What to put on an assault squad?

[Darkjediben]

Making my second squad of ten assault marines now, and i'm looking to go back to the first one and cut off their pistols to replace them with special weaps. Should I go with flamers or plasma pistols?

[JamesI]

I prefer flamers of the choice given. Cheaper than plasma pistols, no risk of blowing yourself up.

[Zynk Kaladin]

Flamers are definitely my favorite. Two flamer templates can thin that horde of whatever nicely before charging in and slicing the survivors.

[Koremu]

Plasma Pistols are useful against MEQ, TEQ and if you expect to be forced to rely on the Assault Squad themselves to tin-can-open the Transports themselves. Otherwise, use a Flamer.

[DarkGuard]

I've used flamers on mine, very handy to thin down enemy units before the charge. Of course plasma pistols let you get an additional close combat attack, but the cheaper flamers are less likely to blow you up :rolleyes:

[Jackelope King]

If you made me take Assault Marines in C:SM, I'd take flamers. Assault Squads should only be going after light infantry anyway, not hunting down Terminators.

[Brightguy]

Agree with flamers. Plasma is good against heavily armored high toughness targets, exactly what assault squads are bad at. Flamers play to their strenght which is going after light infantry.

[ImperialReaper]

I am a big fan of plasma.

You can wound anything easily and leave him with no armorsave. When the going gets rough you could even pop vehicles with a little luck.

 

But against armys like nids or IG which come in masses and have low toughness and armor saves you are probably better suited with a flamer.

[Tanhausen]

I'd say it depends the role. Back in 4th ed I ran 2x7 assault squads with a PF/PG Sgt and 2 PG standard AM, with a JP chappy that also carried a PG. Yep, it was darn expensive ( something like 500 points in a 1500 enviroment) but was great to hunt dreadnoughts, catch rear tank armours, fusilading carnifexes... they were a "big guys" hunting unit that was extremely mobile and delivered consistently :devil:

 

That said, in 5th enviroment, and DA now having to go either 5 or 10, they are in the case waiting for the comeback xD

 

I think a nice combo would be tanks blowing transports and a flamer squad moppin up B)

 

Again, depends what you want them for, if they are troops or not...

[Race Bannon]

Why not just make two dudes with flamers and two dudes with PP? Then you can switch them out depending on the opponent. :)

[Hellios]

My dark angels can't have flamers but so I have plasma pistols... but otherwise I would have a flamer or 2... The main benefit of plasma IMO on assault marines is to pop transports. However I feel assault marines are best used (although it depends on the mission and how your opponent plays) to counter assault things that are getting to close to your shooty units. This being the case we might hope that the transports have already been popped and even better the units have been damaged already because assault marines are the janitors of the space marines... they mop up the little bits that are left and a flamer can help maybe kill a couple of marines or enough gribble (say Orks) that the unit is now so weak you should easily finish it off in CC.

[ShinyRhino]

I started out fielding a squad of 10, with one flamer, and one plasma pistol, with a powerfist sergeant. I wanted something that could deal with any situation. Then I realized that I was crippling myself, since a single plasma pistol really doesn't do much. Most of the time I'd miss, fail to wound, or fail to harm a vehicle.

I switched to 2x flamer instead, and really like it. I tend to use this squad as a flamer bomb. I attach a Jump Pack Librarian with Avenger, and deepstrike in. Use the sergeant or a standard Marine as your first model placed via deepstrike, and you can then wrap the models around him to place the Libby and the flamers toward whatever you want to hit. 2x flamer templates, plus the Avenger template HURT. The only obstacle is landing them on-target.

 

I am tempted to revisit the palsma pistols, by building myself another standard Marine with one, and also a sergeant with one. Three plasma pistol shots is nice. You can either whittle down a TEQ unit and try to bury the survivors under weight of attacks, or pop a light transport and charge the occupants. Most non-MEQ units that want to be riding around in a Chimera, Trukk, Devilfish, etc can actually be handled by a charging assault squad without expensive power weapons. MEQ are goign to require at least a power sword.

[Koremu]

I am tempted to revisit the palsma pistols, by building myself another standard Marine with one, and also a sergeant with one. Three plasma pistol shots is nice. You can either whittle down a TEQ unit and try to bury the survivors under weight of attacks, or pop a light transport and charge the occupants. Most non-MEQ units that want to be riding around in a Chimera, Trukk, Devilfish, etc can actually be handled by a charging assault squad without expensive power weapons. MEQ are goign to require at least a power sword.

My Power Fist Jump Pack Veteran Sergeant has a holstered Pistol :mellow: Very useful for deploying the Squad in whatever config I need.

 

The Assault Squad as a whole hasn't done great guns by me, but the rest of my army isn't really optimised to work well with them. I think I need another Squad of them and a FNP aura...

[Lord_Reven]

I dislike plasma pistols.. 15pts. for something you will probably only use once, and that has a 1 in 6 chanse of burning you instead, i just dont consider them worth it on a RAS. So i would go with flamers.