No one uses Desolation Marines, why?

[Lathe Biosas]

I've noticed that no one plays with Desolation Marines. 

 

I understand that they are dumb looking and appear to be armed with the Imperium's greatest collection of NERF weaponry, but ugly models are still used if they have good rules.

 

The Marines are essentially armed with a 36" indirect bolter and either a 48" krak or frag missile... and they can use both the 36" and the 48" gun in the same shooting phase.

 

(Tbh, I can't remember what the Sergeant can upgrade his weapon to right now)

 

 

Is it because the current Indirect Fire Rules are bad, or is the nonuse attributed to the fact that 5 models cost 200 points? Or is it a mixture of these, along with the general goofiness of the weapons?

 

[Karhedron]

A bit of both, Indirect Fire is weak and has gotten weaker in 11th edition. Also the S10 krak missiles are not quite powerful enough to cut the mustard as anti-tank weapons. 200 points is just too much for what they bring to the table. If they dropped to 150 points they might be worth considering for the flexibility but not as it stands. Still, there is a new codex coming out in 6 weeks so maybe they will get a bit of attention.

[Tawnis]

They are also exceptionally fragile for their points. While indirect does help with this a bit, 38 point models that are T4 2W 3+Sv won't stand up to much that can close the distance. 

They have gone down to 180 points, from their former 200 for the first unit (Though they are 210 after that, yikes), but I still don't expect to see them much. 

[Tacitus]

For a while, "everybody" did.  They were much cheaper and spamming them was potent.  Which is why they changed to 5 and only 5, for 200.  Additionally it resulted in a bunch of changes to Indirect Fire rules because that tactic/playstyle was getting abused across multiple factions. 

 

For 200ish Points you could get 5 Desolation Dudes who could indirect fire the secondary weapon but not the Primary.  Or you could get a Dev Squad with four lascannon.  They may not be able to Indirect Fire the primary (or anything) either but they came with 12 Ablative Wounds before you started losing the big guns.  For SIGNIFICANTLY less than 200 you could take a Ballistus Dread with 2 Lascannon and two Missiles, two more wounds, T10, and a 2+ armor save.  The weird but most accurate answer is: Most armies aren't big enough to go that far down the Bang-For-Your-Buck matrix and they don't need anything exclusive to the Desolation Dudes. 

[Mazer Rackham]

23 hours ago, Lathe Biosas said:

Or is it a mixture of these, along with the general goofiness of the weapons?

 

For me, yep.

 

[Indy Techwisp]

Regarding the models looking dumb:

They do. The launchers make no sense.

 

That said with the new codex there's gonna be quite a few people who are gonna have a number of officially recommended replacement models to hand already, so let's hope the codex makes their stats better to shore up that side of the issue.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

They’re ugly