Devastator Teams

[EmperorEternalXIX]

Devastators would be useful if they were cheaper. As they are now...totally useless.

4 lascannons is like 200+ points min-maxed with five guys. One round of light shooting can eat 100 points even in reinforced cover.WAYYYYY too much of a liability for me.

[BuFFo]

First off, lol lascannons.

I guess?

Static fire support squads lose out in 5th because vehicles are more mobile

Last time I checked vehicles are LESS mobile due to the weapon rules and speeds of non skimmer fast vehicles.

harder to destroy

Agreed, but what does this have to do with a weapon that can fire basically anywhere on the board if deployed correctly?

and harder to avoid

I really don't think you are playing 5th edition.... Easier to avoid? You mean with TLOS how I can hide vehicles ANYWHERE on the board now? In 4th, you could hide behind terrain, but now you can't.

You stick your Devastators/Havocs somewhere, so your opponent knows they won't go anywhere and plans accordingly.

Agreed. Don't forget that your opponent will also AVOID driving anywhere near the unit if possible unless you are Eldar. Eldar don't give a crap about any anti tank weaponry lol.

Even then, 4 lascannons aren't going to be knocking out Land Raiders any time soon.

Mine do. And so does the other marine/chaos players who have learned over the past twoish months in my area how effective 4 Lascannons are, instead of driving around like dolts with meltas, or taking horridly craptastic Obliterators.

Vehicles can move, which is reason enough to take them. Foot squads can get Lashed, PBS'd, and run off the board, vehicles cannot.

Vehicles can be killed easily with a single anti tank weapon. heck, you dont even need to destroy vehicles. There is only a 1 in 6 chance that your vehicle will eb able to fire its main gun next turn after being penetrated.

With cover the way it is, it's impossible for foot squads to really dig an entrenched enemy out.

YES!!!!! Thank you for proving Havoks and Devs are good.

Enter vehicles with mobility to bring nasty stuff like flamers and assault troops in.

Yup! I agree. Can't have it all right? Then again this has been part of the game for 2 decades, so nothing new here.

I respect your opinion, but play against a couple competent mech armies and let me know how it turns out.

I do, with my IG, and my opponent's vehicles get raped. I don't win all my games because IG suck in CC< but their vehciles sure as hell don;t survvie lol. They can't handle all the Lascannons I bring to bear. Except my Eldar opponents. They just laugh at my anti tank be it melta or lascannon. Go figure lol.

[Zigmunth]

The way I use Dev in my Raven Guard army is to take a full 10 men squad 2xHB 2xLC and run them based on weapon type. Sergeant always goes with 2xLC.

So... for 270pts (170 + 30 + 70) I get two teams. The 2xHB team always covers the flank with Rhinos and 2 Tacs in them. the 2xLC team always covers the flank where my Assault and Vanguard goes. This setup protects footsloggers from vehicle / dread attack and 2xHB team clears ground for my two Tacs to jump out to.

That's theory... I tend to suck with my rolls even with 2+/3+ on 2xLC team. I manage to suck it out! In general it tends to make my opponent think more about how to move his vehicles or at least gather some fire power for other units to get up close and personal.

The other thing is... I prefer two 5 men squads, cause they can suffer 3 wounds without loosing the heavy weapon and the difference in points is only 80pts. And you can shoot two different targets, not just one.

I am contemplating on heavy another 4xPC squad, for Apocalypse or just for my Red Scorpions army (they prefer to stand and shoot - fluff wise).

[Chumbalaya]

Mine do. And so does the other marine/chaos players who have learned over the past twoish months in my area how effective 4 Lascannons are, instead of driving around like dolts with meltas, or taking horridly craptastic Obliterators.

Oh, I see what you did here.

Fatecrushers is awesome, Orks are competitive, Monoliths are good, and 'stealer spam totally works.

[EmperorEternalXIX]

I do, with my IG, and my opponent's vehicles get raped. I don't win all my games because IG suck in CC< but their vehciles sure as hell don;t survvie lol. They can't handle all the Lascannons I bring to bear. Except my Eldar opponents. They just laugh at my anti tank be it melta or lascannon. Go figure lol.

Comparing IG lascannon spam effectiveness to devastator spam effectiveness is just a bad idea. On paper it seems like the marines would be better, but there are less of them, they cost more, have less wounds depending on the setup, they don't have access to things like bring it down, and they certainly can't be bought in the numbers that IG HWTs can.

With that said a dev squad with 4 lascannons is going to HAVE to be minmaxed to keep points down...at max they can be spammed to 3 squads. Even minmaxed this is more than 25-30% of a 2000 point list (690 points -- almost half!!!!).

If you are going to spend that many points on anti-tank capacity, it is much wiser to get the much killier, more survivable, less avoidable, more vesatile option: 9 land speeders with multimeltas and heavy flamers. If you wanted to dedicate them to anti tank work you could skim some points off the top by disincluding the HFs (even though geared that way these are still cheaper than the spazcannon Devs).

I run one squad of these guys and they wreak havoc throughout the game. If they don't kill their weight back in smoldering tank wreckage, then they serve other purposes (barbecuing GEQs for example). It is especially fun to move flat out and contest an otherwise-held enemy objective. These vehicles have been the difference between a draw and a win for me many, many times. Utility aside, they reliable decimate vehicle targets and have a huge threat radius.

As if all that weren't enough, I'd be remiss to ignore the fact that Vulkan, green piece of crap that he is, does not twin-link spazcannons...

That being said, no offense, but coming into a thread about devastator loadouts and proclaiming the lascannon effective when you can field 3x more of them is a bit off-center of the matter at hand, and I really don't think the two compare. The meta game is totally different; being on the other side of a guard army there is a lot more to deal with, and sparing guys to deal with those umpteen heavy weapons is a lot harder, especially for low-model-count armies. In the space marines, as you can see from my example, 700 points is in 3 units that aren't scoring, aren't a threat to everything on the board, and are static and immobile (and thus, easily neutralized).

Land Speeders or Sternguard in a drop pod with Combi-meltas will always beat out lascannons, in both cost, practice, and even theoryhammer/mathhammer.

[RocketRollRebel]

Eh as a Blood Angel Player I never touch devastators. I liked them as a modeling project but there are just too many things that do the job better or cheaper. Besides in my opinion I think armies (especially space marines!) do much better when they are mobile and able to maneuver.
As an imperial guard player who has been running vet mech lists with 10 tanks (at 2k), I really don't worry that much about las cannon dev teams. They may take out A tank but odds are I will have them either weakened or running or dead pretty quickly. Also las cannons vs AV14 isnt what it used to be. I like my odds against them needing a 6 to penetrate!

Despite what you may say about eldar. Mobile melta weapons are king tank hunters in 5th edition. Sure serpents and monoliths ignore the effects of melta weapons but Serpents are only one unit in one army and thats what auto cannons are for . Also you are playing necrons you can ignore the monolith and go for the phase out or hit it with a vindy or a dread in close combat! Its not like its moving very fast! Necrons have a lot of handicaps that you can exploit as it is! haha

and dont even get me started on the waste that i think missile launchers are!

[Bloodthirster]

I like to run 4 plasma or 4 heavt bolter in my lists. The amount of shots the HB pump out makes them pretty effective at taking down light tanks, such as ork trucks, and light infrantry. The PC however are golden goodness, they destroy anything I fire them at, and seem to be the only thing I don't roll 1's on, so that's a big bonus

[Slann]

for anti tank take marine tac squads with las cannons split them up and hold the heavy weapon half back to shoot its cheaper this way , as for devs I like 4 HB's this is just good agianst every troop in the game .