. Thus my comment that flamers require crummy opponents (or some other circumstances, like deepstriking flamers or using lash as above, etc.)

You conclusion is incorrect because your premise is flawed. Some tactics are easier to put into play than others. Some situations are near-unavoidable. If your opponent has transported units, getting an Exploded result will happen at least some of the time. If your opponent has any units, lash (remember the OP asked about chaos marines) will bunch them up absent absurdly bad dice/no terrain on the board to cover daemon princes. Carefully spreading units can mitigate flamer placement, and reduce the impact of unit-bunching via tank shock, but it can't completely eliminate the danger. Yes, your opponent will play to minimize these situations and opportunities, but you can and will create some of them anyway if you try.

You have a knack for getting you point across more fluently than I. Thank you.

Mannahnin wrote:You conclusion is incorrect because your premise is flawed. Some tactics are easier to put into play than others. Some situations are near-unavoidable.

Were this true, then there would be certain strategies which would be completely unbeatable, and everybody would just do that. If there was something that you could do, that your opponent couldn't undo, then it wouldn't actually really be much of a game, it would just be a matter of who did one of those auto-win things first.

Certainly you may not be able to completely eliminate the threat of what your opponents do with flamers, but you can certainly reduce it a lot, and you can certainly reduce it a lot more than other types of weapons (for example, that have ranges of greater than 0", or ignore both armor and cover saves, or can shoot at targets they can't see, or aren't affected by your opponent's ability to displace, etc.). Flame weapons are weak precisely because their statline is poor, and they are avoidable. If either of those were different, they would be good, and you'd see them everywhere, instead of consistently getting passed over for things like melta and plasma guns. This is one of those cases where something is unpopular for a reason. Their difficulty of use, and the ease of your opponent being able to avoid taking enough damage to justify their cost in points and weapons slots.

If you want to focus on the "it takes skill to use them", that's fine, but you can't avoid the "players can easily use skill to stop them". Were we talking about castled, out of LOS guard artillery, a weapon which has fewer options for player skill to reduce damage, it would be one thing, but driving up flamers in plain sight and hoping for a barbecue is quite another.

You're incorrect. You're drawing excessively-broad and sweeping conclusions from situational truths. I'm not saying there are unstoppable auto-win tactics, and you're striding boldly into strawman territory by misconstruing my remarks that way. I'm saying that some tactics (specifically getting a lot of hits with flamers on a bunched-up squad) aren't so easy to counter as to make them automatically null and void, as you've claimed in this case. Your claim that flamers require crummy opponents to be useful is comically inaccurate.

The only reason we don't see more flamers is because of vehicle proliferation in 5th, which has led to the need for lots of melta.

I think you're all making fair points, mostly because I don't know much myself!

So I think I'll keep the flamers for anything but things with power armour, then.

Now the follow-up question: What special weapons do I put up against troops with power armour? My other friend is just starting on a GK army, so I'm kinda scared for my Chaos Marines' safety.

Power armor dies to weight of die. Flamers are fine against power armor, as long as it's not JUST a Flamer shooting at that unit, preferably 2 flamers and a bunch of other small arms.

vs GK go with thousand sons. rubric marines are actually really effective. AP3 bolters make meat out of regular power armor.

Also, all those rending psycannons? pashaw invul saves lolz

Weight of hits is pretty important these days. Because of cover and bright marine players, low ap only reduces their save from shooting to a fifty percent chance. It makes the high strength low ap shots feel a little over costed, especially when it doesn't have the added bonus of killing lots of throw away infantry, instant killing interesting stuff, or being really good at killing certain vehicles.

Volume of fire has the added bonus of tearing apart orcs and infantry men in rates that effect wether they have to take a test. Flames are a little weird because they have range considerations. It's range isn't 8 for those 3-5 hits. It's like 2 inches. Most vulnerable units don't f around and let you take advantage of them. They sit back and fire their heavy weapons, in their pill boxes or move into you until they can't be shot at all and you've got thirty or more attacks to contend with. Getting close to mobs makes me uncomfortable, but I haven't played a good close to mid range army in ages.

I've always seen flamers as smatterings in defensive counter assault elements. The squad ought to be built a little more quarrelsome and used very decisively. You'll have fewer of these types than your normal line or campers as they have a more particular usage.

I love flamers, but then, I play daemons...