September 17, 2012 by darrell
Darrell has a look at one of the classic heavy support choice's for the Space marines and lets us know just why it annoys him.
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the missiles are pants. GW money scam at its worst.
Only 4 of the squad of 5/10 can have heavy weapons darrell. As for missile launchers, there 10 a penny from most other tactical sprues
Looking for versatility, I used one devastator box and a full tactical marines box to build 2 devastator squads :
– 2xlascanon, 2xmissiles, sergent + 2 marines
– 2 plasma, 2 HB, sergent + 2 marines
One anti-inf, one anti-tank, extra marines for hit points (drop to 6 if your plan to put them in a razorback). The melta goes in a tactical squad (melta, heavy melta and combi melta for the sarge).
Looking at the bitz stores the ML’s price ranges from £1.50 to £4.50.
There may be others cheaper, was only a quick search.
Obne thing all sites had in common:
“This product is out of stock.”
Looks like Darrell has already equipped his SW’s with Missile Launchers! 😉
Sorry Darrell but the box is great value (£16.56 from an online retailer) – if you use it correctly. Most basic Marine armies will contain at least 2-3 Tactical Squads – there’s your 3 extra Missile Launchers right there. The Tacticals can then get the Heavy Bolters & Multi-Melta for free, combined with whatever special weapon they’ll carry.
Magnetizing the heavy weapons may take time & effort but it’s worth it – the SM battleforce contains a 5 man combat squad I wouldn’t otherwise field – they are perfect for making into Heavy Weapon guys. If you magnetize the Heavy weapons you get great mileage out of them, making for greater versatility.
I like to run Devastator Squads with Plasma Cannons anyway or, if using your beloved cheese Wolves, I’d personally use Lascannons & Plasma Cannons as Frag Missiles aren’t reliable enough to guarantee me kills in the majority of games I’ve played that I’ve used my Missile Launcher squad in. In fact they’ve under-performed on too many occassions for me if anything.
Don’t get me wrong I’d love every unit to come with every option but the Devastator box is fairly old (4 yrs +) and you haven’t taken that into account. The new box sets pretty much contain everything you’d need, the older ones suffer a lot in comparison. The Tactical Squad hasn’t changed in over a decade or more – you don’t get all the Heavy options or the Sergeant’s coveted combi-weapons and it’s £23!
If it did contain four of eveything + all the sergeant’s options (which granted would be awesome) the price would easily be £35 + & then many would complain it’s too expensive.
Either way its great value as is. You can potentially get 2 Devastator Squads (no matter the load out) out of it if you buy a Combat Squad as well – that’s 2 units at 370pts total for £30 – well below the average of the £1-3 for every 10pts ratio that it takes to build an average army. Compared to the previous all-metal box where you got only one of each for the same price this box is immense.
Also it contains a fair few Servo Skulls for some certain Grey Knights…
Just wanted to comment on your assessment of what’s useful now… how you were saying soft vehicles and missile launchers is where it’s at. They’re where it’s at for now… for 40K is very cyclical… rock paper scissors… the trick to being good is to figure out what the masses are doing and NOT do that…. kinda like the stock market. So while these guys are good for now they’ll soon be eclipsed by a new combo… I’m predicting a swing back to uber-units… we’re already seeing some of this in the new Paladins… I’m sure when Necrons come out they’ll have some bad-a** unit that’ll be kicking… or special gear/rules that enhance a current unit. Pariahs perhaps? So kiddies what I’m saying is go back to your super hard units…. nob bikers/death company/paladins or whatever.. put a little twist on it and you’ll clean up. Sorry for going off topic BTW. 🙂
Also should mention that this kit is great value for converting Chaos Havocs if you don’t want to buy the GW metal kit
1 Missile Launcher? Come on, GW!
This is exactly where my Problem with this Box is. Sure you get a nice amount of bits and the Tactical Box includes a Missile Launcher, but i play Space Wolves. How do i get my Missile Launchers? Even for Smurfs the loadout is kinda wonky. You can’t split fire, so how do you layout your squad? One or two weapons are probaly firing on the wrong target.
I have since made due with converting IG Missile launchers and using the missile from the Rhino kit.
It is the same as the Space Wolves Box. I need Meltas, preferably two or (your Meta may vary) Flamers. What do i get? Two Plasma Guns and SIX Plasma Pistols (of which i can take one) Granted this might now be useful, since a lot of player switch over to Grey Knights for their Paladins. And Paladins die to Plasma.
The box art for the Devastators shows them all firing in different directions.
Are they firing at different targets or does it happen to be a very big horde with a wide front? lol
fwiw Have to agree about the SW box.
Is this the only Space Marine box you get missile launchers in? I play eldar and I am swimming in extra heavy weapons. I don’t have a use for 80% of the heavy weapons they give me.
Hold on now D-Man, the “bog standard” tactical squad usually has a missile launcher in the box. So that you can also have plasma and multi-meltas they made this box of Devisators. It should also have 5 regular marines too. I wish I had saved all the old missile lanchers from my tactical squads.
well if you think missle launchers are hard to get, try to get your hands on multi meltas. there is only one in this box and as far is i know this is the only box you can get them. So that means that if i want to equip 3 tactical squads with multi meltas, i have to buy 3 of these boxes, and then i got 6 lascannons 6 plasmacannons 6 heavy bolters and 6 rocket launchers (3 form the tactical boxes and 3 from the devestators) which i dont use, and thanks to the manager at my local gw, everybody here around plays orks… so much orks O.o
i have the same problem playing salamanders with getting multi meltas. i say they should just bring out a few sprues with say 2 of a certain heavy weapon on it, i mean they already do it with lightning claws & assult cannons
Again it’s nice to hear an honest opinion about the contents of a box. Every one might not agree but for that price they could have given all the options. Look at Pery miniatures plastic war of the roses, you get 40 guys with options for halberds, bows, crossbows and so on (well not for everyone but more than 1 of each) for the same price as this box. Well done Darryl.
I love this guys reviews!
i use 4 MLs in my devastators but i have 3 tactical squads so i swapped the missiles for 1 plasma cannon 1 multi Melta and 1 lascannon but i still have 1 of each (except MM) and 2 Heavy Bolters and i was like What The Hell?
I have to agree. Offering two of each weapon at the least, then with two devastator boxes, two combat squad boxes you could easily make up a squad of all four, four times over.
Does GW sell the weapon sprues separately through the catalogue? On a different note, the flashing on those sprues was horendous! You’d need a roomin’ disk sander to get rid of that lot!
My only annoyance with Devastator squads is their immobility. Should your enemy avoid your lines of fire, you need to redeploy, which loses a round of shooting/exposes you to enemy fire. I run mine with a heavy bolter razorback, but it’s not perfect.
GW Screws every single race when it comes to infantry heavy weapons*, Eldar get screwed the least, but they get screwed in other ways with infantry, like having the only boxed set that’s not a legal minimum for the storm squad. Orks pretty much get everything, and due to their nature you can knock up a heavy shooter in a couple seconds with some brass rod etc, Tau and Necrons just don’t have any(though that might change) Tyranids get their strain upgrades instead for the most part, regular Marines get some of everything but not enough of any one gun to work, and the Imperial Guard, a faction synonymous with heavy weapons since its very inception have to buy a second friggin’ box to get anything more than a grenade launcher.
*They screw us a lot but it just seems to me like the heavy weapons are a concentrated effort to do so.
after watching this video a few days ago i got to thinking about how i was going to work out my dark eldar squads. completely distracted from painting, i decided to see what special / heavy weapons i’d saved up from my 4 boxes of warriors and 3 boxes of wyches. turns out i have a decent ammount left over from doing just 1 of each S/H per squad. leaving me with 5 heavy’s to go and 5 specials remaining. then i took a look at the trueborn, which lead me to look for what squad came default with the shard carbine, the scourges.
now my dilemma is one of hoarding. not knowing how badly i’m going to get shafted in the scourges boxes im’ hesitant on putting any more DE weapons on any of my dudesmen till i see what comes in the box. i reckon it will be a 5 man squad like the SM assault dudes. but i fear that it will come with only 1 or none heavy weapons that i actually would like to use. since i’d like to transfer the shard carbines to the trueborn squad – which can also be heavy / special loaded out.
panic face
When creating an all-comers list I like to outfit my devastators with 2 Missiles, 1 Plasma, and 1 lascannon. I’ve found that to be a good balance of anti horde/tank/heavy infantry.