How I learned to stop worrying and love the Flamestorm Baal

[mercury]

I wanted to discuss with you my personal take on the Flamestorm Baal. It seems that this particular variant of the tank has something of a bad rep and rarely turns up in anyone's competitive or tournament lists. I was wondering why, as I have bought one for my Blood Angels and after several games have come to the conclusion that I love it.

 

I frequently hear that the Flamestorm Baal is inferior to its Assault Cannon cousin, largely due to its short weapons range. It is true that if you use your Scout move to line up some turn 1 shots at the enemy then you'd better be prepared for a wrecked tank, as it will now likely be in the midst of your opponent's army and in range of just abut every gun/demo charge/grenade going. In later turns a good flame run is still likely to leave you exposed. So why take one?

 

One of the major arguments against the Flamestorm Baal seems to be "it rarely makes its points back". I do not subscribe to this as an argument. Unless you happen to be playing a special scenario, yourself and your opponent will have an equal number of points on the table. It is therefore statistically impossible for every unit in your army to consistently do more than its own point value in damage. I play a number of miniatures games, in some of which I frequently choose models with little or no damage output purely for their support function. There are not many such options in WH40K it would seem - so this concept is a little unusual - but they do exist (Sanguinary Priests spring to mind).

 

In my opinion the Flamestorm Baal is so valuable for its psychological effect upon an opponent and resultant board control it provides. Everyone knows the threat of the Flamestorm Cannon and Heavy Flamers, and they are rightly feared by horde armies. Even MEQs dread the S6, AP3 Flamestorm Cannon. Use this to your advantage! The threat of a Scout move to deal with infiltrating Genestealers or an Outflanking Flamestorm Cannon taking out a flanking unit of Marines can have a significant effect on your opponent's battle plan. Suddenly those Genestealers are not deployed in a forward position, or those Chaos Marines remain near the centre of the battlefield. My Flamestorm Baal is worth it for these reasons alone.

 

Like most players, I rarely get more than one good flame run out of my Baal Pred per game, so I do need to try to maximise damage when I use it, but I am not obsessed with 'getting 140 points back' as I pay my points for a role which is much harder to score mathematically. Of course, this in turn means that I have to have high damage output models in my army to take out the swathes of models which the Predator does not, but that is what Mephiston and friends are for!

 

Next time you build an army list, give the Flamestorm Baal a try. If you approach its function with a sufficiently open mind I promise that you will not be disappointed.

[Brother-Captain Devlonir]

Got to love the extra turn with no or barely any shooting your rhinos and/or razorbacks get because the enemy has that Flamestorm Baal in his face and has to focus his anti-tank on it!

 

Seriously, the Flamestorms are the ultimate suicide unit that your enemy simply cannot ignore because giving it two shots off will make you get your points back for sure. You should paint them all black ;-)

[Gumo9]

I love the Flamestorm Baal too. It first earned it's stripes for me against genestealers which were causing me no end of headaches in games. The first solution that worked for me was a Flamestorn Baal with heavy bolters on the side. No more genestealer threat.

 

My opponent's entire strategy was based on having a huge swarm of genestealers rampaging over my units. After a few squirts from the flamestorm there was only a few of them left. My Baal basically won the game for me.

 

G

[jeremy1391]

I have used the flame Baal to great effect against elder pathfinders and banshees