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Quick question : for a 5 man, deep strike suicide storm trooper squad is there ever any reason to take 2 Plasma Guns rather than 2 Meltas and a Plasma Pistol on the Sarge, given the two load outs are the same price?

Not imo, you have to contend with gets hot rolls for lower strength, no extra dice for meltas for ap, you cant rapid fire then charge, meltas are assaut.

The only advantage is rapid firing against a unit you do not want to charge but then it doubles the chance of a gets hot

I usually go with the 2 melta and the plasma sarge. I'd say that plasma is for bigger squads of stormtroopers, where they're used as a fast-response unit rather than a suicide squad.

Cheers, that's what I was thinking. I'd originally been planning one squad with plasma and the other with melta until I realised that I couldn't think of any situation where the plasma ones would be more effecive.

Yeah i'd probably only use plasma if I ran 10man squads as that would kick out a lot of anti MEQ. For a 5 man though melta just seems to be the best choice. However, if you can get the plasma guys on some nice soft rear armor, they could probably hunt armor almost as well as the meltas. Most of your kills would be by hullpoints rather than explosions, but I wouldn't be complaining about extra flexibility. Plus a scrub can throw a krak grenade too so thats 5 plasma shots and a krak grenade. Anything AV12 or lower you've got a good chance of killing.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Yeah i'd probably only use plasma if I ran 10man squads as that would kick out a lot of anti MEQ. For a 5 man though melta just seems to be the best choice. However, if you can get the plasma guys on some nice soft rear armor, they could probably hunt armor almost as well as the meltas. Most of your kills would be by hullpoints rather than explosions, but I wouldn't be complaining about extra flexibility. Plus a scrub can throw a krak grenade too so thats 5 plasma shots and a krak grenade. Anything AV12 or lower you've got a good chance of killing.

You can gunslinger your ST Sgt with plasma pistols if you want to get 6 plasma shots. Even a 5 man squad can put a hurt on MEQs with that setup. 4+ save makes you more survivable to gets hot. I like to run plasma setup with my stormies because my melta guns are notoriously unlucky at my FLGS. I once took 7 melta shots at an immoblised landraider and did a whopping 1 HP to it in 4 turns.

Well, so there are a couple of things you get from plasmacide.

Firstly, you do get an extra shot, which is nice if you're up against termies or MCs. Secondly, you're probably deepstriking them, which means if you're attacking vehicles, you're likely doing it on rear armor. This made shots over melta somewhat useful before, but it makes it even moreso in an era of glancing to death.

Thirdly, and this is probably the most important, plasma has a much longer range. You've got a roughly 5/6ths chance of landing your stormies within 6" of their indented targets. If you've read my battle reports of late, you'll know this isn't the same as 6/6ths. The benefit to plasma is that all you've got to do is land within 12" of your target to fire at full effectiveness, which is much, much safer, given that you can deepstrike them further away.

That said, I think for a suicide squad, I'd probably go with what you've got setup, unless you have s certain need for more plasma. What really makes plasma guns good is the second turn you get to fire them, which obviously is more likely to happen in larger squads. I'd be taking some 10x plasma stormie squads myself if it weren't for a specific need for meltas in my lists.

Melta, it's a one trick pony to wipe out really heavy stuff reliably.

I typically put plasma in masse in command or vet squads.

Harkin with three plasma, autocannon, and infiltrate can really piss off some people.

As much as stormtroopers deepstriking in and melting a landraider on turn 2.

If you are lucky you are in orders range and use "bring it down".

I treat them as a fast response team in my army. I have two vendettas, and two 5 man squads with meltas. If there aren't land raiders (or "other" av 13/14 vehicles) then I leave them out and infiltrate them rather then vendetta them in.

Why would you drop them out of a vendetta??
Wastes the vendetta's firepower by having to fly it over to the drop point, and potentially kills your stormtroopers if they scatter.

Just deepstrike them.

In the right situation it is a legitimate tactic. For one, you insure that both units arrive on the same turn. With the re-roll to scatter you shouldn't have to worry too much about mishaps. Also if enemy fliers are present and you got unlucky with first turn, you can dump off your stormies and fly the heck off the board to come in next turn. I don't do this with stormies, but I've been using this tactic with SWS and it has done pretty well thus far.

 sfshilo wrote:
Melta, it's a one trick pony to wipe out really heavy stuff reliably.

I typically put plasma in masse in command or vet squads.
.
Harkin with three plasma, autocannon, and infiltrate can really piss off some people

As much as stormtroopers deepstriking in and melting a landraider on turn 2.

If you are lucky you are in orders range and use "bring it down".

I treat them as a fast response team in my army. I have two vendettas, and two 5 man squads with meltas. If there aren't land raiders (or "other" av 13/14 vehicles) then I leave them out and infiltrate them rather then vendetta them in.

One trick pony?, yet it insta kill's most units as it is strength 8 and is ap2 so nothing gets a good save against it, i messed up and didnt do my look out sir roll before rolling my saves (captain was third in line), insta killed by melta in a tourny scoring him slay the warlord.

Cheers guys, some good advice there. Think I'll stick with the meltas - the squads are intended as vehicle killers so it's probably more sensible.

I was interested in Ailaros's comments on the range thing tho. Obviously you need to be within 6" to get the full Melta goodness, but even between 6" to 12" 2 meltas and a pistol feels like it will do better than 4 plasma shots. Anyone feel like mathhammering 2 St8 AP1 plus a St7 AP2 versus 4 St 7 AP2 shots against AV 10-14?

I guess if you're really unlucky and scatter more than 12" away from any target then the plasma set up has the advantage of at least being able to get a couple of shots off.