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Is there ever actually a reason to take an Ecto plasma Gun over a Hades Gun? I know you have the option to have a third one, but the Hades seems much better.

If you need AP2 S8 blasts, it's a good option, also doesn't rely as much on BS3.

If you're playing VS a DA Deathwing Army.

ahhh DA... ok Ill keep that in mind thank you

I've ran it both ways a number of times. Logic would suggest shooting 3 plasma shots instead of just one means at least one would score a direct hit, but in the magical world of dice rolling, it's just a fairy tale.

The Hades Autocannon is better for the overall army needs of a typical Chaos force. Most the time you need the AP2, you're already rocking a fair number of lascannons or plasma guns on your infantry or other tanks.

It's worth running it both ways to see which you like better, though. It's one of those things that's going to come down to personal preference quite often. I actually like it best as just a maulerfiend and have had way better luck running it that way than either forgefiend variant.

Yeah, Ap2 is pretty boss, and does pair with an extra cannon better, even accounting for the other shortfalls. I think the biggest con against the plasma, though, is that it's range is terrible. This sort of relegates it to being a defensive weapon.

If you want to have a defensive weapon, though, then the plasma cannon is a fair bit better. An Ap4 weapon is going to do some amount of damage at high strength, but an Ap2 weapon is a showstopper. Whatever awful horrible monster/vehicle/deathstar that's barreling into you is going to be hard countered by 3 S8 Ap2 weapons, especially as their likely larger size means an easier time for those blast weapons to hit. Also, don't forget that the forgefiend can be twin-linked for a turn every game.

The problem, though, is that it's kind of hard to justify when you could take a tri-las pred for much cheaper.

With the 2 autocannons it actually makes a half decent AA gun.

... sort of. Against an AV12 flier, it takes an average of 5 turns of shooting to bring it down. That's the whole game (more than the whole game if the game only lasts until turn 5, or the flier in question doesn't arrive on turn 2).

Forgefiends are expensive, and trying all game to take down a flier while it hopes nothing else attacks it sounds crummy, and if the flier has anti-tank weapons itself, it's hard to see how the forgefiend wins that battle without luck.

I mean, this is really a problem with forgefiends in general, though. Their firepower just isn't very good for their cost.

That's why I said half decent, it does a better job than really everything else in the CSM codex (apart from an Autocannon Heldrake). As Daemonforge does allow it to re roll failed armour penetration hits and if you have anything with Divination nearby, then you get re-rolls.

It would work for me because I have daemon allies, otherwise there is a severe lack of bang for my buck.

but demonforge only works once.

Plus, For the high price tag of two autocannon forgefiends, you can have two lascannon predators and an autocannon predator, or you could have three units of autocannon havocs. Surely 24 BS4 S7 shots are going to outclass 16 BS3 S8 shots, including against fliers.