Destroyer advice/discussion

[Djangomatic82]

What role or niche are the Destroyer units supposed to fulfill in actual gameplay?

I understand the lore tells us they are the ones that are permitted to use all the proscribed weapons, like toxiferran flamers, rad missiles, disintegrators and graviton guns, as per their rules.

On the tabletop, It doesn't seem to me that those options really giver clear and decisive advantage over competing units to really incentivize Destroyer inclusion. I look at a kitted out Destroyer squad versus a kitted out Veteran squad and I cant really see what unit the Destroyer is supposed to excel against, versus the Veteran squad.

The inclusion of rad grenades in their basic gear and a 2A base seems to point them into a melee role, but the lack of melee weapons with good AP for every model, seems to play against that option.

Have Destroyers just been left behind, are they only meant to be good in certain legions, or am i missing something, some kinda secret sauce that makes them better  than a Veteran Squad, even if in just one or two specialized circumstances?

 

[MARK0SIAN]

In my experience destroyers work best when they’re ‘paired’ with another unit, normally a decent melee unit. I use the destroyers for some shooting to soften the target up then charge in with them and the other unit so the destroyers lower the targets toughness for the other unit to kill them off.  It allows units that normally lack the strength to instant death elite stuff to actually wipe them out.

 

However, it’s a bit of a pain to pull off and there would normally be easier ways to achieve the same effect. 
 

I generally agree with your assessment, destroyers are hard to define in terms of their role on the table as they don’t excel in any unique direction. 
 

One thing to bear in mind though is the number of mechanicum armies you’re likely to face in games will probably go up and the rad grenades will work against a lot of the robots. 

[Unknown Legionnaire]

First things first:  Maybe move this to the tactica section ?

 

Second, let us be clear we are talking about standard Destroyer Assault Squads and / or Mortalis Destroyer Squads, not legion specific units, because some of them have different and / or specialised purposes.

 

Alright ... Destroyers.

 

If you look at their common rules and stats, increased number of attacks, counter-attack, stubborn, rad grenades and melta bombs all over the place, chainsword on  the get-go, it becomes apparent that Destroyers should be a dedicated melee unit. At least in my book.

 

But in 2.0 they are often outperformed by other units that simply to their job better, do not have to rely on combined charges, do not occupy elites slot and so on and so forth.

Melee in 2.0 in general is done by command squads, sometimes veterans and specialised legion specific melee units. You even rarely see vanilla terminators, if they're not someone's retinue, due to 'only' being WS 4. 

In the end, there's a lot of factors why people leave Destroyers off to the side. Another one being there's no way t make them into line units. Not even for those legions who can unlock them as troops.

 

Destroyers can be really awesome though, when you combine them with certain legion traits, legion specific gear and / or warlord traits.

 

Ten alchem-templates from a five-man suicide jump unit ? Yes please.

Fearless Destroyers with inbuilt FnP (5+) ? Yes please.

Howl of Morkai getting your dudes up to STR 6 on the charge and thus making every attack in the ten-man unit ID ? Hell yeah !

And so on, and so forth ...

 

In my opinion, Destroyers require some thinking, but they're still awesome if you can tailor them to a specific task.