Kabalite Venom Spam - Haywire 'Nades or Ney?

When running Venom Spam Kabalite Warriors as Troops.

The way I see it, mounted in the Venom you can have your 5 warriors armed in 2 main ways;

'Squad A' - With a Blaster for 55 points.

or

'Squad B' With Sybarite/Haywire 'nades and Blaster for 70.

So for roughly a 1/3 increase in points cost Squad B can put out 2x as many AT attacks as Squad A in a single turn sequence, if under 8" from a valid AV target + with a successful charge this increases to 3x as many AT attacks in a single turn.

Combined with the haywire 'nades superior ability to strip hull points this 15 point upgrade seems like a no brainer. Especially when you consider that using the blaster on an AV target wastes the Splinter Rifle shots form the other members of the squad.

In poker we would say that its 'good pot odds' or something.. a competitive, relatively small additional outlay for a markedly superior chance of getting your points back threw damage caused to the enemy.

However lots of Bat Reps I see utilise venom spam with warriors equipped like 'Squad A'

Am I missing something here?

People tend to not want their heavy vehicles right next to haywire grenades, and your extremely fragile troops tend to not want to be anywhere near anything with S4+, hence starting your turn within 20" (6" move, 6" disembark, 8" throw range") of the wehicle you want to hurt, without being hurt yourself first, is rather unlikely.

Well, a few things come to mind:

- 15pts isn't really a throwaway amount, if you see what I mean - especially for such a small squad.

- The Sybrite is basically wasted beyond the haywire (the squad is so small and fragile that Ld is basically irrelevant).

- The Haywire grenade has barely 1/3 of the range of the Blaster. Blasters are awful weapons, compared to meltas (despite costing 50% more). Literally the only advantage they have is that they have more range... and this tactic means sacrificing even that small crumb of benefit.

- Also, if you're going that close, you're basically making them a suicide squad. And, if I'm going to do that, I want a suicide squad that's better at it's job. No point in throwing away 70pts of troops (probably their transport, too) just for a single blaster shot and 1-2 throws of haywire grenades.


In addition, I think we just have better options. If you want more anti-vehicle stuff, there are Trueborn (who can have 4 blasters), or Scourges (who can have 4 Haywire Blasters or 4 Heat Lances). It just seems more efficient to keep troops cheap, rather than trying to mix and match weapons with different ranges.

I think its because you have to be so close to use the grenade, putting the venom and occupants at risk. Depending on what you're throwing it at you may be dead meat if you don't manage to finish it off. I guess many prefer to save 15 points off the venom + warrior loadout for other things such as dedicated AT.

Allthough I play very aggressively with my kabalites i have rarely the need for haywire. 15pts is not much but when you multiply that for all four troops it becomes 60 pts. You get a Raider(what ever) with those points and its helping in almost every game.

Last game those haywires would have been nice when my kabalites assaulted a Vendetta but manageing on one hp of damage.

Fifteen points for one grenade is astronomically expensive.

I never take them unless I have fifteen spare points and nowhere to put them.

That 15 points could be spent on more important things. Especially if you have a lot of syberites with HW. Then there are a lot more points that could be invested elsewhere.

If you have say. 4 kabalie units in venoms with your load out you will indeed get some nice situational haywire shots for 60pts. BUT! You could easily invest those 60 points in upgrading a kabalite unit to a unit of trueborn with 4 blasters. The trueborn are not situational and will always have a purpose on the field.

Fielding situational items like haywire on kabalites seems like a big waist of points IMHO. I would maybe considers a dracon with hwg in blasterborn if they were with an archon with blaster and wwp. 5 blasters and a hwg is going to frak something up real nice.