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There's lots of talk about Melta's low strength being lacklustre against vehicles.

As a quick patch to the Melta rule, this could help somewhat:

Weapons with [MELTA X] in their profile are known as Melta weapons. Each time an attack made with such a weapon targets a unit within half that weapon’s range, that attack’s Damage and Strength characteristic is increased by the amount denoted by ‘x’.

For most Melta weapons, this will push the wound roll against most vehicles up a pip making them more reliable if you take the risk of getting so close.

I mentioned this exact same thing awhile ago after the lackluster 10th Melta rules were first revealed as well, as it is indeed a sweetly simple solution towards making Meltas feel more like the true AV weapon they were in prior editions. My post was in the 10th edition rumor thread and was more of a "why did not GW do this already, it would have been so easy?" type post, so I highly endorse this proposed rule!

It's a simple fix and probably in the right range of power, gonna give it a try for sure.

I like it. Simple and effective

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Just chiming in to echo the others. Good approach. I'm fine needing to get close with melta, but I want to wound their target reliably once I do so.

This does sound like the best way to give melta keyword some bite back. I also like how it gives some extra knobs to twist on the X of Melta X to tweak different models, or special abilities.

Needs some work but not terrible.

I'd rather it just be a +1 to wound instead of the S bonus

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Needs some work but not terrible.

I'd rather it just be a +1 to wound instead of the S bonus

That might be a better way to handle it. I don't think I'd ever want to get more or less than a +1 to the to-wound roll for getting close with melta, so there's probably no big need to tie it to the Strength stat. Plus, that would avoid (possibly non-existant?) situations where you want a weapon to do a bunch of bonus melta damage but don't necessarily want that weapon to go up in strength by an amount equal to the bonus damage.

+1 to wound at melta strengths is more dramatic than the strength bonus, but also has the drawback that then potential unit perks like "+1 to wound vehicle" or general +1 wound buffs will end up useless on the weapon type, of which would be carried by units that are most likely to have such an ability.

A strength bonus is just a base stat bonus, which is representative of the power of the weapon and has less unusual interactions.

 Daba wrote:
+1 to wound at melta strengths is more dramatic than the strength bonus, but also has the drawback that then potential unit perks like "+1 to wound vehicle" or general +1 wound buffs will end up useless on the weapon type, of which would be carried by units that are most likely to have such an ability.

A strength bonus is just a base stat bonus, which is representative of the power of the weapon and has less unusual interactions.

There's not a lot of +1 to wound buffs, so this criticism is pretty invalid.

Give them Anti-Vehicle X.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Give them Anti-Vehicle X.

Yeah because monsters shouldn't feel that burn more at half range

Monstrous Creatures shouldn't have a privilege vs Melta

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Daba wrote:
+1 to wound at melta strengths is more dramatic than the strength bonus, but also has the drawback that then potential unit perks like "+1 to wound vehicle" or general +1 wound buffs will end up useless on the weapon type, of which would be carried by units that are most likely to have such an ability.

A strength bonus is just a base stat bonus, which is representative of the power of the weapon and has less unusual interactions.

There's not a lot of +1 to wound buffs, so this criticism is pretty invalid.

Taking the example of the Storm Speeder Thunderstrike:
Thunderstrike: Each time this model has shot, select one
enemy Monster or Vehicle unit that was hit by one or more
attacks made by this model this phase. Until the end of the
phase, each time a friendly Adeptus Astartes unit makes
a ranged attack that targets that enemy unit, add 1 to the
Wound roll.

For this ability's chosen target, vehicles and monsters, the ability would be completely useless for it's intended target using weapons that are clearly meant to take advantage from it.

So the small number (but not that small) makes the critisism more valid. The buffs are generally part of abilities which aren't meant to stack with others of a similar design or characters, but are meant to stack with a relatively common weapon type doing it's normal thing.

If we all expect melta to be good against vehicles the better and more intuitive thing would be Anti vehicle X+

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Daba wrote:
+1 to wound at melta strengths is more dramatic than the strength bonus, but also has the drawback that then potential unit perks like "+1 to wound vehicle" or general +1 wound buffs will end up useless on the weapon type, of which would be carried by units that are most likely to have such an ability.

A strength bonus is just a base stat bonus, which is representative of the power of the weapon and has less unusual interactions.

There's not a lot of +1 to wound buffs, so this criticism is pretty invalid.

It's a valid thing to keep in mind, but you're right about such abilities being pretty rare. Also, I feel like the intent of a strength boost is essentially just to give the melta a +1 to wound (you're probably not boosting the strength enough to suddenly wound your target on 2 better rather than 1 better). So from that perspective, making melta not stack with other sources of +1 to wound is inkeeping with the general design philosophy of not letting modifiers stack in 40k.

The Deer Hunter wrote:If we all expect melta to be good against vehicles the better and more intuitive thing would be Anti vehicle X+

Well, I do expect melta to be good against vehicles, but I don't expect it to be significantly worse against non-vehicles. Unless there's lore I'm unaware of explaining why a melta would be worse at burning through, for instance, a tyranid's chitin than a rhino's hull, it seems weird to not buff meltas against non-vehicle targets.

It's not like a haywire weapon that's specifically good against machines but not especially good against organics.

As much as I like the OPs proposed rule, I do think it is intentional that Melta weapons didn't get a huge buff for 10th. The whole point of increasing the Toughness scale was to make vehicles and monsters harder to wound.
Melta weapons are pretty common, so if you make them still able to wound big tough units on 3+, that lessens the impact of increasing T across the game.

Forcing lists to take dedicated anti-tank/anti-monster level weapons feels more fluffy, even if it puts melta (and plasma) in a weird place.

I think what it does is create a new niche for Melta to fill.
Instead of being a go-to anti-tank/monster weapon, it's more of a light-vehicle/heavy-infantry killer.
Melta is usually S9 now, so still good vs T8 and lower, which there are plenty of those units now.

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 Daba wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Daba wrote:
+1 to wound at melta strengths is more dramatic than the strength bonus, but also has the drawback that then potential unit perks like "+1 to wound vehicle" or general +1 wound buffs will end up useless on the weapon type, of which would be carried by units that are most likely to have such an ability.

A strength bonus is just a base stat bonus, which is representative of the power of the weapon and has less unusual interactions.

There's not a lot of +1 to wound buffs, so this criticism is pretty invalid.

Taking the example of the Storm Speeder Thunderstrike:
Thunderstrike: Each time this model has shot, select one
enemy Monster or Vehicle unit that was hit by one or more
attacks made by this model this phase. Until the end of the
phase, each time a friendly Adeptus Astartes unit makes
a ranged attack that targets that enemy unit, add 1 to the
Wound roll.

For this ability's chosen target, vehicles and monsters, the ability would be completely useless for it's intended target using weapons that are clearly meant to take advantage from it.

So the small number (but not that small) makes the critisism more valid. The buffs are generally part of abilities which aren't meant to stack with others of a similar design or characters, but are meant to stack with a relatively common weapon type doing it's normal thing.

You gave one example when there's typically more bonuses to hit. I'd argue it's not valid.

The one issue with messing with the melta rule is that there are several melta weapons in the game, so it has to be done in a way that doesn't cause problems elsewhere.

In this case, my worry would be the Knight thermal spears which are much longer ranger and would have an easy time getting the melta bonus.

The Deer Hunter wrote:
If we all expect melta to be good against vehicles the better and more intuitive thing would be Anti vehicle X+

Please, no Monstrous Creature privilege

 Galef wrote:
As much as I like the OPs proposed rule, I do think it is intentional that Melta weapons didn't get a huge buff for 10th. The whole point of increasing the Toughness scale was to make vehicles and monsters harder to wound.
Melta weapons are pretty common, so if you make them still able to wound big tough units on 3+, that lessens the impact of increasing T across the game.

I agree that it was an intentional choice on GW's part, but I also feel like it was probably a bad choice. Meltaguns are and have always been one of the higher-end good-against-vehicles guns. Making that no longer the just feels wrong the same way making lasguns excellent anti-monster guns would feel weird. Plus, we have factions like sisters who really depend on melta to deal with tanks and are probably going to really suffer and skew or semi-skew lists.

If they wanted to make tanks more durable but leave meltas good against tanks, one of the most obvious ways to handle that would be to make meltas good vs tanks but also expensive. But instead we got the new points system where they can't really do that, so... I try not to be overly gripey about GW, but this does just feel like a series of weird/bad design choices.

Forcing lists to take dedicated anti-tank/anti-monster level weapons feels more fluffy, even if it puts melta (and plasma) in a weird place.

Counterpoint: Melta should *be* the dedicated anti-tank choice. And further, removing meltas from the list of viable choices means lowered list diversity because you're forced to take the options that actually work against tanks instead. Same issue with drukhari blasters. GW didn't expand my interesting choices; they just made it so I have to spam ravagers and scourges so I can handle tanks because sprinkling blasters and blast pistols throughout the army is no longer viable.

I think what it does is create a new niche for Melta to fill.
Instead of being a go-to anti-tank/monster weapon, it's more of a light-vehicle/heavy-infantry killer.
Melta is usually S9 now, so still good vs T8 and lower, which there are plenty of those units now.
-

I've seen this argument made a couple of times, and I want to respectfully disagree. The problem is that it doesn't really create a "new niche" because you're probably better off just skipping meltas and going for the good anti-tank guns instead because those guns are probably also good against your low toughness vehicles. Taking a meltagun is a gamble on whether or not your opponent will bring some nice, squishy sentinels (or whatever) you can go after. Taking a lascannon is a safe bet because it can handle that sentinel or its chimera, russ, and baneblade friends all reasonably well. So again, we're not making meltas more interesting by limiting their list of viable targets; we're just making them less appealing next to something like a lascannon.


The meltagun also probably loses out to the lascannon as an anti-heavy infantry gun (because range) and against the plasma gun (because more shots/range). And if it doesn't get outperformed by the plasma gun as an anti-infantry gun, then I think reasonable people could argue that's potentially a problem in its own right.

Personally meltas and krak missiles should have moved up to S10.

 Tyran wrote:
The one issue with messing with the melta rule is that there are several melta weapons in the game, so it has to be done in a way that doesn't cause problems elsewhere.

In this case, my worry would be the Knight thermal spears which are much longer ranger and would have an easy time getting the melta bonus.

For more powerful melta weapons, adding strength has a diminishing effect against most normal targets. For the Thermal Spear in particular, with it's large Melta bonus, getting it also as strength only affects commonly: T12 vehicles and monsters by a single pip (these are relatively common), and T7 and T8 light vehicles/heavy infantry by the same amount - against T6 or lower it's unchanged, and against T10-11 it's unchanged. Where they do get a more disproportionate bonus is various super-heavy vehicles that are T13+, but for these heavier melta weapons, it's arguably a feature rather than a bug as these seem to be even more an intended target for the very heavy melta weapons and getting relatively closer to those will be a bigger factor (I imagine), however it is one area which is worth watching for this.

At the risk of asking the obvious, have we actually seen enough Melta in play to know they are not doing well against tanks and monsters? Obviously, GW has pulled them back from their 9th edition effectiveness by only adding 1 point of Strength while their targets have gained multiple points of Toughness. But does that mean armies using mass melta as their AT are actually not being effective?

Inquiring minds want to know?

I will add that with the move towards more heavy platform mounted AT over melta, that vehicle mounted multi-meltas probably should have received a Strength boost above 9 to reflect their stronger power reserves.

The problem with melta isn't their damage output but the issue that they are inconsistent.

They wound of 5+ but their Ap-4 and DD6+2 (when in half range) means every 5+ is likely going to hurt a lot.

Most people want them to make them more reliable by increasing their strength or giving them anti-vehicle, which sure is fine.

But a reliable gun with Ap-4 and DD6+2 is going to potentially be a balance issue and definitely a lethality issue (specially for multi-meltas that have twice the shots).

alextroy wrote:At the risk of asking the obvious, have we actually seen enough Melta in play to know they are not doing well against tanks and monsters? Obviously, GW has pulled them back from their 9th edition effectiveness by only adding 1 point of Strength while their targets have gained multiple points of Toughness. But does that mean armies using mass melta as their AT are actually not being effective?

Inquiring minds want to know?

I will add that with the move towards more heavy platform mounted AT over melta, that vehicle mounted multi-meltas probably should have received a Strength boost above 9 to reflect their stronger power reserves.

Fair questions that I can't answer. What I can say is that melta looks anemic enough on paper to have me hesitant to play with the sisters army I'd been excitedly assembling. I was really looking forward to having sisters hopping out of immolators, but not so much when all their melta is fishing for 5s against enemy armor.

Tyran wrote:The problem with melta isn't their damage output but the issue that they are inconsistent.

They wound of 5+ but their Ap-4 and DD6+2 (when in half range) means every 5+ is likely going to hurt a lot.

Most people want them to make them more reliable by increasing their strength or giving them anti-vehicle, which sure is fine.

But a reliable gun with Ap-4 and DD6+2 is going to potentially be a balance issue and definitely a lethality issue (specially for multi-meltas that have twice the shots).

My first thought when they previewed the dark eldar blaster was that I would have been willing to trade some of the damage for a more reliable to-wound roll. While capping the damage done by melta against vehicles feels weird in general, I think I still feel the same way with meltas. If they set the damage to a flat value like 4 or something (4+ bonus damage at close range?) but upped the strength to 14 (like they did with heat lances), I'd probably like them more.

It takes fewer mental gymnastics for me to think of meltas as something that reliably does moderate damage to vehicles than to think of them as weapons that usually do nothing but occassionally do major damage.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Yeah because monsters shouldn't feel that burn more at half range

Monstrous Creatures shouldn't have a privilege vs Melta

And then Plasma gets Anti-Monster.

Each weapon gets its niche.

I'm gonna be the voice of dissent here I think, I actually don't mind what they've done with melta weapons - I say that as someone who plays nearly all the imperial factions.

Everyone seems to be fixated on the wound roll that melta now suffers on, this is by design. They needed to tone down melta, it still has AP-4 and very good damage especially in half range.

For the game to be balanced (I know they done f'd up the points and various faction rules) you need to avoid having options that are catch all better versions of other things. If you make melta be super good at wounding as well as AP and damage it will be the only option taken.

In many imperium units where the meltagun is an option the other choices are a flamer or a plasmagun - the meltagun needs to be balanced against these. The plasma has been toned down so that it is poor at killing vehicles and best into medium/heavy infantry, the meltagun isn't super reliabe but is still very dangerous against larger targets - give it +1 wound or something similar and it becomes the only option.
This kind of problem has only been compounded by GW's bloody stupid decision to force PL on us making all upgrades free meaning that those options need to be semi balanced against each other for it to work at all.

Lastly a quick note on the lascannon (generally considered a good AT weapon) against the multimelta (now considered bad).

Lets assume they are at 18" range so no melta bonus, on todays tables its not difficult to get within 18".
Lets target a landraider, a decent representative hard tank target.

I like to do my head mathhammer starting with 36 attacks as its easy to do the math on the fly.

Lets start with 36 3+ to hit lascannons.
1 attack each gives us 24 hits, wounding on 4+ gives us 12 wounds, saving on 5+ give us 8D6+8 damage going through.
Then the multimelta.
2 attacks each gives us 48 hits, wounding on 5+ gives us 16 wounds, saving on 6+ gives us just over 13D6 damage through.

Obviously different toughness, invulnerable saves, cover, hit mods and ranges come into play for and against the different weapon options - but hopefully this helps illustrate that whilst a lower STR may make it a worse weapon it does make it a bad weapon and it certainly a very viable choice especially in marines who have easy access to wound rerolls.

 WisdomLS wrote:

Lastly a quick note on the lascannon (generally considered a good AT weapon) against the multimelta (now considered bad).

Lets assume they are at 18" range so no melta bonus, on todays tables its not difficult to get within 18".
Lets target a landraider, a decent representative hard tank target.

I like to do my head mathhammer starting with 36 attacks as its easy to do the math on the fly.

Lets start with 36 3+ to hit lascannons.
1 attack each gives us 24 hits, wounding on 4+ gives us 12 wounds, saving on 5+ give us 8D6+8 damage going through.
Then the multimelta.
2 attacks each gives us 48 hits, wounding on 5+ gives us 16 wounds, saving on 6+ gives us just over 13D6 damage through.

Obviously different toughness, invulnerable saves, cover, hit mods and ranges come into play for and against the different weapon options - but hopefully this helps illustrate that whilst a lower STR may make it a worse weapon it does make it a bad weapon and it certainly a very viable choice especially in marines who have easy access to wound rerolls.

Hello, thanks for giving your thoughts. There are a few things to consider:

You have the lascannon wounding on 4+ and multimelta on 5+, but realistically against most 'tank' targets, it's the lascannon wounding on 3+ and the multimelta on 5+; the example is accurate for Land Raiders and a few other hard targets, but a lot of 'tanks' and heavy walkers sit on the T10-11 range. I will give that T12 and T9 are common enough on vehicles to also be realistic common targets, however with the OP patch, the wound roll of the multimelta is still the same as before against T12, but against T10-11 they are evened to be only 'one' different or the same (i.e. 3+ and 4+ rather than the 3+ and 5+ it currently is), albeit that is in 'melta' range that's even shorter it doesn't change it too drastically, but gives more reliable reward for the risk.

Furthermore, the lascannon having a longer range is a bigger deal. Range means the bearers can be kept safer, and also have more targets and shoot more over a course of a game.

While against T12, the example you had multimeltas averaging 9 or so more wounds; against T10-11, the lascannon averages either 47 wounds (more than the multimeltas). Throwing the examples in unitcrunch:

Lascannon vs Leman Russ equivalent
Expected result 47
Mean 47.8

Multimelta vs Leman Russ equivalent
Expected result* 46
Mean 46.8

All while being able to shoot from more than twice as far away.

However, the main problem is that in practice, you're not bearing that many Multimeltas in Melta range (where they do have an advantage), so there's a significant risk your units fail to connect at all and sitting dangerously close.

(to note - with the suggestion in the OP, there's no difference for shooting at targets out of melta range - the aim was to bring more reliability when you do take the risk and making the weapons much more asymmetric - very devastating high reward, high risk melta vs reliable, less risk but (somewhat) lower reward for lascannon.)

I'd certainly agree that the lascannon is better into a wider array of targets, anything T10/11 especially or targets with decent Invul saves.

Range is also a big factor, I feel that meltaguns and multimeltas are usually found on more mobile units designed to get closer whilst a lascannon is often on a backfield unit.

my main point was that its a very fine line to tread to make these standard weapons all have use cases. I think they've actually done pretty well with the melta selection.

Obviously if we were still in the sane world of painting points for options of different power I'd put the lascannon at 5pts more than the MM.
Unfortunately we can only hope that GW has costed them appropriately in their PL guesses - there aren't many platforms where a lascannon and multimelta are interchangable options (devastators are the only one that springs to mind) and I think meltaguns are in a good place when compared to flamers and plasmaguns.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Yeah because monsters shouldn't feel that burn more at half range

Monstrous Creatures shouldn't have a privilege vs Melta

And then Plasma gets Anti-Monster.

Each weapon gets its niche.

That makes just as little sense.