Hi all,

I am planning to play a Salamander tactical marine with a meltagun or flamer in my first campaign.,.

Are these weapons worth it compared to bolters? As a 40K player I am playing Salamanders as my SM army so I thought about making one to go into the deathwatch. Looking in the Rites of Battle book I saw Cleanse and Purify. That's when I thought : hmmm meltagun.

I am reading so much about the full auto bolter damage, I was wondering whether it was worth it.

the rest of the team is going to consist of a Space wolf apothecary / wolf priest , an imperial fist devastator with heavy bolter and two more unknown positions.

Thanks in advance for helping a DW noob.

Asmodan

If you don't want to sacrifice the flexibility a bolter gives you why not consider a combi-weapon. Since Tactical marines get Rapid reload really early they lose much less from only having one shot from the combi-weapon.

Plus it cheap Req wise which will leave you with plenty for other things.

I agree; the bolgun got the range over the meltagun and the flamer, making it a good flexible weapon anyday of the week; a combi-weapon option would be the best way to go to hit'em at range and keep that Ace in your sleeve when they get too close.

Except if the mission really dictates a meltagun/flamer must be there, then you'd better go with a back up bolt pistol and the 'Real' weapon.

Well depending on the campaing, rule of cool may say take the melta gun. Also, the rites of battle melta gun is a teensy bit more in the req department but makes it a better weapon - more in line with the fluff and table top anyhow.

Still, I agree with Braddoc and SomVone here- pick the weapon that fits the mission- until you pick up signature wargear you're not tied to a particular weapon (even then you're not really ). Bolters are a super flexible weapon as they do solid damage, moderate pen, autofire, and can carry specialty ammo (and of course don't forget the bolter mastery abilty of tac marines).

I don't know that most DW players are that worried about base boltgun damage (except those trying to cross over or reconsile the original DH boltguns with the DW ones, then we have some discrepancies and balance issues), the real issue of power lies with the Heavy Bolter, due to it's high static damage bonus (+10 per shot) and the high rate of fire (high rof in game terms only mind you). Then you just add talents, traits, specialty ammo and the like on top and you get a dominating weapon.

Whether they're better than a Boltgun should be secondary to how cool and how much fun you think a Meltagun or Flamer would be.

Besides, there's nothing stopping you from having your Tac Marine just sling his bolter over his shoulder.

Blood Pact said:

So just requisition 2 main weapons? I didn't know it was possible. I am only getting the core rule book on sunday ( **** those birthdays...)

I just think CLEANSE AND PURIFY isnt done enough justice by a combi weapon. Good suggestion though. I hadn't thought about that one.

Asmodan said:

Here's the problem with the meltagun: you will probaby fight xenos infantry more than xenos mech. Against most infantry, against all but the heaviest of infantry, a bolter with specialty ammo will be much better. Against xenos mech, the meltagun is still underpowered when compared to what it can do in 40K TT.

Also you can't pick it to begin with but have to require 20 renown first which will take at least 3 successful missions normally.

Flamer is effective against xenos infantry hordes though, especially with Cleanse & Purify as talent.

You may want to consider building a Devastator too. Deathwatch Devastators are not just heavy weapon guys, they are the shootists. They can be used to make effective snipers. Tacticals are shooty leader-types.

Alex

The RoB meltagun is great, but not so great against hordes of weaker foes. But then, you can just use a bolt pistol or frag grenades on those. Meltaguns are frikkin' cool.

It'd probably be best to use the Chapter Design rules from RoB for Salamanders, as the version printed on Dark Reign is utterly borked.

I recommend picking gear by mission. In the background, no space marine carries more than one basic weapon at a time outside of relic-level equipment and that's the way I run it. Otherwise why bother with combi-weapons in the background?

The boltgun is incredibly flexible and an incredibly solid default weapon. Flamers lack range but are incredible against hordes (range isn't an issue in space hulks for example). Meltaguns are great against single heavily armoured targets like tanks and walking 'tanks' but are certainly underpowered compared to the background. I'm considering revising the latter to have more damage and the Devastating quality to represent them more closely.

The Devastator is incredibly efficient at dealing out destruction to hordes and just really good at it to anyone else - at range. Not all battles are going to facing enemies at hundreds of metres over open ground though so even the mighty heavy bolter isn't always the best choice of weapon. And devastators are going to generally be poorer at melee and rarely have a melee weapon in hand when attacked: a problem against fast/sneaky enemies who get the drop on them.

They are poorer at melee, but still get Swift Attack some day

Talk about that to my Techie, you'll see what he thinks of that ^_^'

And if the Dev' hasn't melee covered, then you're quite founded to go hit him very hard : he's getting what he deserves

Techmarines have more armour than any other class (unless you're relying on psychic powers for defense instead of crushing the xenos) and have the nifty ability to strike with a servo-arm as a normal attack or a reaction. Getting jumped in melee isn't that terrible for them in my experience.

It is absolutely not, don't get me wrong.

I just intended to show that Devs weren't THAT afraid of melee. Of course, if the Dev doesn't take some mag-lock'd melee weapon, he may find it a tad more difficult to deal with a stealer who has come all the way for a big hug, but then, he chose it, right ?

Decessor said:

Hmmm maybe I'll switch to flamer then. Also works with the cleanse and purify idea. I just hope I can requisition it straight away. And I'll make sure he's got more boltpistol clips at hand in case the range is too much.

Keep in mind the range of a bold pistol is 30m and standard range- you can crank it to 90 at a pentalty (which will of course impact you differently based on BS and talents), and it's definitely more range than the flamer, but it's still designed as a close range weapon.

Though I am a fan of cleanse and purify

Well, a Tac marine gets a boltgun to start with anyway. And has quick draw. So you can easily carry two basic weapons, you just can only use one per turn.

Stormast said:

Why should he?
Just dodge and then shoot it with your boltpistol.
It's standard gear and it's something the dev will know how to use well.

@deinol - I could be mistaken, but I thought you could use a gun in each hand, just you have a -20 mod to each shot if you don't have the dual-wield talent, plus an additional off hand penalty of -20 for one of the shots. However, since all Space Marines are ambidextrous, no off-hand penalty, so just a -20/-20, not -20/-40, right?

Mayhem1703 said:

It depends on if you use DW RAW alone or you add in DH Erratta. Based on DW RAW, for some reason, if you don't have TWW you simply cannot use the off hand.

Umbranus said:

It all depends on whether he's dumping stats into WS or AG, and if he's using a balanced weapon. Though as a dev I think I'd go Agility + Dodge skill as it's the same price for more benefit.

Charmander said:

Unless my memory fails me it has been clarified per inquiry to FFG that DW has been intended to use the same rules as errata'd DH. It was necessary because RAW has been conflicting on the issue.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Now that I think of it I have the same memory, but my memory is sometimes untrustworthy...

Charmander said:

And a worthless investment if you don terminator armour...

Siranui said:

If you don terminator armor for every mission perhaps, but then that speaks to the fact that you'd best know the general direction of your campaign before investing deeply down any skill/talent/characteristic track or you may be annoyed by what you ended up with.

Siranui said:

There's several enemies/weapons where I'd rather take a dodge than rely on the Terminator AV.

Alex

Same here. Unfortunately we don't even get the option of dodging in terminator armour.