Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey there!

Is anyone aware from a lore/game play stand point if any regiments or local PDFs are in the habit of equipping individual squads with lSW something akin to a fully automatic Las gun?

I appriciate that you can attach various weapons such as grenade launchers, flames, plasma guns but there doesn't appear to be any form of LSW which would make sense from a more modern ish based cadian regiment.

Best you got are hotshot volley gun for the Scions, I doubt it's much of a stretch to assume the regular las weapon equivalent exists.

It may not be seen as needed. Depending on the fluff and Mark of lasguns, they are pretty much an LSW each. Full auto, good ammo capacity and accurate for suppression or for aimed fire.

Do the Krieg squads still get access to heavy stubber teams in the LMG role?

 Flinty wrote:
It may not be seen as needed. Depending on the fluff and Mark of lasguns, they are pretty much an LSW each. Full auto, good ammo capacity and accurate for suppression or for aimed fire.

Do the Krieg squads still get access to heavy stubber teams in the LMG role?

Yes and No. Grenadiers do, but regular korpsmen jump from lasgunners to "twin fifty" twin-linked heavy stubbers on a crew-served mount, which is most definitely not a 'light' anything.

cmurphy96 wrote:
Hey there!

Is anyone aware from a lore/game play stand point if any regiments or local PDFs are in the habit of equipping individual squads with lSW something akin to a fully automatic Las gun?

I appriciate that you can attach various weapons such as grenade launchers, flames, plasma guns but there doesn't appear to be any form of LSW which would make sense from a more modern ish based cadian regiment.

Lsw as in one man or teams? Heavy Stubbers are Kinda the collective name gw gave them and to my knowledge the only base squad that can field them are cultists if you don't include FW renegades. (they have them as teams and on their cultists aswell and every inf squad that is no marauder or ogryn gets access to them.)

If you include fw renegades then they can field the most stubbers but again if you don't count the heavy stubber one man option renegades also got access to autoguns which seem to be (atleast for vraksians) comparable to battlefield rifles (like the g3 or the SG 90)

Heavy stubbers, perhaps? As far as las-weapons go, multilasers or hotshot volley guns are the only other options, and GW rarely seems to put them in guardsman units in game or lore (barring Scions)

Thanks for all the replies!

It would be a bit redundant overall if lasguns can act in that role already but I quite like the modelling idea of having an LSW style weapon included with a few of my infantry sections.

I just feel like particularly for a mechanised regiment or something akin to airborme it wouldn't always be practical for a big 50 cal or bolter to be lugged around for additional fire power.

I'm pretty lazy too and quite like dedicated fire support groups for the likes of heavy weapon support for my guard.

Tripod mounted multi-lasers exist in the fluff (and can be seen in the youtube series, astartes episode 3). That would be the closest thing in the lore to a crew serviced las-machinegun. For crew serviced weapons capable of high rates of fire and infantry supression, see heavy bolters or heavy stubbers. Heavy stubbers are extremely similar to a modern M2 machinegun.

You have to remember that the guard are fighting massive monstrosities in the lore, and a 50 caliber machinegun may fill the role of a "light machinegun" in a modern military.

Autocannons in the lore are strongly hinted to be at least 20mm.

Would not the humble heavy bolter do?

You could even model a counts as heavy bolter using a heavy stubber.

Due to the nature of 40k universe, the most common "light" support weapon is the Heavy Stubber. Most Imperial Guard forces don't use them as a .50 is not powerful enough for the Monstrosities they tend to face. For example, the most common Xenos threat faced by the Imperium are the Orks, which can easily absord a few .50 bullets. This is why in the Guard the Heavy Bolter is the go to anti infantry weapon, which lodges in the orks body and then explodes causes massive damage that not even an Ork can shrug off.

But back to the OPs question. Heavy Stubbers are very common in the PDF. This is because the main threat many PDFs will face is other humans, either rebels or minor uprisings.

If you want to have a few in your IG army then you could always consider allying in some Genestealer Cult, which is possible via the Brood Brothers rule. Genestealer Cult get basic troops, Neophyte hybrids, which are Guardsmen in all but name. I find them very good for representing PDF forces. They don't get access to the exotic special weapons like Plasma and Melta, But they still get Grenade Launchers and Flamers. Also they can can take 2 Heavy Stubbers per squad, and each squad can be between 10-20 men. They they don't have orders but they do have +1 Ld, kinda represents their lower training/experience but that they are fighting on home turf Best thing is you don't even need to buy new models, just use your Guardsmen and kitbash a few man portable Heavy Stubbers

Haha this is true in terms of the usual tyes of creatures and other enemies the guard face off against. But when has that ever meant the boots on the ground get given efficient weapons to deal with them hahaha.

I don't have an issue with heavy stubbers/bolters being used in a support role other than the size of the heavy bolter that you can currently get in the HW box.

Thay thing is rediculous!

w1zard wrote:
Autocannons in the lore are strongly hinted to be at least 20mm.

Provided that the standard boltgun fires the equivalent of a 20mm grenade, the autocannon should be at least 75mm or even 90+mm.

There are novels where it is said they fire 30mm. Meanwhile the heavy bolter rounds are the same caliber as the main gun of a Bradley or a LAV.

It might be cool to model up volley guns and use the grenade launcher profile. The frag profile could represent a setting where it fires very quickly at low power, where the krak profile could represent a setting where both barrels are fired simultaneously at maximum power.

 AtoMaki wrote:
Provided that the standard boltgun fires the equivalent of a 20mm grenade, the autocannon should be at least 75mm or even 90+mm.

Boltguns are stated to fire .75 caliber, which is 19.05mm but it isn't really a bullet it is a gyrojet round so the recoil is far less then it would be for a solid slug round. I can see autocannons firing anywhere from 20mm to 30mm solid slug round, but anything more than that and the recoil starts getting to be a little too much, even for a tripod mounted support system.

 Bobthehero wrote:
There are novels where it is said they fire 30mm. Meanwhile the heavy bolter rounds are the same caliber as the main gun of a Bradley or a LAV.

Ok, that makes sense, but I always thought a heavy bolters rounds were somewhere around 1.00 caliber (25.4mm) with the gyrojet system accounting for the controllable recoil.

They are, the Bradley and LAV fire 25mm rounds

The autocannon is in a weird place, with str 7 it should really be some sort of 70+ mm gun usually mounted on ships, but its carried by infantrymen and tanks.

 Bobthehero wrote:
They are, the Bradley and LAV fire 25mm rounds

The autocannon is in a weird place, with str 7 it should really be some sort of 70+ mm gun usually mounted on ships, but its carried by infantrymen and tanks.

I'd think STR 6, AP -1, D2 for autocannons was ok, if the multilaser was 4 shots STR 5, AP 0, D1. Unfortunately a lot of the stats for crew mounted weapons are holdovers from previous editions where balance was a lot looser and GW doesn't seem to want to move away from the old stats.

I would really like to see crew served multilasers and heavy stubbers be options for IG and renegades.

But what about the single man LMG? Heavy 4 str 4 bladestorm? Str 3?

yes cultists have single man heavy stubbers that are sort of crap, but maybe humans could have something you could build a unit around.

Heavy 4 Str 4 no AP, like a non hotshot volley gun.

Taking the Heavy Stubber as a baseline machine gun, I would make a squad automatic Rapid Fire 2 (or maybe Heavy 3) Str 3 AP-. IRL Squad Automatics have the same calibre as the units rifles. The hot shot volleygun is described as having an extreme RoF, so Heavy 4 is too much.

The whole point of Squad Automatics and machine guns in general is suppression. Send out so many bullets the enemy keeps his head down. It's a pity there is no suppression mechanic in 40k.

I remember that in a White Dwarf the Heavy Bolter is described as like the gun on an Apache Helicopter. And that the Multilaser uses the same power-cells as a lascannon.

AFAIK there is no Imperial Guard RPK/M27/L86/etc equivalent really.

Now, nothing like an "LSW" is really mentioned, GW seems to lump a lot into the "heavy stubber" category, which is basically anything belt fed that's bigger than rifle and smaller than an Autocannon or Heavy Bolter. The As-mentioned Hot-shot volleyguns would be the next closest thing.

In general, most 40k infantry squads are portrayed in a manner centered around something akin to the typical WW2 infantry squad, with a central heavy weapons team that performs the bulk of the work supported by multiple riflemen with an NCO and a specialist weapon like a grenade launcher. It's a squad setup that predates the concept of something like an LSW for the most part really.

 Vaktathi wrote:
In general, most 40k infantry squads are portrayed in a manner centered around something akin to the typical WW2 infantry squad, with a central heavy weapons team that performs the bulk of the work supported by multiple riflemen with an NCO and a specialist weapon like a grenade launcher. It's a squad setup that predates the concept of something like an LSW for the most part really.

One thing I liked about the old Codex: Cityfight rules was that IG Infantry Squads could be split into combat squads similar to Marines. That way half the squad with the heavy bolter could lay down fire while the other half could maneuver up with the flamer. It was very thematic and helped make mixing short and long ranged weapons in a unit not a waste of points, but I imagine it might be hard to keep track of in a big modern game.

In the fluff all sorts of lasgun patterns exist so I don’t see why you couldn’t have it. As mentioned, volley guns or stubbers could work in-game, but if rules representation isn’t a must, you could just model it and field it as another lasgunner.
If you think about it, real LSWs tend to use the same ammo as the rifles, so it may not necessarily demand a unique profile outside an RPG setting, kinda like how autoguns and lasguns share the same stats. The potential for extra shots can be abstracted into something like FRFSRF since disciplined troops don’t roam around spraying full auto all the time.
Just my two thrones anyways; it’s what I’ve been doing to fit an lmg analog in my squads without sacrificing special weapon slots.

w1zard wrote:

 AtoMaki wrote:
Provided that the standard boltgun fires the equivalent of a 20mm grenade, the autocannon should be at least 75mm or even 90+mm.

Boltguns are stated to fire .75 caliber, which is 19.05mm but it isn't really a bullet it is a gyrojet round so the recoil is far less then it would be for a solid slug round. I can see autocannons firing anywhere from 20mm to 30mm solid slug round, but anything more than that and the recoil starts getting to be a little too much, even for a tripod mounted support system.

It the grimdark future recoil is not an issue.

Aren't there different types of projectile weapons to consider which all have different specialities.

Stubbers: Sub Pistols, Subguns, Heavy Stubbers
Autoguns: Autopistol, Autogun, Autocannons
Bolters: Bolt Pistol, Bolter, Heavy Bolter.

Las: Las Pistol, Lasgun, Multilaser, Lascannon
Hotshot Las: HS Laspistol, HS Lasgun, HS Volleygun

Something like a HS Volley gun or a heavy stubber is probably closest to what you want, but I do think that probably a grenade launcher with just the frag profile, but with a supression rule would be best as a proxy.

There are heavy lasguns in the setting, see the various supplement books to the Dark Heresy and Only War roleplay systems that Fantasy Flight Games used to make. It's just for the purposes of the tabletop game there's not much a difference between them and a basic lasgun.

There are also lascarbines, bullpup style lasguns, machinepistol style lasguns, musket style lasguns, and so on and so forth.

Hell, one could make a basic lasgun in to an LSW probably just by using a heavier barrel and a backpack power supply that takes up part of their standard issue kit backpack.

Heavy stubbers are definitely the closest thing at present to a squad machine gun, although I agree that a heavy-barrelled LSW variant of the lasgun is unlikely to be sufficiently different in game terms to warrant a separate profile.

Personally, I think they should add heavy stubbers as a special weapon option for Guard, and they should change the heavy stubber to rapid fire 2 across the board for all armies using the weapon. Then we can model infantry squads in a way that matches modern infantry (from about WWI onwards!), which will also look awesome! This would require an unlikely new kit under the current climate sadly.

 Melissia wrote:
There are heavy lasguns in the setting, see the various supplement books to the Dark Heresy and Only War roleplay systems that Fantasy Flight Games used to make. It's just for the purposes of the tabletop game there's not much a difference between them and a basic lasgun.

There are also lascarbines, bullpup style lasguns, machinepistol style lasguns, musket style lasguns, and so on and so forth.

Hell, one could make a basic lasgun in to an LSW probably just by using a heavier barrel and a backpack power supply that takes up part of their standard issue kit backpack.

So rejigging a hotshot lasgun to fire a less intense shot more rapidly?