Vandegraffe said:

Tell that to the Techpriest in my DH playgroup that totes a lascannon around everywhere. Everybody gives her a wide berth, when on planet. Only time she leaves it behind is when our inquisiitor tells us we're going undercover and there is no suitable way to hide/disguise the thing. Every Fight we're in her first turn is brace/aim followed by aim/fire every turn till the battery is drained.

The group I'm in at the moment rarely carries anything that's bigger thena gun or a powerblade. Though, if we do come across a heavy weapons emplacement during a mission we make sure to use it.

This one time we ended up in the middle of a underhive war (Two rival nobles had pumped lots and lots of money in to the two rival gangs so they ran with military style hardware). I can't realy recall how it came to that, but we ended up pissing both sides off and ended up in a small habblock with two heavy stubbers in each widow. Supressing fire down the relatively narrow lane they had to come down on while we waited for our inquisitorial arbites squad to comeand mop the gangers up.

Brother Zahariel said:

Well, as Vandegraffe said, you stick out like a sore thumb and get all the unwanted attention. You will certainly fall under close scrutiny of the local Enforcers/Magistratum as well as the Adeptus Arbites and you will be targeted first by any opposition you encounter. He will never be allowed entry to any public or private owned building or area except by pulling the Inq card and even then this will be close to a declaration of war to the respective organization. So, it is the job of the GM to have the PC be treated accordingly by the environment/NPCs.

two of my players love heavy weapons and use them whenever possible:

repelling a cult attack with a heavy stubber

shooting down a flyer with a plasma cannon

RPG'ing ground cars in a chase down a highway

blessed lascannons against a daemon prince

autocannons against an ork warband

chasing a group of genestealers with a heay flamer

chasing a group of cultists with a heavy flamer

chasing a group of imperial guard with a heavy flamer

chasing a group of mechanicus skitarii with a melta weapon

opening a door with a melta weapon when raiding a cult hideout.

.. yep, they do love their heavy weapons.

trentmorten said:

I thoroughly enjoy that every instance involving the 'Heavy Flamer' is prefaced by the word 'chased'. Hilarious. There truly is nothing in the Universe that does not fear getting lit on fire.

In the RT game I'm in, our Voidmaster (IIRC) used an internal defense system in the hangar (twin-linked heavy bolters) to shred a mob of Orks

About the only time was with a daemon host, former inquisitor running around killing fairly much everything in its way and the assassin I was playing picked up a multimelta with one previously deceased owner. Most of the group had picked up something along the way with various degrees of large, ugly weaponry on account of most of our stuff being broken by mooks with power swords or deemed useless to bother hauling out.

Host goes where it wants to go and does what it wants to do at a secret vault, the only person in the party who knows how to use a heavy weapon is the guardsmen- who does what guardsmen always do when confronted by anything scarier than a power bill, ***** his entire colon on the ground, thrashes around a bit in the mess and becomes useless as usual. Psyker, bravely ******* out and hides, scum does what the guardsmen does... sort of just leaves a priest with a lascannon and my assassin still standing after the cool rolls, few fate point re-rolls and one of us hit it eventually. Dead.

We kept the guns, never bothered to learn how to use them and I dont think they where ever used again until the game was handed over to me soon after to GM a long time ago, when a bunch of broke-arse scout marines in a parallel game I run next to DH, needed something more thumpy than they had at hand and the proto-inquisitor-former PC assassin gave them a loan of the multi-melta. Said multi melta was used on a boarding action against a chaos heavy cruiser, it killed a lot of heretics, started two fires and helped disable both the shield generators and nacelles. As a result, the cruiser had to abort its drop-assault on the planet the same DH PC's (now very high level) where in charge of wresting back from the local heathens to turn into a much needed agri-world. In effect saving the lives of about 250,000 Imperial settlers from being wrecked by the Night Lords and having the DH PC's in a bent-over and corn holed position they probably wouldnt have enjoyed.

Since then, the multi-melta just sleeps on an Kill-Ship in a big pile of guns the assassin/inquisitor keeps lying around, that she still never bothered to learn how to use... but, never know when something might need to be renovated with a huge burning hole.

repelling a cult attack with a heavy stubber- in the early days of the group they were sent down hive to escort a suspected "cult magus" back to the tricorn. meant to be an easy run, but the cult magus was actually a cult magus and the cult forced them to bunker down in the magistratium station and defend the position. in a similar vein, but not identical, was using the Hvy stubber to shred a boarding party sent by a chartist captain determined to rescue his niece from the pc's (who didn't have her).

shooting down a flyer with a plasma cannon- again, two similar situations, one in the house of dust and ashes when they were flying to the auction and the raider ship flew towards them. they all thought the pintle mounted stubber the crew had was kinds cute by this stage. the second occurred in malfi, having just implicated the local munitorium official in tithe skimming, he called in some highly equipped mercenaries (who he was selling the weapons to) who used valkeryie flyers to try and bring the pc's transport down.

RPG'ing ground cars in a chase down a highway- pretty self explanatory

blessed lascannons against a daemon prince- having been outsmarted by a recurring nemesis twice, the summoning of his patron was getting awful close. asked what they needed to bring the chapter to a close by their inquisitor the two chracters looked at each other and said "lascannons". The priest pointed out that weapons of faith would be far more effective, so they got their lascannons blessed...

autocannons against an ork warband- the orks invaded one of the pc's worlds. they did not like this.

chasing a group of genestealers with a heavy flamer- in the bowels of a nobles spire they found his menagerie. sadly for them, this included a group of genestealers (noble was part of the beast house, although they didn't know it). having cut the power to the defences, this also released the beasties. the pc's decided it would be downright irresponsible to let the genestealers get away as they knew what they were and could do, cue them chasing the creatures, all armed with flamers, apart from the two with heavy flamers..

chasing a group of cultists with a heavy flamer- early on, a successful cult bust in a promethium refinery. not the wisest idea but apparently the explosion was worth a fate point...

chasing a group of imperial guard with a heavy flamer- the guardsmen had potentially been contaminated by xenos contact, but the officer and men had been churlish and rude to the pc's the entire time (failing social rolls) and thus it was with no small amount of glee that the pc's were given free reign to handle the situation.

chasing a group of mechanicus skitarii with a melta weapon- a cult magus was fleeing with a xenos artefact, the pc's had to stop him. he left behind a rearguard. the Pc's arrived via the station's armoury and started by aiming for the cover the skitarii were in on the basis that then they enemy would be so much easier to hit...

opening a door with a melta weapon when raiding a cult hideout- only a normal melta i'm afraid

Luthor Harkon said:

That why she enjoyed having me as an Arbite, in full regalia at all times, when she carried it. I managed to mitigate some of the 'social' diffculties for her through roleplay and some **** good charm/intimidate rolls. but in combat if they saw her she was 1st on the targeting block...till the psyker would announce his presence, or my combat shotgun reduced someone to paste.

My most recent example of using a heavy weapon was when our party was actually on a Feudal world. We came across a band of refugees who claimed their township had been invaded by a small army of cultists and most of the people had been sacrificed in terrible rituals. We then basically set up an assault on the township, gathered some allies, a few knights, some local clerics, the whole deal. We set up on a hill top outside of town, they already knew we were coming, dumb Sorcery. They had lined up waiting for us, a hundred or more cultists backed up by some nurgling or mutant-things, we never were sure which.

Our guardsman just smiled and set up his heavy assault stubber, which we had all forgotten he had. When the battle started he just unleashed a wave of death on the incoming horde. Managed to make the fight way easier for our forces, right up until our psyker switched places with the enemy psyker due to perils of the warp. That made things go all crazy.

We had something similar once. We had the order to investigate cult activity on a mining world.
My feral world guardsman was rather new to being an acolyte (I joined the game later) and was still used to large scale warfare.
So when we learned the whereabouts of the cult HQ and decided to attack it he asked the local arbites to lend him one of their mobile heavy bolters (he had heavy weapon training bolt).
The cult HQ consisted only of about 15 individuals in one room, quickly disposed of with a hand flamer. Who had thought that a cult HQ would be so small?

When I already thought I would not get a chance to use the HB, we learned, that the Arbites Fortress, situated in the air above the mining area, supported by some steel girders, was attacked by hordes of zombies.
So we fell back towards the fortress (not as fortifies as it may sound) and fought a last stand to keep the waves of zombies on one side of the fortress from reaching it.

The heavy bolter felled lots of those unholy creatures despite their resistance to mundane weapons so only few were left when my ammo was depleted. And those where easily killes in melee.

Imperial Hive World. Our acolyte cell needed to take down a hive gang whose leader possibly has information regarding the murder of the planetary governer's daughter. The gang calls themselves the 'Blood Knives', and their fighting style is, as you would expect, shiv-happy melee. Expecting melee fighting (seriously doubting we could just 'parley'), we equip with close range assault weapons (autoguns, shotguns, swords, knives, clubs, so on).

Fighting is brutal, basically forcing us to clear multiple small areas SAS style (open door, unload weapons at full auto in all directions, then move in, reload, and do it again). Turns out they were leadin us through a pre-planned defensive area with a lot of narrow areas that were very suitable for knife fighting. We arrive near the end cut up and bloody, whereupon we come across the gang leader and his bodyguard - a heavy ganger, equipped with a big heavy stubber. To our surprise, the gang leader attempts to negotiate a deal, obviously realizing he is not dealing with another gang.

As the negotiations start, a second hive gang that followed our cell to the Blood Knives hideout attacks. The heavy gets taken out quickly by a surprise assault, but we recover and eliminate the initial attackers. One of us grabbed the stubber and started using it to completely deny access to the nearby corridor - he just walked up to the entrance, braced, and then started unloading supressing fire down the corridor. Because it was a belt-fed model, it did this for ten rounds straight, completely cutting off one route of attack, allowing us to grab the gang leader, fight off the remaining attackers from the other direction, and then exfiltrate with the gang leader in tow. Without that stubber I'm pretty sure we would have been overrun.

My guardsman has access to an assault cannon. He only deploys with the thing when we're moving into a proper warzone, and he usually only whips it out when we hit a real tooth-and-nail stand up fight, but when we hit those situations, "Ol' Painless" really evens the odds. For a specific example, once we went down into a hive on Fenksworld (forget the specific hive) which was in the middle of a full-scale Chaos uprising. We managed to sneak ourselves into an air vent, cut a few firing ports into it, and with the assault cannon, a heavy stubber, a hunting rifle and a Death Light lasgun, we killed somewhere in the vicinity of 80 hive gangers in 20 seconds.

Gaire said:

See heavy stubbers fair enough, but assault cannon? Those things are only ever mounted on Terminator armour or vehicles due to the immense weight and recoil, plus huge ammo hoppers. In fact, Deathwatch goes as far as to change their weapon type from Heavy to Emplaced, reinforcing this idea.

It's sure a heck of a lot of fun to use, though.

In our game we are two using heavy weapon:

-the IG with heavy stuber: makes ennemy use their dodge before frontal assault, cover fire in corridors, slow down bigger monster with lots of hits and btw some good damage.

-me as cleric with heavy flamer: use to make ennemy move out of cover, doing damage to of ennemy when attacked by large force so my team could put them down easier, for fun because i like to burn heretics they have to repent after all.

Now this was a homebrewed game I had written up. My group of acolytes come across a pair of rival gangs and getting into a small skirmish with them, managed to kill/scare off the remaining few. Amongst the remains was a poor quality gattling gun, and our rank 2 guardsman, figuring it might be useful. Picks it up and starts carrying the thing with the little bit of ammo still in it. Sadly he didn't get to use it in a gun-fight, but he did do something funny and led to a quote amongst my group. Saying "It was poor quality anyways", he takes this gun and uses it as a battering ram to a door, knocking it down and leading the group into the home of one of the main targets they were dealing with.

But ya know, it's not every day your acolytes get involved with the 40k version of Doctor Satan and the Devil's Rejects in a Mexican Standoff and come out rather alive.

Kasatka said:

From it's description, I figured it was something like the M134 minigun, that while usually mounted on vehicles can be held and fired (at least in the movies)

+++ Arnold in Terminator 2 (okay, so he's not really human in that movie)

+++ Predator

Darth Smeg said:

I GM a bunch of nutters. Their adventures include destroying Greater Daemons of each of the four False Gods with Hellstrike missiles. Admittedly, said daemons were all summoned into a promethium refinery, which probably helped. The crater can be seen from the moon.

Our main heavy offender was Metallus the Tech-priest. His favoured toy was a Heavy Stubber (later upgraded to an Assault Stubber) which he used at every opportunity. His most spectacular kill was at Extreme Range with a 01 Righteous Fury shot that decapitated a cultist leader. The only bullet that hit one-shotted the beggar. Metallus would shoot wildly at every opportunity once he got this thing. Prior to this he'd been toting round a D'laku Hellgun, which he felt sucked. He later died when a Navigator showed him what fire-power really was by teleporting into the middle of the party and opening his third eye.

The Feral World IG, Crisis, despite having the training for all the Heavy Weapon types, decided he wanted to be Marneus Calgar and toted twin Power Fists around instead. Later he stapped a pair of Bolters to them for the full effect. In melee, he was the heavy weapon, if that counts. Lightning Attack with two Power Fists... o_O;; However he did rack up an impressive 507 kills with a Hydra Platform against Plague Zombies. His augmented servitor mount (actually a modified Squig) had a Heavy bolter mounted on it which was used twice, both to good effect. He's now trancended this mortal form to join the ranks of the Spess Mahreens.

The Black Priest of Maccabeus once torched an entire hab-block with a Heavy Flamer (despite being untrained at the time) for heresy just because he thought he'd found some (he hadn't). The actual heresy going on there wasn't detected. Many Ork spore-kin perished.

My character, an Imperial World Assassin, totes around a Grenade Launcher (which will become a Rocket Launcher once he's got the skill). Haxtes does efficient assassinations, not subtle ones.

Never took any heavy weapon training but I bother to take Arms Master (half non-trained penalty on ranged weapons) and I've found some rather nifty opportunities that our GM put here and there for to use a derelict heavy stubber/las weapon. Frankly, I've found also that you don't want to invest too much into heavy weapons as an acolyte unless you're guardsman and have more than plenty to spend on weapon-skill flexibility as there's more than enough times you'd rather have something you can hide in a trenchcoat. That said, Arms Master is very cheap for the flexibility it gets you. Take that and Bulging Biceps and you can pick up and use just about anything at a moment's notice when your trusty basic weapon is too light for the job and you have other options.

As to affording it, the phrase 'on-site acquisition' comes to mind.