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When cobbling up an Adeptus Astartes kill team, do you guys use the heavy bolter?

I find it's too expensive and I usually ditch it to make way for an additional tac marine or a bolter scout. I find a balance between bodies and special weapons is the optimal way to go.

Am I wrong? (Fairly new to KT.)

I have used one as a Heavy specialist in quite a few games.

When boosted by a Comms guy and using the "More Bullets" tactic, you can put out a decent amount of S5 AP-1 fire that can put some hurt on weak units.

Thing is, the Missile Launcher is so good, and the HB competes with it.

The HB isn’t a bad weapon, and can even be great against the lowest end models... but the ML is also really good against the HB’s ideal target, and is also good against everything else, too.

One-shotting a Tyranid Warrior is an unlikely but decently possible. 32%ish chance, if TW is unwounded and in the open. That’s without any buffs, either.

So, in general, I’d take ML wherever possible because they’re just better than HB.

I got comfortable using the heavy bolter from playing my CSM kill team. So I kinda like having a heavy bolter. Plus, it feels really wrong not having a machine gun type soldier in the team.

I have used one in an all scout squad. He is usually the first causality (he is an easier target than the missile launcher and camo cloak scout) so I haven't got much out of him. Hellfire Shells could be useful if my opponent's weren't aware of its existence and snipe him right away and Death Denied isn't needed. He is more useful than a basic scout with bolter or shotgun all the time though.

Overall, I find the Heavy Bolter in Kill Team to be a little tepid. The number of shots it puts out feels pretty low compared to many other weapons in a similar (long range dakka) role. Even with a MEQ WS range and cover make landing shots mediocre. You can be confident you are going to land a hit and get a Flesh Wound on most targets, but in Kill Team, there are a more than half a dozen weapons that would have got the kill instead. Which is where I think the problem is.

It is competing with the missile launcher where the points cost reduction isn't enough to compete with the launcher that is better at beefy targets and arguably better at grouped up squishy ones. I think just making the Heavy Bolter Heavy 4 would go a long way (average d6 hits of frag weapons). That isn't going to happen due to have tied Kill Team is to full 40k and how wide spread the Heavy Bolter is in full 40k.

The bigger issue is after playing Kill Team for a while is I think special/heavy weapons just don't cost enough points in general so players just load up on all them at much as possible depending on how many data sheets they can exploit. Most of the time a kill team of nearly all special/heavy weapons is only 1 or 2 units less than they would otherwise be and most, not all, factions can absorb the loss of bodies easy enough.

The problem with the heavy bolter is the roll to decide if you kill an enemy or just wound them. The missile launcher has DD6 (average D3.5), meaning multiple injury rolls and a very high probability of turning a successful wound into a dead model. The heavy bolter is only D1 which means you can only ever roll a single injury die and offer a 50/50 chance of survival. Even if you're lucky enough to hit and wound multiple times with your three shots any extra hits are discarded and you only get the single roll. And spreading your shots against multiple targets is both situational and unlikely to get multiple wounds.

Now, if you play with the obvious house rule that the "and then end the shooting sequence" line in the injury roll only ends the sequence for that particular wound and that any other wounds still require an injury roll the heavy bolter becomes a much more viable weapon. Now having multiple shots instead of a single powerful shot is a lot less of a liability and you can start to make an argument for the benefits of having the potential to spread your fire when needed.

Oooh. Lots of input. Thanks guys! Will read this soon as I get a breather. (Looong day entertaining guests.)


EDIT:

So sorry for the very late reply but my wife just opened a small restaurant and RL priorities came flooding in. :(

I've decided to buy an HB tac marine. I figured with auspex and comms support plus the Hellfire Round tactic would do wonders against an MEQ-heavy kill team.

Here's my kill team list (for core vanilla KT):


COST: 100
FACTION: Adeptus Astartes
COMMANDERS:

UNITS:

MODEL: Tactical Sergeant
COST: 15
SPECIALISM: Leader
LEVEL: 1
ABILITIES: Resourceful
WARGEAR: Plasma Pistol & Auspex, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades

MODEL: Tactical Marine Gunner
COST: 16
SPECIALISM: Sniper
LEVEL: 1
ABILITIES: Marksman
WARGEAR: Plasma Gun, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades

MODEL: Tactical Marine Gunner
COST: 16
SPECIALISM: Heavy
LEVEL: 1
ABILITIES: Relentless
WARGEAR: Heavy Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades

MODEL: Scout Gunner
COST: 17
WARGEAR: Missile Launcher, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Camo Cloak (Missile Launcher Only)

MODEL: Scout Gunner
COST: 17
WARGEAR: Missile Launcher, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Camo Cloak (Missile Launcher Only)

MODEL: Intercessor Sergeant
COST: 19
SPECIALISM: Comms
LEVEL: 1
ABILITIES: Scanner
WARGEAR: Bolt Rifle, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Sword, Auspex

Might probably do a video about my thought process in cobbling up this list. ^_^