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Is plasma still good? I'm seriously considering nexting my White Scar/Mantis Warriors, biting the bullet and repaint them into Blood Angels (Centurions aside, maybe my meta will let them fly). All in preparation for 30k but I would like to use them for 40k too.

They don't get the GravBike Command squad so I was wondering whether Plasma Assault Marines are viable or not. Would like them with Jump Packs so that I don't have to splash on Pods.

Or just plasma in general. Not sure about Plasma Devs though.

Plasma Cannons are not good. That’s more a small blast issue though.

Plasma pistols are comically overpriced.

Plasma guns are fine. While grav does better in a number of spots, so does plasma. They are equivalent in my mind. Toss it on a relentless platform, grav pulls ahead quite a bit, but on a normal marine, both work.

Plazma is good for stuff without relentless.

I grabbed a a lot if Plasma Dark Vengeance bikes, and use them as a harassing suicide unit (of sorts) but generally, grav outperforms with more shots and no Gets Hot to help out your opponents

Now on Tacticals, or CSM (who don't get the fancy toys) I'd go with Plasma.

Not to mention it comes readily available on sprues.

The difference is can they move and shoot. Assault isnt really much of a question since afaik nothing that has Grav wants assault since they probably wont have anything other than the basic marine statline to do it with.

Plasma can still hurt crap armor guys reliably but then again, if you run out of 3+ armor targets you probably won anyway unless youre facing orks, which gravs arent that great against in general.

I'd say if they can get Relentless, go grav. Otherwise, go plasma.

In all honesty if you can get away with it I would recommend playing the SM rules with BA models. IMO skyhammer and the ravenwing shadow strike kill team play like the BA fluff. The BA codex is pretty bad due to IMO a complete lack of understanding of how the rules function. How having rapid fire weapons and no assault transports in an army with special rules only usable when they assault was a good idea I cannot imagine.

If you want to play with the BA codex itself then plasmaguns are actually pretty good. It is better than gravguns on non relentless/slow and purposeful models and can hurt most vehicles better than gravguns. This is not true at all for plasma cannons unfortunately which are just awful.

BTW 30K legions have grav weapons too. So you can actually still take grav.

PS forgeworld can help BA not be so bad. The tanks and artillery units available from forgeworld helps to really mitigate the overall flawed design of the codex. They are also very fluffy for a 30K legion.

On the side of grav but for tacs no huge change

Plasma Guns are better against:

AV11 or worse
Infantry with an armour save of 5+ or worse
Most Flyers (since rolling double-6's is pretty hard for Grav, even with lots of shots)

 Yarium wrote:
Plasma Guns are better against:

AV11 or worse
Infantry with an armour save of 5+ or worse
Most Flyers (since rolling double-6's is pretty hard for Grav, even with lots of shots)

That's a pretty short list.

Extra 6 inch range on plasma gun vs grav gun. Probably only really relevant for tac squads though.

 Yarium wrote:
Plasma Guns are better against:

AV11 or worse
Infantry with an armour save of 5+ or worse
Most Flyers (since rolling double-6's is pretty hard for Grav, even with lots of shots)

Add in Daemons and Spawn.

Martel732 wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Plasma Guns are better against:

AV11 or worse
Infantry with an armour save of 5+ or worse
Most Flyers (since rolling double-6's is pretty hard for Grav, even with lots of shots)

That's a pretty short list.

Also an inaccurate one.

Av12 or worse
Save 4+ or worse(assuming a t8 or less)
Add in any t3 or less multi-wound
Also anything beyond 9"(15") from a non-relentless platform

Plasma is more take all comers.

Grav is more paper rock scissors

-its amazing against TEQ/MEQ but bad against GEQ

If you make a grav themed army and go up against orks, daemons, horde IG, cultist spam, KDK khorne hounds, etc....you will be out of luck.

The problem being that you will never kill a WK with plasma.

Personally Id take plas of grav on most things, I feel it covers a better range of tagets as a TAC weapon

Ive killed WKs with weaker guns than your S7 plasmas. Likely? No, i just got lucky as gak lol.

Regardless youre firing a gun thats not suppose to firing at. Low cost guns or really high rate of fire guns are suppose to fire at things they cant reliably hurt because the rate of fire vs cost to field is better suited for it.

However, plasmas can hurt Wraithguards and jetbikers pretty well.

I still stand by my statement that the endall decision between the two depends on Relentless, not the use of the gun.

I agree it comes down to Relentless as a whole. That said, remember that while Grav hurts hordes less, you already have Bolters for that, and Grav is actually a hard counter to units that are actually scary. Plus if you're planning on being stationary anyway, Grav is able to get out more shots <18".

Why all the hate on Plasma Cannons? Point for Point, (so long as the template is hitting 2 models) they are the best heavy weapons out there for marines....... what is the issue people are having with them?

Everyone afraid of the scatter chance? It's not all that bad on the table- Most of the time it will hit something...


Otherwise, I tend to go plasma on everything other than Bikes and Grav Devs. Those two platforms shine for grav, while all others pay the tax for the extra range/shots of not moving.

Small Blasts are mediocre as a whole. Theoretically Plasma Cannons should be decent, but all small blast weapons share the same fault.

So from this I'm getting Grav on BA bikes. Plasma on everything else.

Well no I actually got SM > BA but you know

 Btothefnrock wrote:
Why all the hate on Plasma Cannons? Point for Point, (so long as the template is hitting 2 models) they are the best heavy weapons out there for marines....... what is the issue people are having with them?

They usually hit only 1 model unless the squad's bunched up.

 koooaei wrote:

 Btothefnrock wrote:
Why all the hate on Plasma Cannons? Point for Point, (so long as the template is hitting 2 models) they are the best heavy weapons out there for marines....... what is the issue people are having with them?

They usually hit only 1 model unless the squad's bunched up.

Or if you get a very favourable roll on the scatter die (allowing for the center hole of the blast to be half way between two models).

Still going to be 1 model usually, though (especially with armies with decent-to-high BS).

And plasma talons are even better.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Plasma Guns are better against:

AV11 or worse
Infantry with an armour save of 5+ or worse
Most Flyers (since rolling double-6's is pretty hard for Grav, even with lots of shots)

That's a pretty short list.

Also an inaccurate one.

Av12 or worse
Save 4+ or worse(assuming a t8 or less)
Add in any t3 or less multi-wound
Also anything beyond 9"(15") from a non-relentless platform

Except, Grav gets more shots than Plasma. Against AV12, you need a 6 to penetrate with the Plasma, for a large chance of doing something inconsequential. Grav needs a 6 and automatically gets the second-to-best result that also makes the next grav "pen" deal an extra hull-point. As such, it really needs to be AV11 or worse because the benefits of Plasma start to outweigh Grav. The additional shots also make it roughly the same against 3+ save targets, but yeah, technically better once you reach 4+ instead of 5+. T3 or less multi-wound is pretty infrequent ever since toughness boosts were factored into instant-death, but these same models also tend to have armour saves of 4+ or worse anyways... very, very few 2+ or 3+ save T3 multi-wound models out there. As for range, I think the last time I saw a Space Marine without his own Pimp Pod was about 2 years ago. No wait... I've also seen them riding bikes and wolves.

 Btothefnrock wrote:
Why all the hate on Plasma Cannons? Point for Point, (so long as the template is hitting 2 models) they are the best heavy weapons out there for marines....... what is the issue people are having with them?

Everyone afraid of the scatter chance? It's not all that bad on the table- Most of the time it will hit something...


Otherwise, I tend to go plasma on everything other than Bikes and Grav Devs. Those two platforms shine for grav, while all others pay the tax for the extra range/shots of not moving.

Because plasma cannons are awful. That's why we hate them.

Has anyone else been trying Plasma Cannons lately? I run some in my Gladius, and they seem to always do very well.

Yes, many opponents will spread their guys out to mitigate the effect, but isn't that a good thing in the long run? Forcing the opponents units to spread out due to fear rather than strategy? Not to mention forcing deep strikers to run rather than fire, and other uses.

I faced off against Plasma Cannons once.

Thing is, they were against my Orks and it was Crimson Fists w/ Pedro so PE to re-roll gets hot, scatter and wounds might have influenced the results by a significant margin. That's why I'm a little hesitant, they were great against me but there was a defining factor behind them.

On bikes, there's no contest: gravguns are better. They're good against units with 4+ armor, and you can use your twinlinked bolters against squishier targets.

On footslogging marines, I favor Plasma. It's more of an "anti-everything" gun. More importantly, you can move and still fire 2 shots at 12".

And you can factor in rerolls if it's a gladius or ultramarines... Which make the plasma more stable

@Plasma cannons
The problem with plasma cannons is a multi tiered problem which can pretty much be summed up in low damage to cost. This is not as true in Inquisition where they can be fielded in all plasma cannon units for a fairly cheap price point with access to numerous ways to increase the units effectiveness.

A more complete analysis of the plasma cannon requires the question to be asked what is a "good" weapon. A good weapon must be one of the two following; 1) extremely high damage to cost against an important target group (ie grav and melta) and/or 2) have high damage to cost ratio against a wide range of targets (ie scatter lasers). The plasma cannon doesn't have enough shots to deal a lot of damage to most targets, ie it is poor against AV12+, MC, GMC, SHs, most infantry, artillery, high cover save, etc. Really the only target plasma cannons are good against are infantry with 2+ saves. They are usually only decent against 3+ saves for the cost as if the opponent is bunched up enough for you to consistently get more than 1 model in the blast they will usually have cover saves. The math can be done to show this and I have done it before but it comes down to single shot weapons are usually worse than multi shot weapons even for large blast weapons this is usually true but for small blast weapons this is especially true. To add insult to injury the small blast cannot even be snap fired. Thus you cannot even try for damage on flyers and invisible units.