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thats why dreads and speeders have multies

also, melta on bikes is just as good.


and all of these can either hold thier own or get out the way once they killed the target.

And therein lies the main issue- Devastators just make for bad anti-tank whatever they are armed with. MM attack bikes do a better job for less points, especially if vulkanised. The marine list as a whole makes the distinction between las-devs and miss-devs moot (take neither).

If you absolutely have to take devastators take HBs or plasma cannons- my choice would be the plasma; pred annihilators are so cheap for the heavy bolter option.

willydstyle wrote:

Do I shoot at the Dev squad with my long-range weapons, which will statistically need 18+ shots before I start doing any real damage

-or-

Do I ignore them and risk taking big damage from their guns every turn?

I agree with a lot of your post, but this part is off.

You're talking one-way statistics completely.

You say it'll take 18 shots to damage your guns. But that your guns will do huge damage to the enemy.

You don't mention the enemy probably has just as big guns / tough squads as you do.

If there's a unit of obliterators across the map from your 8man 4-ML dev squad, you can bet you're going to be clearly out-shot.

AP3 vs. 2+ armor save, 2+ armor save is superior.

Against tanks, your missiles won't do much. Against marines, plasma cannons are way way way more effective.

4 Krak missiles might wipe out 3 khorne berserkers. 4 Plasma cannon shots might wipe out the whole squad.

If you want to be anti-armor, stick with attack bike multi-melta or something. Missiles will not bring down good armor.

Missiles are worse than plasma cannons against anything other than the job which meltas should be filling. (Drop troop landraider exploders. Landraider busting bikes. Etc etc.)

I guess that since I play chaos and don't have any infantry mounted plasma cannon it skews my PoV a bit. I agree that devs with plasma cannon are better than missile launchers.

However, frags against marines in cover aren't entirely inept, if the opposing player has bunched up to huddle in terrain.

A missile launcher squad would probably be shooting a target other than obliterators for sure too. Daemon princes are something that krak missiles take down better than plasma cannons or autocannons, especially if the DP has mark of nurgle. Krak missiles are also great for rhino busting, or wave serpents, or trukks, and can do decent against side armor on battlewagons, so they have a role, but I agree with you that space marines definitely have better choices.

Usually if I'm fielding havocs, I'm doing so in my Black-Legionnaire horde-ish-type army, and busting enemy transports early on in the game is #1 priority for me. Granted autocannon perform that role well as well, missile launchers also have one advantage over autocannon in that they can instant-kill T4 things, so Nob Bikers, Plague Marines, 'Ard boyz with Grotznick, etc. fear them a bit more (although of course the cover save combined with allocating wounds to the warboss nerfs them a bit) FNP is becoming such a major part of the metagame that krak missiles are definitely worthwhile, if not always the optimized choice.

willydstyle wrote:I guess that since I play chaos and don't have any infantry mounted plasma cannon it skews my PoV a bit. I agree that devs with plasma cannon are better than missile launchers.

However, frags against marines in cover aren't entirely inept, if the opposing player has bunched up to huddle in terrain.

A missile launcher squad would probably be shooting a target other than obliterators for sure too. Daemon princes are something that krak missiles take down better than plasma cannons or autocannons, especially if the DP has mark of nurgle. Krak missiles are also great for rhino busting, or wave serpents, or trukks, and can do decent against side armor on battlewagons, so they have a role, but I agree with you that space marines definitely have better choices.

Usually if I'm fielding havocs, I'm doing so in my Black-Legionnaire horde-ish-type army, and busting enemy transports early on in the game is #1 priority for me. Granted autocannon perform that role well as well, missile launchers also have one advantage over autocannon in that they can instant-kill T4 things, so Nob Bikers, Plague Marines, 'Ard boyz with Grotznick, etc. fear them a bit more (although of course the cover save combined with allocating wounds to the warboss nerfs them a bit) FNP is becoming such a major part of the metagame that krak missiles are definitely worthwhile, if not always the optimized choice.

Yeah, it's a given if you're facing opponents that only have FNP troops, krak do damage.

Although a plasma cannon shot hitting 3-4 guys at once could end up doing twice as much dmg even with FNP.

Not to mention plasma cannons are AP2 also. Meaning they can wipe out terminator squads that krak are utterly useless against.

Also, a good player won't put his DP in the open in front of large numbers of krak missiles. He'll keep it out of sight or jump into a clump of trees where it still gets 4+ invulnerable (which would take an average 12 krak missile shots to kill.)

Marines with missile launchers just don't scare me much. They're slow, predictable, and immobile.

For the same points you can get a sternguard unit that drops out of the sky and then shoots 4 combi-meltas into the side of your landraider, exploding it instantly.

That squad can then walk around while firing 2 ap3 shots each at 12" while moving, etc etc.

My feeling is grab 2 Tacticals and toss in multi-meltas or lascannons as a "stay away from me landraider" measure and then load out on awesome things like sternguard drops and attack bikes and units with so much more firepower for their money than 1 dinky ML with a smurf-retinue.

I completely forgot about ap1/2 preventing FNP as well, and would even work against T5 FNP targets such as warbosses.

Like I said, I play chaos... Krak missiles seem to work well for me, and I like frag missiles against ork hordes and such, but it looks like the ML really doesn't have much of a place in the Space Marine arsenal at all.

I just don't see static shooty squads as good anymore... say a drop pod lands beside them or in comes some daemonic horde. I think having all units mobile is the way to go. A lot of times I shoot my meltaguns from inside the rhinos.

G