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I'm planning on buying 2 boxes of Space Marine devastators, can anyone tell me what heavy weapons are best,
I play as a Black Dragons Chapter (Salamanders tactics) with large amount of infantry, I want them sitting near the back, but be able to deal with both infantry and veircles

You can't do that while sitting in the back. All imperial long range heavies are inadequate. Go skyhammer or Gladius or leave devs at home.

Depends on the rest of the army but I think that a unit of MM for salamanders would be pretty good.

I think in general you want to avoid, missiles, and plasma. The rest you can make an argument for.

In general I use those weapons to outfit my tacticals lol.

 _Zarrack_ wrote:
I'm planning on buying 2 boxes of Space Marine devastators, can anyone tell me what heavy weapons are best,
I play as a Black Dragons Chapter (Salamanders tactics) with large amount of infantry, I want them sitting near the back, but be able to deal with both infantry and veircles

There aren't really any good long-range anti-infantry options for devastators. Grav cannons are their most useful weapon against infantry and monstrous creatures, but they have short range. Multimeltas are useful against vehicles but their range is also poor. Grav puts out so many shots (rerolling to wound/damage vehicles thanks to grav amps) that it will wreck vehicles too. Overall you're better off using centurion devastators that can move and shoot properly, unless you're running a skyhammer formation to make regular devastators relentless for a turn.

Sitting near the back and shooting is a job better left to thunderfire cannons these days.

I would say take 4 missile launchers. Great range and can use frag missiles against large low toughness units like cultists or termagaunts.

 6^ wrote:
I would say take 4 missile launchers. Great range and can use frag missiles against large low toughness units like cultists or termagaunts.

No. Never missile launchers. They are awful. Get two typhoon speeders instead.

Real News wrote:

 _Zarrack_ wrote:
I'm planning on buying 2 boxes of Space Marine devastators, can anyone tell me what heavy weapons are best,
I play as a Black Dragons Chapter (Salamanders tactics) with large amount of infantry, I want them sitting near the back, but be able to deal with both infantry and veircles

There aren't really any good long-range anti-infantry options for devastators. Grav cannons are their most useful weapon against infantry and monstrous creatures, but they have short range. Multimeltas are useful against vehicles but their range is also poor. Grav puts out so many shots (rerolling to wound/damage vehicles thanks to grav amps) that it will wreck vehicles too. Overall you're better off using centurion devastators that can move and shoot properly, unless you're running a skyhammer formation to make regular devastators relentless for a turn.

Sitting near the back and shooting is a job better left to thunderfire cannons these days.

Just take a cataphracti terminator captain and they get slow and purpose so that solves the mobility problem

That's an enormous tax for four imperial heavy weapon shots.

That lives forever.... Especially giving him shield eternal rerolling 1s on failed invul saves. It is rediculous and makes them very durable especially with white scars with hit and run and a chaplain with hawk eye plus Khan. Very very strong hitting.

All that for a dev squad?

Where else are you going to put them? To the point though a Shield Eternal Cataphractii and Chaplain with Hawk eye is extremely good. They are a HQ tax anyways mine as well put them to use in an effective way.

I have had a decent time running them in the Storm Lance. Taking two Grav Devs and a Rhino then pushing them fast forward to control mid. They have taken out more flyes than any other unit in my army lol.

The choices:
Grav cannon with grav amp: Best weapon available to devs, gets really nasty in the Skyhammer Annihilation Force.
Missile Launcher: Less expensive than certain other choices, but as others have pointed out it's usually better to take a pair of LS Typhoons instead of 4 Missile Devs. If you're strapped for anti-air you could take 4 Flakk missile devs, but that's a bit expensive for 4 skyfire shots.
Lascannon: I personally like these, as they can sit in the rear and pop transports/TEQ, but they really aren't that good, mainly due to being 1 shot.
Plasma Cannon: Not terrible, but not very good either. Any opponent worth his salt will space his units out so that only 1 or 2 get hit with any one small template.
Multi-melta: Good choice, but only in Skyhammer since they get Relentless and can pod in right next to that pesky enemy vehicle that needs to die. Otherwise, snap firing and short range ruins the appeal of the weapon.
Heavy Bolter: Only useful against hordes of cheap mooks (like Guardsmen, Ork Boyz, or Tyranid Gaunts). Marines laugh at them.

My 2 cents.

Telling us how powerful your current meta and how competitive you want to be with them would help us out greatly. Martel is very much correct in the notion that Imperial heavy weapons platforms are mostly terrible in a competitive scenario outside of formations...

However


Long range firepower in a semi casual setting? Lascannons - Can't kill enough infantry but can certainly lay some heavy anti tank S9 AP2 fire for the heavy stuff

Competitive? Grav cannons in a stormlance demi company or Skyhammer formation - Wounds against armour saves at AP2 and causes immobilization to vehicles on a 6 and a metric ton of shots. 24" range but does what you want with it's anti armour/anti infantry role.

Heavy bolters are a waste of time if you're not a sister of battle

Multi meltas suffer for a lack of relentless (unless in a skyhammer)

Missile Launchers are just terrible... a lack of AP2 and only 1 shot each is lack luster against vehicles and frag missiles are usually not even worth firing...(when decent when you can spam the shots cheaply - but not the devs)

 _Zarrack_ wrote:
I'm planning on buying 2 boxes of Space Marine devastators, can anyone tell me what heavy weapons are best,
I play as a Black Dragons Chapter (Salamanders tactics) with large amount of infantry, I want them sitting near the back, but be able to deal with both infantry and veircles

I went with 4x Plasmacannon and 4x Grav-cannon. Then gave the sergeants combi-weapons to match their units.

I love me some gravma. Gave two SM players' armies heart attacks. Fun times.

I laugh at plasma cannons. And my list sucks.

 Selym wrote:

 _Zarrack_ wrote:
I'm planning on buying 2 boxes of Space Marine devastators, can anyone tell me what heavy weapons are best,
I play as a Black Dragons Chapter (Salamanders tactics) with large amount of infantry, I want them sitting near the back, but be able to deal with both infantry and veircles

I went with 4x Plasmacannon and 4x Grav-cannon. Then gave the sergeants combi-weapons to match their units.

I love me some gravma. Gave two SM players' armies heart attacks. Fun times.

Jikes, that's a llot of get's hot rolls there. has it ever backfired on you?

You don't need to ask. Between gets hot and small templates, it's literally the worst weapon you can give devs.

Martel732 wrote:
You don't need to ask. Between gets hot and small templates, it's literally the worst weapon you can give devs.

I would've thought that would be the wondrous Heavy Bolter.

I would like plasma cannons for em if they didn't get hot. Gets hot just needs to be flat out removed from plasma cannons.

Heavy bolters are cheaper and can't kill my own guys AND get full benefit of BS4. And can spam down some units like ghetto scatterlasers. I'll take crappy wound spam over small blasts any day.

Martel732 wrote:
Heavy bolters are cheaper and can't kill my own guys AND get full benefit of BS4. And can spam down some units like ghetto scatterlasers. I'll take crappy wound spam over small blasts any day.

Fair enough.

 Torus wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 _Zarrack_ wrote:
I'm planning on buying 2 boxes of Space Marine devastators, can anyone tell me what heavy weapons are best,
I play as a Black Dragons Chapter (Salamanders tactics) with large amount of infantry, I want them sitting near the back, but be able to deal with both infantry and veircles

I went with 4x Plasmacannon and 4x Grav-cannon. Then gave the sergeants combi-weapons to match their units.

I love me some gravma. Gave two SM players' armies heart attacks. Fun times.

Jikes, that's a llot of get's hot rolls there. has it ever backfired on you?

One memorable game was set to be my opponent's apocalypse - he was running some fluffy 1st company, and my BT was taking to the field with some rather aggressively deployed heavy weapons. Turn 1 my Plasma all wiffed, and killed half my devastators. Turn two saw epic misses, and then they got sniped out by some plucky sternguards.

The only redeeming feature of that battle was my EC giving them hell. Dude made back his points, and the points of the over-heated Devs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
You don't need to ask. Between gets hot and small templates, it's literally the worst weapon you can give devs.

It's done me favours. They aren't particularly good at all, but they do wonders on certain favorite units.

There's too many other sources of AP 2 now.

Martel732 wrote:
There's too many other sources of AP 2 now.

Not disagreeing but at 15 points in a dev squad - they aren't that terrible. Being forced to take devs in many formations - they peak my interest from time to time. The only reason I don't take them is gets hot. A lot of times I just go heavy bolters.

Always minimize the damage from the ion accelerator

Hi, I have a Dark Angels Battle company that is quite balanced, for those 2 devs I built both of them 10-strong, one with 2x heavy bolter and 2x plasmacannon and the other with 2x lascannon and 2x missilelauncher (possibly with flakks). In combat they split for maximum output on targets. They also have free rhinos to make mobile firebase from missiles and heavybolters.

I usually run devs with 2 Gravcannons in a Rhino. It works quite well, except when you do what I did once and whiff 8/10 shots at a Wraithknight...