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Ever since the change to single base heavy weapons teams for IG (which can be insta-deathed by anything S6) I haven't seen much of a point in HWS. Why do they base cost more than Special Weapons Teams?

Mortar squads are irrelevant with the introduction of the wyvern.

The firepower from heavy bolter squads are easily replaced by a chimera with multilaser, heavy bolter, and heavy stubber.

Autocannon squads are a maybe.

Rocket and lascannon squads are so expensive and so squishy, are they ever really justified?

Basically for 15 more points you can get BS4, Ld8 and add 4 wounds by taking veterans. Clearly the vets will be more generalists, with only one heavy weapon and three special weapons.

Is there any way to effectively deploy HWS?

Their only real benefit seems to be that you get them for 'free' as part of a platoon, so they don't take up any FOC slots, and count as scoring. Other than the normal pluses of infantry over vehicles, such as increased cover saves, going to ground, and better use of Orders.

Autocannon squads are my least favourite to play against. They just wreck everything!

They are squishy, but that twin link order can make them effective. Make sure they have cover!

A agree with Shingen. A HWS that's been twin linked by that order can be pretty brutal!

Ignores cover las cannons. nuf said.

 extremefreak17 wrote:
Ignores cover las cannons. nuf said.

Yea but that's a 100 point squad of six guardsmen, can't take a VOX, unless you pay for a commissar you're taking orders at ld 7.

They are fragile, and can be instant deathed by numerous weapons from numerous armies. I don't use them at all. As I play veterans. However, I did play against another AM army at a tournament the other day, and he had two heavy weapon teams (on skyshiled landing pad) of lascannons. That was an extremely high priority target, seeing as I had a Imperial Knight with me. The punisher (with heavy bolters all around) did a good job on taking out one team and the exterminator (with heavy bolters all around) took out the other team.

They can be great in a stormlord. The stormlord keep them from dying and they are relatively cheap Dakka.

Too squishy and too much S6+ dakka in the meta. Rapiers and Sabers on the other hand are pwnsauce. Stick a primaris inside the squad for ld9 and prescience a different unit because rapiers and sabers already have TL.

Rapiers are just plan brutal against armor. They come stock with TL and ordnance. Once they get ignore cover they just beat the snot out of wave serpents.

A single Mortar squad hiding out of line of sight on an objective is a pretty good Scorer.

Or, hey, if you have the models, you may as well use them. ^^;

If the only problem is survivability, then bunkers are the answer.
70 points gets you an AV14 bunker with ammo stores. Everyone shoots out and re-rolls 1's.

I'd run 3 of these, with an allied inquisitor detachment (with a bastion) to hold my center.

Plopping down 4 AV14 buildings is something that most people aren't prepared to deal with (re:eldar serp spam).

-Matt

Spam them. I don't mean like three or four. I mean more like 10+. Yeah, they're squishy, but your opponent can't kill all of them at once, and they can do some pretty decent damage when they get to fire.

Or take mortars and hide them out of LOS now that ruins don't pretty much invalidate them anymore.

 TheSilo wrote:
Ever since the change to single base heavy weapons teams (which can be insta-deathed by anything S6) I haven't seen much of a point in HWS. Why do they base cost more than Special Weapons Teams?

Mortar squads are irrelevant with the introduction of the wyvern.

The firepower from heavy bolter squads are easily replaced by a chimera with multilaser, heavy bolter, and heavy stubber.

Autocannon squads are a maybe.

Rocket and lascannon squads are so expensive and so squishy, are they ever really justified?

Basically for 15 more points you can get BS4, Ld8 and add 4 wounds by taking veterans. Clearly the vets will be more generalists, with only one heavy weapon and three special weapons.

Is there any way to effectively deploy HWS?

I assume for IG?

I think with blobs being good, and movement being based on if the model moves, heavy weapons squads are limited in what they are worth but consider them for additional cheap Objective Secured units. Think of peoples willingness to take 12" range cultists. Is a mortar squad worse? Nope. Not really. Wyverns make more sense but arent objective secured. So in a meta where troops choices are seen a lot...

In Maelstrom missions, thats a really great thing to keep in mind. It's ALL about objectives, even when its not Maelstrom.

Ive not taken actual heavy weapons squads per se in a long time. But the ability to fire the Lascannons at separate targets isn't nothing. The ability to take more of them is not nothing. Imperial Knights require 24 Prescienced Lascannons or similar weapons to fight against Imperial Knights effectively since their initiative usually lets them make a mockery of your units special characters as IG. You need to soften those monsters up before they get where they are going and those shields make damaging them pretty rough. So heavy Weapons would make some sense if your meta has that kind of thing floating around.

I spose its a meta question more than a right or wrong question.

Just as a reminder to people not all that intimate with how guard works, HWSs dont' get to split fire and ignore cover and all that crazy stuff.

They have a CHANCE to. A pretty crummy chance, at that. Orders are not markerlights.

Especially if the unit is only going to get roughly one chance to pass orders before it gets killed or run off, it's way too easy to overestimate how powerful they are.

Well, actually, I find heavy weapon squads very useful, since otherwise I'm bogging my Veteran squads down and they really have to keep mobile to survive.

Why?

Elysians don't get Heavy Weapon team options in their infantry squads.

Forward for the Emperor; the order that allows you to fire heavy weapons AND then make a run action. So you want to move those heavy weapons without having to snap shot everything? Here’s your ticket.

 Ailaros wrote:
Just as a reminder to people not all that intimate with how guard works, HWSs dont' get to split fire and ignore cover and all that crazy stuff.

They have a CHANCE to. A pretty crummy chance, at that. Orders are not markerlights.

Especially if the unit is only going to get roughly one chance to pass orders before it gets killed or run off, it's way too easy to overestimate how powerful they are.

Yup, HWT have a 58% chance on their ld 7. A normal squad has a 72% chance of passing their orders, even better with a VOX.

Might be worthwhile to stick a multipurpose Primaris Psyker with the heavy weapons, to confer ld 9 while buffing other units.

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
Forward for the Emperor; the order that allows you to fire heavy weapons AND then make a run action. So you want to move those heavy weapons without having to snap shot everything? Here’s your ticket.

The problem is that firstly you need to start them in LOS, which means they might get killed first, and secondly, it only works once, because next turn you need to move to get out into LOS again, which means snap-firing.

TheSilo wrote:Yup, HWT have a 58% chance on their ld 7.

Also, I forgot to mention, the officer squad also needs to survive, which given that they're about as fragile as HWSs are...

Real guard players don't cry over t3.

They're excellent threat saturation. If you're shooting at them, you're not shooting at everything else. If you're shooting at everything else you're not shooting at them. Put them in cover and their survivability increases significantly. Just try to avoid getting serpent shielded. Yea, they probably will die anyways, but you've got lascannons on your russes too for that reason.

Well, the problem is they're not. HWSs don't saturate with PISs or conscripts (because they're just much more valuable, and S6+ is wasted on them), and they don't saturate with Russes (because anything S8 or lower isn't going to be doing very much to tanks, so might as well shoot at the HWSs).

Pretty much the only thing HWSs saturate with is artillery, as open-topped AV12/10 is going to draw the same kind of mid-S firepower, but you're probably going to try and keep your basilisk out of LOS entirely.

I mean, if you're on the other side of the table, and you can shut down 3 lascannons with a single scatter laser, who are you going to point it at, an HWS or a chimera?

It only counts as tricking your opponent if they shoot at something LESS valuable.

For me in a world of St7 (mostly ignore cover) they are not as worth it for me i find. they almost always die super quick unless i whip out more threats first.

Iv also resorted to putting them inside a giant infantry blob to benifit better from limited senior orders.

But i think mass spamming autos might work out, tons of shots for a medium price that score sitting back field while the rest of your army forces forward with plasmas or what not might be interesting.

If I take them it's en masse, otherwise they're not worth it. Twelve twin-linked, ignores cover auto cannons are amazing, three or six? Who cares.

I've had good luck with a las cannon hws. I deploy them in ruins, up high enough to see most of the battlefield, and stick my CCS nearby. Haven't tried it yet, but it seems to me giving them a commissar to help out with orders tests might be good.

I think opponents don't really consider their threat-to-fragility ratio all that often. Generally I'm keeping them busy with more pressing targets for their S6+ weapons (Chimeras and Hellhounds, usually) and if they target the hws it's usually with anti-infantry fire.

 Las wrote:
Real guard players don't cry over t3.

They're excellent threat saturation. If you're shooting at them, you're not shooting at everything else. If you're shooting at everything else you're not shooting at them. Put them in cover and their survivability increases significantly. Just try to avoid getting serpent shielded. Yea, they probably will die anyways, but you've got lascannons on your russes too for that reason.

Toughness isn't the problem. The problem is 3 models with no ablative wounds costing as much as 21 guardsmen. After they die to a serpent shield it's like losing 21 guardsmen worth of saturation in points. Leadership 7 is icing on a bad cake.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
If the only problem is survivability, then bunkers are the answer.
70 points gets you an AV14 bunker with ammo stores. Everyone shoots out and re-rolls 1's.

I'd run 3 of these, with an allied inquisitor detachment (with a bastion) to hold my center.

Plopping down 4 AV14 buildings is something that most people aren't prepared to deal with (re:eldar serp spam).

-Matt

dont you then need to take the defense emplacement and defense line for the wall of martyrs to run 3 bunkers?

Also adding primaris psyker to help the squad probably isn't the best choice as some psychic armies will just shut out your powers making him useless. It's always better to just bring more guns with the IG/AM.

Also I wouldn't rely on orders as others have mentioned it's very easy to fail with ld7 and voxs don't even help them. And then again you roll double 6's and no more orders go off the rest of the turn.

Here's a fun trick to try for a Gunline heavy based list. Run a squad of conscripts with a priest in a long line behind an aegis line(this will be the charging unit that will attack anyone that gets close. Behind that have a 30man blob with 3 lascannons and yarrick stretched out. Basically this unit will try and hold the deployment zone down. But place yarrick in a way where his 6" ld10 bubble hits the conscripts to Mae it easier to issue orders to them. Then at yarrick a back left and right have 2 lascannon heavy weapon teams line up so that at least one base from each of the squads is within yarricks ld10 bubble. This way orders will be a little more effective on those squads. Expensive and a lot of points but this is pretty much a small force to hold down the deployment zone.

6 LC in 2 heavy weapons squads costs the same as 3 in 3 infantry squads.

It's a choice between 3 more cannons or 24 ablative wounds + leadership 8

 Bludbaff wrote:
I've had good luck with a las cannon hws. I deploy them in ruins, up high enough to see most of the battlefield, and stick my CCS nearby. Haven't tried it yet, but it seems to me giving them a commissar to help out with orders tests might be good.

I think opponents don't really consider their threat-to-fragility ratio all that often. Generally I'm keeping them busy with more pressing targets for their S6+ weapons (Chimeras and Hellhounds, usually) and if they target the hws it's usually with anti-infantry fire.

The problem with the commissar is that if you fail ld, he's executing an entire weapons team, meaning that you'll have at most one team left. I think a primaris might be a better fit, with the primaris doing divination or biomancy for buffing nearby units.

25 points for an allied inquisitor, LD10.
Then pick up the servor skulls that you really want to have as well; and add in psychic powers if you want to go the psychic route.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
25 points for an allied inquisitor, LD10.
Then pick up the servor skulls that you really want to have as well; and add in psychic powers if you want to go the psychic route.

*for 25 points aaaaaaaand $40 for Codex: Grey Knights.

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