Heavy Weapon Selection Question

[Ardias]

Hello all,

Okay, two points to state upfront. I'm not new to collecting my army, but I'm only a few games away from being completely "unblooded" and confess my tactical newbieness.

Secondary, my apologies if this has been specifically addressed in a prior post, but via the search engine I wasn't seeing anything that stood out.

That said, I am currently working on assembling and painting my first Space Marine army, and I am wondering about the value of the Plasma Cannon in either Tactical or Devastator squads.

I have only been fortunate enough to discover the LO relatively recently, and I've read many opinions / forum posts over at a certain other WH40K website (where I find many members like to crush the spirit of newbies like myself for asking anything) touching on this topic. The apparent consensus in the Space Marine community there is that Lascannons are the superior option over Plasma cannons. The argument given is that Lascannons have the same rate of fire and AP, superior Strength and range, and no chance of "getting hot."

This is coupled with the argument that based off the size of the normal blast template that if one takes care to space their troops at the maximum unit cohesiveness distance, there can be a relatively low probability of hitting more than 1 or perhaps 2 models per blast.

(But then again, I've seen many Dark Angels players cite the Plasma Cannon as the best heavy weapon in the Space Marine arsenal.)

So my question I guess is this: Not having played many encounters yet, how much validity does the argument about the spacing of your troops reducing the effectiveness of the Plasma Cannon's blast, and thus it's value compared to a Lascannon, really have? (Especially when they cost more in a Tac squad and the same in a Dev squad. . .)

I'm assuming that certain conditions (Cityfight, passing through difficult terrain, etc., character or wargame effects with which I'm not yet familiar, etc.) might make "bunching up" more common than one would like, and thus this argument loses strength. Or not?

Are Plasma Cannons simply favored by Dark Angels because they can opt to take them in larger numbers?

I'm just wondering since I'm still in the process of assembling/painting/organizing my neophyte Space Marine army, and I don't want to make un-informed choices while building my first Devastor Squad, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to learning by example and seeing what works for me via gameplay, but I was just curious what people thought.

Thanks for any input.

[Winters]

I'd say lascannons are generaly better. Prolly becasue they would usually spread out their models so you'd only be getting 2 at the most. The lascannon is much better at hitting tanks. But then agin, I'm an autocannon and missile launcher fan, so what do I know? :hmm:

[Rattrap]

If you want an extremely effective marine killer, take the plasma. If you want to kill tanks, take the Las.

[Silver Wings]

Under the new rules, the plasma template has to go on one of the models heads, the template has a radius of 1.5 inches and they can be spread 2 inches appart, Threfore they are useful when your enemy makes a mistake, when you blow up a transport or when theres lots of them. Of course without the lascannon you wont have killed the transport. At 12inches a plasma pistol or gun will kill more than a cannon, so thats what i am doing. Iplay plasmas for the fluff and because i dont think using an anti-tank weapon on troops is logical, did we hit individual German troops with Bazookas in WW2??

[Brother Marius]

I do not believe anyone can say that one weapon is ever better than another. It all depends on circumstance and the composition of your army. If you are lacking in anti-tank punch in the rest of the army then a lascannon would probably benefit you. However, if you want a versatile weapon then the plasma cannon is superior. I've heard the argument that the small blast template is "useless" since units may be spaced 2" apart and the template has a 1.5" radius. However, it has been my experience that players rarely take the time to space their troops that far apart, and if they do it can compromise their plan. This is assuming the terrain allows units to be spaced that far apart. If you think about it, a 10 man squad at maximum coherency could spread over 20" of the table. That's alot of space. It has also been my experience that you can usually get the full hit and two partials with the small template, so I believe it is useul.

A general piece of advice, as someone new to the game and the forums, is to take everything pretty much everybody says with a grain of salt. This is especially true when people are talking about absolutes like "this gun is the best." or "never use this unit." It all really depends on how you like to play and how your army is structured. In this game there are no useless units and no useless weapons. Everything has a purpose, it's effectiveness is just in how you employ it.

[Black Templar847]

Plasma cannons and lascannons i would say are equal.

PC's= Blast, get hot, good str, awesome ap
Good against... everything minus IG (IMO)

Lascannons=High Str, awesome AP, longer range, only one unit could die..., good aganist Vehicles.
Good against... Everything w/ vehicles

So theres how i base my opinion, and if you have too, just take equal amounts of both.
Hope this helps .

[Lord Spanko]

Originally posted by Black Templar847@Feb 14 2005, 146
PC's= Blast, get hot, good str, awesome ap
Good against... everything minus IG (IMO)

Lascannons=High Str, awesome AP, longer range, only one unit could die..., good aganist Vehicles.
Good against... Everything w/ vehicles

[snapback]329469[/snapback]

I agree

I recently spoke with a veteran 40k player about this and we agreed that plasma are amazing in two situtations. Terminators deepstriking, all the models have to be packed around one model. Therefore you can hit them very well in this instance. The next is disembarking transports where you will hit many guys if you can see the hatch that they all came out of (vehicles block LOS).

Another thing I think is nifty about them is they force your opponent to spread his guys out. If your opponent wants to be anal about placing his guys at least 2 inches apart, force him to mesure eactly 6 inches for movement and charge. I saw an ork player who spread his force out to avoid blast templates. His plan back fired when the imperial guard player made sure that each model, not just the ones in frount could get into combat. The ork player was trying to have the closes models charge 10 inches and then pile everyone in behind them. In actuality a lot of these guys were more then 12 inches away.

[BloodAngelCaptain]

I personally prefer lascannons, I always put one lascannon with each tacsquad, so if I come up against a vehicle or a heavily armored opponent then I have the chance to take it down, if I come up against infantry I still have 9 guys with bolters and maybe a flamer. I personally think the lascannon is better, course being a blood angel player I have a hard time with heavy weapons

[Commissar616]

Personally I think that they cannot truly be compared. They each have there uses. Like someone said earlier, you wouldn't shoot a man with a rocket, but you also wouldn't shoot a tank with tompson.

I think plasma cannons are extremey usefull. Most players slack off entirely when it comes to spacing out troops. Especially with heir heavy weapon squads. I think this is so they can count on having all their heavy weapons in range of the same target. Also, having recently having my ass kicked by a Space Wolf army with 3 nasty HQs in drop pods, I can truly appreciate the effectiveness of Plasma Cannons. See, you can't move when you enter by drop pod or Deep Strike, hehehe.

But, don't for get the trusty las. Armor has a tendency to shrug off plasma.

[Dreachon]

as a chaos player i have a far more limited amount of taking a plasmacannon, the only one I have is mounted on a dreadnought, with chaos we have the added advantage of firefrenzy which brings the plasmacannon even better as it doubles the amount of models hit, ever seen 8 SM got blasted by a firefrenzying plasma armed dreadnought.

In 3rd the PC was serious better indeed, but now I'd say both of the weapons have their own uses when it comes to determine the better for a specific scenario or tactic.