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This is probably a silly question, but I'd like to discuss it anyway.

"Smash" Captains appear to be a thing for Marine lists and generally they are equipped with Thunder Hammer/SS
The idea being that the drop in a go to smashing.

But here is something that keeps bothering me: With Iron Halo being standard, Captains having BS2+ and FLY, why not give them a Melta or Combi-Melta instead?
They'd only lose the 3++, but still have a 4++ and just that little extra threat. Played well, the Captains shouldn't be taking saves anyway due to being a Character
Aside from people being generally disappointed with Meltas (and 1-shot weapons in general), is there any other reason this isn't a good option?

Speaking from personal experience from my games with my sons at home, Characters with Melta equivalents tend to do well. We've tried Chaos Lord on Bike with Melta, Autarchs on bikes with Fusion, and my son's favorite HQ is a Salamander Jump Captain with Relicblade/Combi-melta

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Often the things Smash Captains charge are REALLY big and scary. If you charge a Knight Castellan, for example, even a single volcano lance shot can easily kill him if it gets through the save. if he gets lucky and rolls a 6 on overwatch, you want that 3++ save really, really bad.

Against Hemlock flyers, another common target for a Smash Captain, they auto-hit with S12 weapons... you want that 3++ invulnerable there too.

It's really important he be as durable as possible.

It can ve pulled off by using the sanctic halo, which does good work, however the issue is it's adding more and more value into your suicide bomber HQ.
I have found some fun pairing a TH/SS and Sanctic Halo/LC captain tag team, if only the TH, SS dude could be a LT life would be sweet.

Both fair points, although I believe the difference in the SS and Combi-Melta is only 4-5ppm difference, so not too much extra there.
I guess it comes down to what you value more, offense or defense.

And I've always believed that getting to attack in 2 turns is better than only attacking in 1 turn even with an extra shot

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For Vanilla Marines the Storm Shield lets you take the Shield Eternal instead, which halves all damage taken. That's huge, especially when the stuff you're hunting has some rather nasty guns.

I've had a lot of fun giving my Watch captain a jump pack, dual inferno pistols, and a Power maul. Shooty AND smashy.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I've had a lot of fun giving my Watch captain a jump pack, dual inferno pistols, and a Power maul. Shooty AND smashy.

You know that's an illegal loadout right?

Honour the chapter and only in death will always do better than a single melta shot so its probably going to be better to go for extra defense in most cases.

A combi melta smash cap would probably do better when there are no huge knight size targets wandering around, and you need a more general purpose character. A death watch cap could be quite potent with the SIA or you could try and use another defensive relic to try and have the best of both worlds.

Calling it now though - with hammers creeping into codex chaos the red corsairs will corner the market for combi melta hammer lords.

You're going to want that storm shield because you'll be using it more often than any gun.

Insularum wrote:
Honour the chapter and only in death will always do better than a single melta shot so its probably going to be better to go for extra defense in most cases.

A combi melta smash cap would probably do better when there are no huge knight size targets wandering around, and you need a more general purpose character. A death watch cap could be quite potent with the SIA or you could try and use another defensive relic to try and have the best of both worlds.

Calling it now though - with hammers creeping into codex chaos the red corsairs will corner the market for combi melta hammer lords.

If you run into IK with Space Marines, give up, the Knight will Death Grip the smash Captain dead no matter He has any kind of inv saves. And the Captain only has 4A, which means even He fight twice He is only generating 9dmg on the IK. not Even enough to degrade the Knight.

Death grip isn’t a problem. Just use “only in death” in response. A smash captain for a knight is a fair trade.

My marines routinely beat knights. Knights are really quite bad at the CA 18 missions. A Castellan is great for killing tanks but doesn’t actually kill infantry all that quickly, considering it’s a 600 point model. If it comes forward to contest objectives then it’ll go down to a combination of plasma, power fists and mortal wounds.

I must admit to using a knight myself though! A Krast Crusader is just awesome right now. Unlike a Castellan it’s worth it against basically any target, and it doesn't eat CPs anything like as quickly. There just isn’t a better anti tank option for marines.

Neophyte2012 wrote:

Insularum wrote:
Honour the chapter and only in death will always do better than a single melta shot so its probably going to be better to go for extra defense in most cases.

A combi melta smash cap would probably do better when there are no huge knight size targets wandering around, and you need a more general purpose character. A death watch cap could be quite potent with the SIA or you could try and use another defensive relic to try and have the best of both worlds.

Calling it now though - with hammers creeping into codex chaos the red corsairs will corner the market for combi melta hammer lords.

If you run into IK with Space Marines, give up, the Knight will Death Grip the smash Captain dead no matter He has any kind of inv saves. And the Captain only has 4A, which means even He fight twice He is only generating 9dmg on the IK. not Even enough to degrade the Knight.

With the right setup a BT Smashcaptain gets 6 attacks with reroll to wounds and extra hits on 6s. BA do even more but with worse durability. There's a reason Smashcaptains have been so prevalent.

Vanilla Captain witth a Jump Pack and Thunder Hammer, Armed with the Shield Eternal and Iron Resolve Warlord Trait is a beast.

Halving all damage taken, with extra toughness and wound and ability to regenerate wounds...

 Corennus wrote:
Vanilla Captain witth a Jump Pack and Thunder Hammer, Armed with the Shield Eternal and Iron Resolve Warlord Trait is a beast.

Halving all damage taken, with extra toughness and wound and ability to regenerate wounds...

But, you are also throwing your opponent a warlord point. I would not want my WL to be a smash cap. They tend to have high rates of mortality.

 iGuy91 wrote:

 Corennus wrote:
Vanilla Captain witth a Jump Pack and Thunder Hammer, Armed with the Shield Eternal and Iron Resolve Warlord Trait is a beast.

Halving all damage taken, with extra toughness and wound and ability to regenerate wounds...

But, you are also throwing your opponent a warlord point. I would not want my WL to be a smash cap. They tend to have high rates of mortality.

1VP to your opponent in exchange for their model doing most of the killing is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

The loss of the warlord is a problem to be fair. In the CA18 missions there aren't always too many VPs on offer (it actually varies a lot), and these secondaries can easily make the difference.

I stand by my Fist of Vengeance Primaris captain. He is my warlord but in theory doesn't need to be. I do find I give that point away quite often compared to people who have a stand-back farseer or something. But then that's not really an option for marines. Non-captain characters rarely even have invulnerable saves, so they are pretty vulnerable.

Mandragola wrote:
The loss of the warlord is a problem to be fair. In the CA18 missions there aren't always too many VPs on offer (it actually varies a lot), and these secondaries can easily make the difference.

I stand by my Fist of Vengeance Primaris captain. He is my warlord but in theory doesn't need to be. I do find I give that point away quite often compared to people who have a stand-back farseer or something. But then that's not really an option for marines. Non-captain characters rarely even have invulnerable saves, so they are pretty vulnerable.

When I'm playing Marines, more often than not I would expect my Warlord to die, whether they're in the back camping or a suicide unit. That's just the nature of the army. I plan around my opponent basically having a free VP because of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
When I'm playing Marines, more often than not I would expect my Warlord to die, whether they're in the back camping or a suicide unit. That's just the nature of the army. I plan around my opponent basically having a free VP because of it.

Yeah, I find this to be general true as well.
Although, my DW army is very unlikely to even give up WL, as it has 7 HQs. 4 are actually DW, 2 Smash Captains, 1 WatchMaster and 1 Librarian.
The WM is the WL, so most of the time, the Jump Capt are a bigger target (being up close)
My other 3 HQs are Dawneagle Shield Captains, which in addition to being beatsticks, have access to a 1CP Strat to become WL if the WM does die.

So as long as I have CPs (double Battalion DW and regain CP WL trait), My opponent will have to kill the WM and all 3 Shield Captains. If they can do that, I don't think giving up 1VP is going to make any difference as I'm probably losing pretty bad at that point already.

The way I have my list also answers my own original question. My 3 Shield Captains already have Salvo-launcher (with Melta missiles), so my 2 Jump Captains really need to be durable in their own rite. 3++ does this for them.

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The BT one doesn't have to be warlord as he can buy the Vigilus warlord trait.

Neophyte2012 wrote:

Insularum wrote:
Honour the chapter and only in death will always do better than a single melta shot so its probably going to be better to go for extra defense in most cases.

A combi melta smash cap would probably do better when there are no huge knight size targets wandering around, and you need a more general purpose character. A death watch cap could be quite potent with the SIA or you could try and use another defensive relic to try and have the best of both worlds.

Calling it now though - with hammers creeping into codex chaos the red corsairs will corner the market for combi melta hammer lords.

If you run into IK with Space Marines, give up, the Knight will Death Grip the smash Captain dead no matter He has any kind of inv saves. And the Captain only has 4A, which means even He fight twice He is only generating 9dmg on the IK. not Even enough to degrade the Knight.

A captain and some command points for a knight is a good trade, fighting up to 3 times in a phase and stacking psychic powers/stratagems/warlord traits can approach 25-30 wounds on a knight size target (might of heroes and either champion of humanity or imperiums sword if you want to calculate it, other codices have slight variations on this theme).

Back to op question - as with anything else its meta dependant. If your happy to find an alternate way to protect your captain then a melta would be fine, you may find though that this changes the playstyle away from a flat out damage dealer to a more conservative captain - which is fine if you don't want to spend all your command points in one fight phase.

ive really enjoyed ravenguard smashcaptains lately. He moves, advances and charges, rerolls charges and can't be overwatched. Gets around alot of annoying models/anti charge defences (flamers, tau overwatch. Then if you dont have to worry about overwatch you take the +1 to hit and wound.