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A long debated topic, I'm sure, but I'm trying to find the most optimised Veteran Squad loadouts. I play Mech mostly and I love some suicidal meltavets, but what is the magic number of meltaguns in a chimera? 3 and disembark, or 2 to driveby?

Plus, any other ideas on optimised Veteran squads - one of my favourite loadouts at the moment is Forward Sentries, Camo and an Autocannon for 87pts.

I prefer two. If your Chimera vets are outside of their metal box then something has gone terrible wrong and they are about to die. Veterans love their metal boxes.

I would give a squad three specials if you were either going to footslog them with camo cloaks or dump them out of a Valkyrie. Or if you just want to bum rush the enemy.

I've had pretty good results with two specials (either melta or plasma) and a flamer/heavy flamer for when the chimera gets charged afterwards.

Agree 100% about not getting out. You bail you fail.

If you're not going mobile the first turn and you have extra points, missile launcher or lascannon has been pretty good to me too.

Hello Guys.
I still prefer 3 meltaguns for vet's inside a chimera, despite the limited firing ports. I has been said that if you are counting on 3 weapons to fire, something has gone terribly wrong. Well not so much, because now chimeras are not so durable. And even a moderately prepared opponent will have many ways to wreck these chimeras quite too fast. Having your veterans disembarked is in fact quite common. So I hope for the best but plan for though times. However I perfectly understand the rationale for the 2 meltasguns + 1 flamer load-out, and think it is viable too.

Honestly, if the Veterans are going to be charged, they are going to lose. A Flamer for overwatch will not change that. Stick with three of the same weapon for consistent results.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Honestly, if the Veterans are going to be charged, they are going to lose. A Flamer for overwatch will not change that. Stick with three of the same weapon for consistent results.

I agree with you 95%.

Sometimes you get charged by the last 1-3 remaining guys of a squad you almost wiped. That flamer might make the difference then. I also like taking a guy or two out of a full squad before they wipe out my squishy humans.

But you are mostly right.

Depends. I like 3 because drive-bys can't benefit from orders which can boost up those weapons to pretty impressive levels. As far as guard goes, I really try and get as high a density of special weapons as I can.

This has three benefits:
1) Points per not las gun shot is generally lower
2) Units are smaller, so CC will eliminate them leaving that unit vulnerable to more shooting
3) Larger units will still get melted with enough concentrated fire, so why pay for ablative wounds who are going to evaporate anyway?

Now, this doesn't deal with the benefits of blobs, which are there, to be sure, but we're talking about special weapons here.

I'm leaning towards 3 still. I know 3 in a Chimera is still great (you often have to reverse it ass backwards then disembark 6" to get in the golden melta range).

Also, for Plasmas I am thinking 3 is also good, since there's decent odds one of them will die at some point, and again you can hail-Mary out of the back and shoot 6 shots a total 24" from your starting position.

Vets are where you get the most out of your special weapons with bs 4. As many as you can.

I always take meltas in 3s. Unless I'm firing against something soft like a AV10-11 or against a walker, I'm getting out to shoot all three meltas. The squad likely costs a lot less than my target, and if they do their job, then any survivors are just gravy.

When I run plasma, I go with 2 plasma and one lascannon. But I understand that that may not be a popular choice among some players.

I always run them with three. Sometimes they'll have to get out, quite often actually (to get into melta or plasma doulbe-tap range, may need that extra bit of movement to get LoS, their transport may get destroyed, you're deploying them from a non-Chimera transport like a Valkyrie, etc). Additionally, it gives you some redundancy if you take any casualties, for example, from Gets Hot rolles or if your guys disembarked and lost a couple guys before re-embarking.

The case for taking that 3rd special weapon is strong, particularly when it augments the squads firepower so much for such a relatively small additional investment, I find the case for taking just two special weapons to be a significantly weaker option.

I usually run mine with 3 specials (plasma or melta) although I have had some success with just 2 special weapons.