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With their range having been extended, I'm wondering if now is the time to go heavy on flamer weapons, what with their ability to auto-hit. I'm not going to use them for everything, but I'm seriously considering strapping my all of my Terminators and Terminator lord with combi-flamers, getting a Defiler with the twin heavy flamers, and giving a flamer to Havoc champions. My armies are generally already heavily geared towards melee (Maulerfiends, princes, berzerkers), so this strikes me as a good fit, but I'm not sure.

Flamers don't generally integrate well with melee. You end up flaming what you're trying to charge, which just ends up increasing your charge distance.

Plasma bomb is generally what people do with chaos terminators, but if you're doing melee-focused ones instead, combi-bolters get 4 shots at 24" on terminators and mean you can come down 9" from your primary target and then shoot a bunch of shots at something else in their army, which works much better than trying to shoot the same thing you want to charge.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Flamers don't generally integrate well with melee. You end up flaming what you're trying to charge, which just ends up increasing your charge distance.

Plasma bomb is generally what people do with chaos terminators, but if you're doing melee-focused ones instead, combi-bolters get 4 shots at 24" on terminators and mean you can come down 9" from your primary target and then shoot a bunch of shots at something else in their army, which works much better than trying to shoot the same thing you want to charge.

I agree with the principle. But if you're going to fire at one unit then charge a different one - why not kit the Termies out with combi-flamers (or combi-plasma) to do so...?

Because those only have 12" range (you *can* fire the plasma at something outside that range, but you lose half the shots, so it's a massive loss). Finding a place to bring down a squad of termies against something worth charging is hard enough against a good player; trying to do that where you can get another unit within 12" is usually going to be impossible.

So you tend to either point for shooting, in which case you go combi-plasma slaanesh with chainaxes and shoot twice then if you happen to have something to charge why not, or combat-focused with combi-bolters to shoot something not what you're charging.

Flamers also have the particular problem of being bad at killing anything but chaff because of the lack of AP, which makes them a bad fit with terminators, which are too expensive to be wasting on that duty. And even further, chaos terminators are a prime platform for prescience, at which point you're hitting at such a high rate that the auto-hitting from the flamer is largely wasted.

I mean, if you want to do it, go ahead and do it, and if you happen to come up against that 150 gaunt list, you'll go to town. But it's not a very optimal choice for the unit.

I guess it comes down to "Do you like your odds of wounding your targets?"

I feel like flamer spam are best for vehicle units and less for infantry. Infantry usually get one shot off at best, then get tied up in combat or get shot to shreds. Vehicles on the other hand are more likely to remain intact and can take greater advantage of the fact that even if they're bracketed that any lower BS characteristic doesn't matter since they'll still hit at full capacity. Furthermore, unlike most infantry units, you can shoot into combat, which makes charging them a risk beyond just overwatch. Part of the reason why Kustom Boosta Blastas are being taken in Ork armies is because of this.

Flamer are still the same ole meh they always have been. Just now they have an extra 4" of meh. Heavy flamers are a bit more excitng due to the extra strength and ap, but they've always been more exciting than normal flamers.
Flamers still just aren't what they used to be and unless you've got a way to capitalise on them such as Ebon Chalice flamer strat to auto max hit, they're swingy.

They didn't get extra damage like Meltas or heavy bolters. No extra shots like multimelta.
What flamers needed to really buff them was to be able to ignore cover benefits.

Heavy flamers at 5 points are extremely good now.

No, now is not the time to go full flamer.

Flamers have been bad more often than they've been good.

I suppose if you magnetized everything you can take advantage of this small window for roughly equivalent performance. But gluing them on doesn't feel like the best way to handle GW's history.

Yeah, 100% true. ALWAYS magnetize expensive stuff with multiple loadouts.

Alternatively, play with people who are fine with you saying "all these are flamers".

Those are the people you are going to have fun playing with anyway.

My brother always, always makes sure to have a Flamer in every single Valhallans squad, you see, the order: Fire on my Command is quite simply gorgeous... Flamers don't need to roll, so they don't toast their buddies... The fear of being roasted out of turn, usually holds back some of the squishier assault armies until they thin the nearby squads too...