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So the question is, do you fire your plasmaguns / pistols on overwatch?
You have a 1/6 chance to hit
You also have a 1/6 chance to overheat.
Rapidfiring gives 30% chance to hit and 30% chance to overheat.

Assuming you hit, then you probably have a 83% chance to do a wound
Assuming you overheat, then it is either a 33% or 66% chance you take a wound.

Perhaps you are more inclined to fire it if you think you can stop the enemy charge. If he is 8" away instead of 2" away.

Perhaps this is a little different if you have 3+ armor or 5+ armor. Also if you have 5+ armor you might know, just know that in assault you are gonna get raped, while those with 3+ armor, counter attack, pistol and CCW, might think they will live to see another day.

Even better if you are plague marines, as they have FNP. Conversely, firing against Plague marines, wracks, BA, your chance to wound goes down as the target has FNP.


No voting for Tau plasma weapons, there is no choice

For IG, we're dead either way, may as well take a few down with us on the way in. I know I've scored a lucky kill more than once with that logic.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
For IG, we're dead either way, may as well take a few down with us on the way in. I know I've scored a lucky kill more than once with that logic.

I think your chances of getting a kill are good if you overwatch the plasma, I just think your chances of getting an unlucky dead gunner are also an issue.

If Guard are beign charged, they are dead anyway. At least squads that are toting plasma around.

At a 500 point game I had 1 get squad with 2 plasma guns vs a daemon prince , we killed him on over watch alone with plasma guns , but I'm guard , we are expendable and might as well take one of the bastards with us

I think its simple.

Against an equal enemy, you would not, becuase you have 1/6 to hit either him or yourself, but against yours you gain no "wound save" if you roll a 1, he does.
Against a superior enemy-might as well, even though the odds are slightly in his favor, he is better anyway, so in the long run it pays off.

 Exergy wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
For IG, we're dead either way, may as well take a few down with us on the way in. I know I've scored a lucky kill more than once with that logic.

I think your chances of getting a kill are good if you overwatch the plasma, I just think your chances of getting an unlucky dead gunner are also an issue.

That's the thing though. Unless I'm getting charged by firewarriors or grots, those guardsmen are probably already dead. I don't care if the gunner get's hot, because he either tries to kill that crazed space marine running towards him and dies from gets hot, or he doesn't shoot, and gets to say hello to Mr.Chainsword.

There is literally no reason NOT to fire the plasma for IG. I can see spacemarines or something not wanting to fire, as they can actually survive a charge, but for a guardsman, he may as well go out in a blaze of glory.

Frost; "What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?"

Definitely fire the plasma guns. Against most targets, you are gonna be wounding them on a 2+ and deny their armor save. As a guard player, I have a pretty good chance of killing something worth equal or more points than the plasmaguard, so risking losing him is still worth it.

As a necron player, I don't have plasma. But if I did I would totally use them.
Its usually 2+ to wound and it ignores all armor. Why wouldn't I use it?

MrMoustaffa wrote:For IG, we're dead either way

For ANYONE they're dead either way.

The only thing that's going to be charging into close combat nowadays is a dedicated close combat unit. If you have plasma in your squad, that means you are not a dedicated assault units. Non-dedicated-assault units lose to dedicated assault units.

No matter the army.

But especially with guard, yeah...

As previously said by Mr.Mustafa said, if we are talking about IG plasmaguns overwatching then yes, they will be dead most times with this edition so it would be a waste not to fire them. After all it's better to die from a plasma overheat in your hands than to get caught by a frenzied khorne berserker in close combat or get gutted by a tyranids of any kind.
I would even most times fire plasma guns rapidly in overwatching with my CSMs.

I play Guard, if I don't shoot it the wielder is likely going to die anyway. If I played marines or something and it was in an assault squad or whatever, than I might not, but it would depend on the situation.

I have never understood the fear MEQ players have for "gets hot!". As an ork player I tend to fear it because I only get my craptastic 6+ save...but MEQs still have that 3+ to hide behind.

I would fire it just about every time...3+ still saves 66 percent of the time...and you have to roll a 1 first to make that save...

I have had my BA tac marine with a plasma gun AND my biker with a plasma gun both roll Gets Hot! and fail their armor saves and then the biker fail his FNP roll, one right after the other. What are the odds on that ? I dont know... but for some reason I almost never loose guardsman to Gets Hot due to usually using BiD, yet I loose marines left right and center to plasma. Probably why I wont ever take plasma weapons on a vehical. I dont need it doing the enemies work for him. I also have unusually bad dice rolls, always get the "you need new dice" advice, own enough dice for 4 games and still cant roll anything but 1s and 2s consistantly lol.

So here is my counter argument for always firing it.

You have a depleted 8 man Grey Hunter Squad with 2 plasma guns and a Wolf Guard with combi-Plasma

You are being charged by a 5 strong unit of Ogryns led by a lord commi with a fist. They are charging from 2" away, through cover, and they have not taken any wounds.

So you could take 6 plasma shots, almost certainly overheat, and potentially lose a GH. A GH that is going to have 3 attacks that will strike before the Ogryns.

I wouldnt use my plasma.

Use it or lose it. Guardsmen are dead anyway if something manages to charge them. Well, maybe not counting Tau Firewarriors...

 Exergy wrote:
So here is my counter argument for always firing it.

You have a depleted 8 man Grey Hunter Squad with 2 plasma guns and a Wolf Guard with combi-Plasma

You are being charged by a 5 strong unit of Ogryns led by a lord commi with a fist. They are charging from 2" away, through cover, and they have not taken any wounds.

So you could take 6 plasma shots, almost certainly overheat, and potentially lose a GH. A GH that is going to have 3 attacks that will strike before the Ogryns.

I wouldnt use my plasma.

However, those ogryn are T5, with 3 wounds apiece. Your main guys are only going to wound them on 5's, if they hit. Those plasma shots give you a chance of putting a couple of wounds on the ogryn, possibly giving you a chance to kill a whole extra ogryn before they even strike, which is important, because they can stomp most marines pretty well. Even there, I'd shoot plasma. Besides, doesn't your standard let you reroll 1's in the assault phase? That would mean you literally only have a 1 in 6 chance of failing your armor save.

 Ailaros wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:For IG, we're dead either way

For ANYONE they're dead either way.

The only thing that's going to be charging into close combat nowadays is a dedicated close combat unit. If you have plasma in your squad, that means you are not a dedicated assault units. Non-dedicated-assault units lose to dedicated assault units.

No matter the army.

But especially with guard, yeah...

A space marine command squad can have some plasma, and still be just fine in CC.

And put me in the always fire camp. I suppose there might be a case where I wouldn't want to, but it'd be a stretch.

If you plasma gunner is closest to the charging unit, having him die due to Gets Hot! might put you outside of charge range

 Exergy wrote:
So here is my counter argument for always firing it.

You have a depleted 8 man Grey Hunter Squad with 2 plasma guns and a Wolf Guard with combi-Plasma

You are being charged by a 5 strong unit of Ogryns led by a lord commi with a fist. They are charging from 2" away, through cover, and they have not taken any wounds.

So you could take 6 plasma shots, almost certainly overheat, and potentially lose a GH. A GH that is going to have 3 attacks that will strike before the Ogryns.

I wouldnt use my plasma.

That's a pretty terrible scenario but you might as well fire anyway. You will 'statistically' suffer one overheat, which then you fail on a 1-2, which is only a 33.3% chance of failure so it's really not that terrible.
Plus GH only have 3 attacks if you pass your counterattack, and failure of that isn't very likely either. So why freak out about the plasma? In addition, a GH with 3 attacks will hit on 4+, wound on a 5+, and then the Ogryn gets a 5+ save.

3/2=1.5 hit
1.5/3= .5 wounds
with a 5+ armor save, you have a 33.3% chance of dealing a wound with one GH, whereas with the plasma gun you will have a 84% chance of doing one wound. So again, no reason to not fire. Also you're screwed either way so you might as well take them down with you! haha

 Vladsimpaler wrote:


3/2=1.5 hit
1.5/3= .5 wounds
with a 5+ armor save, you have a 33.3% chance of dealing a wound with one GH, whereas with the plasma gun you will have a 84% chance of doing one wound. So again, no reason to not fire. Also you're screwed either way so you might as well take them down with you! haha

I said charging through cover, so you have less than a 84% chance of doing a wound.

I always fire, but not the combi-plasma in the Space Wolf situation, unless it was a unit of Terminators charging me. Wasting that once in a game shot on a chance to hit on 6s isn't worth it to me.

 Exergy wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:


3/2=1.5 hit
1.5/3= .5 wounds
with a 5+ armor save, you have a 33.3% chance of dealing a wound with one GH, whereas with the plasma gun you will have a 84% chance of doing one wound. So again, no reason to not fire. Also you're screwed either way so you might as well take them down with you! haha

I said charging through cover, so you have less than a 84% chance of doing a wound.

I don't think you ever get cover from overwatch, even if you're charging into cover. Can't remember what page I saw that on. Anyone know for sure?

Unless you can pull a rabbit out of the hat then shoot it.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
I don't think you ever get cover from overwatch, even if you're charging into cover. Can't remember what page I saw that on. Anyone know for sure?

You can always get cover saves and whatever from overwatch, read 3rd paragraph under "Resolving Overwatch" in your rulebook. I think you're just mixing up that it's really hard to get that cover save on overwatch. Remember there are units that can get cover save naturally, through special rules(ork's bikes, stealth/shrouded) or defensive grenades, make no sense that your emergency snap fire can suddenly see through the smoke cloud of ork's bikes when a carefully aiming shot(regardless of range) can't. But obviously, in your example, you won't get the cover save from charging into the terrain that the shooting unit is in, based on the basic cover rules for shootings.

But on topic, I think it really is quite simple. If the unit has no way of surviving the assault, fire away, you'll lose that unit anyway, might as well try for the chance of taking out 1 or 2 of that assaulting unit before going down. If the unit can possibly survive, then it gets a bit more complicated and worthy of discussion. And if the player is too scared to take the Gets Hot! damage, they wouldn't have taken the plasma anyway, so the 3rd answer on the poll is rather silly!

Baronyu wrote: If the unit has no way of surviving the assault, fire away, you'll lose that unit anyway

And then think about a moment. Would your opponent bother to assault you in the first place if he didn't think he'd win the assault? Either your opponent is confident of victory enough to assault, which means he's very likely going to win, which means you're not going to survive, or he's not going to charge in the first place, and you won't even get to fire overwatch.

I mean, I guess there could be a couple of rare instances. It would make sense to charge in with those last couple of boyz even if there was no chance of victory because it would mean the only chance of doing damage at all. These instances should be pretty easy to pick out, though.

Outside of an AV13 dreadnought charging me, I'm going to shoot.

I even take dual plasma guns and dual pistols on my BA assault squads. 6 shots, followed by 6 on the overwatch is pretty good.

2+ to wound AP2 is a good trade for auto wounded AP-
Unless you have no armor at all, shoot.

Picking of a vet is well worth it.

-Matt


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One more point, I've had an opponent fail a charge because of the over-heat. Plasma gunner was closest and died, took the enemy out of range.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Outside of an AV13 dreadnought charging me, I'm going to shoot.

I even take dual plasma guns and dual pistols on my BA assault squads. 6 shots, followed by 6 on the overwatch is pretty good.

2+ to wound AP2 is a good trade for auto wounded AP-
Unless you have no armor at all, shoot.

Picking of a vet is well worth it.

-Matt


-Matt

I don't understand...Followed by six what? You only have a 1/6 chance of hitting with overwatch, so only 1 plasma will hit on average.

 Exergy wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:


3/2=1.5 hit
1.5/3= .5 wounds
with a 5+ armor save, you have a 33.3% chance of dealing a wound with one GH, whereas with the plasma gun you will have a 84% chance of doing one wound. So again, no reason to not fire. Also you're screwed either way so you might as well take them down with you! haha

I said charging through cover, so you have less than a 84% chance of doing a wound.

Even if it's 4+ cover then you still have a better chance of doing a wound than you would with just a Grey Hunter against an Ogryn.

plus think of it this way, it's a free S7 powerfist strike, before combat even starts. May as well go for it and put an easy wound on somebody.