Blaster with 5 man Kabalite squads in Venoms?

From looking at other peoples lists and posts, it seems that the most common Troop choice is a 5 man Kabalite squad in a Venom. This is indeed my one and only choice in 7th edition. Based on this, do you guys go for cheap and basic, pure poison or do you spend the extra 15 points per unit and add a Blaster. Is it cost efficient and do you often get use from it or is it just too short range and ignored? For me the problem lies in getting my Venom into 18" of the enemy, when I really want it to be at 35" to keep it safer. Muses please ..

I always take it. ALWAYS

You can never have enough dark light - so much so I consider the 4 kabailites with rifles purely as ablative wounds for the 5th with the blaster!

Would you consider taking blasters on Reavers, that wouldn't get much use as they are mostly jinking (unless LOS) instead? 5 points cheaper too ....

I would always take the blaster in a squad like this, though usually they come into my list after a pair of raiders with dark lances full of warriors.

I usually take the units without as they stay lower on the target priority list of my opponents. I like to save the points for units with more dedicated rolls.
On a side note. I do often take kabalites with blaster, and I am usually not disappointed.

I think it just depends on what you want your army to do and what roll your want your kabalites to fill

I usually take the blaster with, myself. But it also generally depends on the rest of my list.

I've been playing some DE/E allied lists recently, with the archon with blaster and webway portal bringing in an autarch with fusion gun and 5-6 wraithguard with wraith cannons.

Then some reavers, ravagers and a wave serpent etc. as well as the Dark Artisan.

In that list I tend to leave the blasters off as I have enough anti tank sources spread throughout my army. Then the 3-4 venom units can just fill my anti infantry role. In fact I tend to have enough redundancy and unit roles spread throughout the list for all aspects.

But even after all that, I could give the venom units blasters and increase my anti tank sources even more, certainly not a bad option and I have enough other threats on the board that the venoms wouldn't be priority targets if they had to move within 18 to use the blaster.

Otherwise, if I'm pure DE or dont use the wraithguard webway bomb then I will always use the blasters in the venom units - as has been said a few times, they are primarily an anti infantry gun that can take out a much larger variety of armoured infantry and even instant kill some things (like wraiths before they got buffed :/ ) and then they give the unit the capability of actually being able to target anything with an armour value.

As it stands, I always take a blaster.

But, this could be because I currently only have one Ravager and one unit of Scourges, so I'm often light on anti-tank.

In any case, I find that the blaster adds more 'bite' to the squads. Without it, their firepower just seems piddling, to the point where I start to question why I'm even taking them. It also means they're not useless against vehicles, and more of a threat to T3/4 characters and 2+ save units.

That being said, I'm messing around with my list a lot at the moment, so I might well try removing the blasters from some of them and see how much difference it makes.

I dont take the Blasters usually. I can usually find better use of the points elsewhere, which is usually 45pts. 45pts goes a long way in our army and usually means the difference between adding another squad of something or using the points for upgrades or not.

Also, I like that the all the guys inside have the same weapon so they can all fire and hurt the same things. With the Blaster, I tended to reach with the Blaster not only wasting the other 4 guys, but putting the Venom in harms way. I am fine with moving 6'' and firing only 5 Poison shots at people. Alone, it doesnt do much, but moving 2-3 Venoms together, that is 15-30 shots you are putting out. They begin to add up. I dont have delusions of grandeur for them, but they can clean up units just fine.

They all have the same range and will never have to reach for the Blaster-Prayer shot for destroying a vehicle.

Now I am not against them having Blasters in there. People that use Blasters on these squads are not dumb or anything. But for my playstyle and the way I want the units to work, I keep them naked. Choices for targets become easy; shoot anything without an armor value and say at 24" away.

I like to have units very good at something, while keeping them okay for another task. For the venom, the naked-squad is a strong anti-infantry, but having the blaster make it okay for anti-armour. It won't be my first target, since I have others anti-armour in my army, but if I don't know what my ennemy will bring, I prefer having more anti-armour than less.

Not having an additionnal venom because of the blaster hurt a little, but lacking anti-armour when needed hurt more.

Multi Use units are always preferable over single use units.
Blaster always.

In smaller games of around 1000pts or so, which is what I usually play, I usually run my 3 warrior venoms bare. Keeping the cost low allows me to allocate points to a couple ravagers with dark lances. Yes, my warriors become one dimensional, but at smaller point games, a few 15 point blasters are expensive. If I have points left over, I'll add them

I agree with SCP Yeeman. I tend to be of the opinion that less is more.

Blaster always kids!

EDIT: Why? Because I feel more confident having 6 AT shots spread across 6 platforms, rather than 6 AT shots on a lesser number, like 2

Usually just 5 plebs in a boat with 2 cannons. I keep it cheap because I love my Blasterborn

1++ wrote:

Blaster always kids!

EDIT: Why? Because I feel more confident having 6 AT shots spread across 6 platforms, rather than 6 AT shots on a lesser number, like 2

What if you only take 2 Troop choices?

Hellstrom wrote:

1++ wrote:

Blaster always kids!

EDIT: Why? Because I feel more confident having 6 AT shots spread across 6 platforms, rather than 6 AT shots on a lesser number, like 2

What if you only take 2 Troop choices?

I know you weren't asking me, but I'd still prefer that those two troop choices weren't entirely useless against vehicles.

The Blaser is my special weapon of choice in Warrior squads. The Splinter Cannon rarely makes a big difference on them. However, I prefer to bring them in Raiders. The majority of their shots are still poison, while the Blaster is more of a situational weapon.
When it comes to Blasters in a Venom, I just take Blasterborn instead.

If I'm taking warriors in venoms they need a blaster, because I aim for most units in my army to present threats to both vehicles and infantry.

(5) warriors in a venom have one purpose & one purpose only. To walk on from reserves / disembark from their venom to grab an objective - its a 40pt objective holder that is generally fairly easy to hide. Throwing a blaster increases the squad cost by almost 50%, and gives me the false sense of security that packing a S8 weapon brings - invariably when I choose to make use of the blaster I either miss, or fail to do any damage whatsoever. As such, my kabalites are always naked, whether 10-strong in a raider, or 5-strong in a venom.

I don't take the blasters very often. When I do take them, I find myself pushing the venoms further forward than I like to get use out of them. When I don't, I keep my venoms at max 36" range so there is very little that can retaliate against them and I seem to perform better in those games. It also means I don't mind making 12" moves as much or dropping the 5 man off at an objective to hold it.

I usually have 4 kabalite troops choices, so the 60 points go towards me getting another dedicated antitank unit like scourges with haywire or just buying another empty venom.

The Shredder wrote:

Hellstrom wrote:

1++ wrote:

Blaster always kids!

EDIT: Why? Because I feel more confident having 6 AT shots spread across 6 platforms, rather than 6 AT shots on a lesser number, like 2

What if you only take 2 Troop choices?

I know you weren't asking me, but I'd still prefer that those two troop choices weren't entirely useless against vehicles.

What Shredder said but also 2 troop choices is too few aswel, esp as how fragile they are

lessthanjeff wrote:

I don't take the blasters very often.  When I do take them, I find myself pushing the venoms further forward than I like to get use out of them.  When I don't, I keep my venoms at max 36" range so there is very little that can retaliate against them and I seem to perform better in those games.  It also means I don't mind making 12" moves as much or dropping the 5 man off at an objective to hold it.

I usually have 4 kabalite troops choices, so the 60 points go towards me getting another dedicated antitank unit like scourges with haywire or just buying another empty venom.

Make sure you aren't moving 12'' and dropping off warriors since you cant do that.

But Im in the same boat as you. No Blasters, use those 45-60pts for a whole other unit. Plus I tend to move them up like you and put them in harms way.

1++ wrote:

also 2 troop choices is too few aswel, esp as how fragile they are

Well, to be fair, now that everything can score Troops aren't exactly fulfilling a vital role any more.

I voted for 'Blaster always' but that's not strictly true. The vast majority of the time I think it's worth it to add the Blaster, changing the unit's cost to 120 from 105.

It's easy to think of the Blaster as an anti-vehicle weapon, but remember that it kills a mean of 5/9 MEQ per shot vs a Splinter Rifle's 1/9 (or 2/9 with rapid fire). Against MEQ it's a points-efficient upgrade even if you only use the unit for an anti-infantry role. Naturally, it's even more impressive against TEQ but only slightly better against GEQ. (The above numbers are for out-of-cover models).

Since our Darklight weaponry is infamously wiff-able (their mean damage is pretty decent per shot, but the high Standard Deviation / Variance of the dice rolls' random variables mean that a total failure is surprisingly likely- I could explain further in another post if anyone's interested in the stats-hammer?), I like to have a few more Blasters dotted around where possible. That extra shot could just strip that last hull point off a vehicle that your Ravegers have only managed to tickle.

Having said all that, if I need to shave 15 points or so from a list then these Blasters are amount my first candidates to be jettisoned, at which point the unit becomes a cheap objective grabber with a lovely Venom.