Hellhounds strategies?

[Wassa]

How do you play your Hellhounds?

 

Move them as far as possible ahead of your army to engage the enemy and be a distraction?

 

Shoot once and charge in with ‘Crush Them’ hoping to tie up an enemy unit?

 

Or do you shoot and hope the enemy charges you to gain a free shot at overwatch?

[Tokugawa]

Die in the face of enemies, explode, and output mortal wounds.

[Kinstryfe]

Move forward, frying whatever is opportune, and hoping the enemy takes your bait. I've taken to calling them suicide tanks because their whole job is to hopefully explode and cause mortal wounds, and soaking early game fire for other targets.

[sairence]

In a recent tournament I used 3 of thr Artemia ones as my Vanguard, together with two Warglaives. Their job was to move forward, flame things and get as close to the enemy units as they could for maximum explosion effect. That also made them great distractions. My two Russes (Pask and a buddy) were barely ever targetted in the entire tournament.

 

They would also often score me recon points thanks to their speed.

[Colonel Bindoff]

Our hellhound support is usually rushed in to burn any enemies of the emperor who have the perfidious nerve to try and make themselves harder to hit. And because the stream of promethium doesn’t require such expertise in aiming as the weapons of our battle tanks, our enemies fear them! Best of all, in the expectation of some battle damage the inferno cannon has been tooled by the enginseers to never degrade! Even when the rest of the hellhound is basically a smoking ruin!

 

To ensure a regular source of volunteers for new hellhounds, which have the delightful quality of exploding spectacularly all over the enemy if parked correctly, we have informed the regiment that the enginseers are working on a way to use the same manufacturing process used for the cannon on the crew compartment, to reduce the current 105%* fatality in battle rate.

 

*one crew was revived by the field hospital after the last battle having been declared deceased (sidenote; saying no one could survive that is no substitute for checking). However the screams were interrupting the general’s visit so the emperor’s peace was granted by bolt pistol.

[WarriorFish]

Hellhounds are great forward tanks - send them to intercept enemies. Keep moving and keep flaming, then move in to charge units that you want to hold back. Then should they die they have one last gift to give

 

You can't control what your opponent does of course, but I found that they are often leery of charging a Hellhound (with good reason) so you can use that against most units. I don't send them too far away from my main forces unless there's something specific I need to handle that I can't reach easily otherwise. Sometimes they need to zip back to help sort something out for example.

 

They're also fast so you can grab cheeky objectives too. Basically, they're extremely useful I regularly run two and I don't think they've ever been this handy

[Feral_80]

Currently Hellhounds are one of our best units - since AM suffers so much from negative to hit modifiers, these tanks are a boon. I'd never leave home withouth a couple, possibly 3, usually as Catachans. A funny alternative is to outflank 3x of them as Tallarn. 

 

They are really quite straightforward to use: sprint ahead, flame, take fire/charges and explode. If they survive for some turns, even better. They will likely repay their cost every time: you only need to give them a heavy bolter and the mandatory track guards. If you are on a budget, Artemia are really cheap and while their cannon is worse, they do a juicy d6 mw upon exploding.

[MrZakalwe]

I really like them as Cadians because although they gain no native bonuses from the Cadian regiment trait they are an excellent way of triggering 'Overlapping fields of fire' against targets with to hit modifiers (such as Aircraft/Eldar).

[ProminusIV]

Deployment is crucial, if they get shot to pieces in your own ranks, you're going to suffer a lot of damage. So keep those 6" bubbles clear of troops and tanks! Then drive forward, park them in front of enemy troops and enjoy the show. I have not had a lot of success with deploying them from ambush, partially because of the tight deployment. 

[sairence]

Yeah, it's all about deployment. In deep zones, like Hammer and Anvil, they tend to form my extreme front, in Dawn if War-esque I often leave an entire flank to them.

[duz_]

Yes all of the above! :D 

 

I deploy them by themselves 6" away from everything else (and each other if possible :lol:)

 

Then run up and burn and hope some goofy opponent charges them and blows them up

I generally always opt to re-roll the explodes result if it doesn't do it the first time around! ^_^

 

[OtherKharon]

If I remember correctly I read on dakkadakka that if possible kite with them. Force charges onto the vehicle  after you have driven it up one flank and keep falling back afterwards, making use of those sweet sweet flamer hits.

[Mr4Minutes]

They are good, but the artemia are susceptible to hugging(tied up in cc). Even a 10 man guard squad should be able to charge one and survive to tie it up for a turn.

[FallenSoldiers]

Remember if you’re out of effective threat range turn 1 because your enemy deployed wisely... move, advance, and pop smoke to try to get into flamer range next turn!

[Frater Cornelius]

And I thought flaming was against the forum rules, and yet here we are :D