Rapid Fire - how do I make splinter weapons work?

Hello guys,

the title pretty much says it all. This thread is meant to discuss the pros and cons of splinter rifles or rapid fire weapons in general and how to use them in game.

As I am new to 40k even though I've been a long time WHFB player rapid fire bothers me a bit. The fact that I may either remain stationary and shoot or move and fire twice at half range is not all that beneficial in my eyes.

Here is why: As DE you rely on speed and mobility in order not to get shot or assaulted to pieces. The exception being the dedicated CC squads of course. With this in mind it does not look like a good idea to remain stationary in order to shoot 24" with my rifles. It is also a bad idea though to cruise into 12" range of your designated target, which could for example be a Carnifex or a Nemesis Dread Knight in order to rapid fire, because if you don't kill your target in one round, it can definitely assault you in the following turn and most likely rip your transport to pieces which the squad should follow shortly thereafter.

So, how do you make splinter rifles / rapid fire guns work. Am I missing something?

Cheers,

Dogmar

I try to keep most of my shooty guys at Blaster range. Rapid firing rifles are a rare sight indeed.

You generally have all your shooty fellows inside transports, disembarking them only in a time of need. If you want something that sits on a point and covers anything that comes near it in splinter fire, you probably should try running 20 man Kabalite squads. Otherwise, 10 man squads should sit in their respective Raider at all times, riding around, then taking that 12" movement, disembarking and unloading 20 deadly rapid fire shots at that one nasty unit. A risky tactic, but sometimes required (though shouldn't be done infront of Guardsmen blobs, better just charge those).

I have little issues with rapid-fire, mainly because I try not to rely it. It's more a defensive measure rather than an offensive one. I had to learn it the hard way with Fire Warriors... that 30" range is nice, but when ballistic skill, initiative and toughness are all 3, it spells doom for them almost in every scenario, rapid fire or not.

Raneth wrote:

I try to keep most of my shooty guys at Blaster range. Rapid firing rifles are a rare sight indeed.

This, mostly.
I actually do rapid-fire in basically every game I play - but it's a reactive/cleaning up operation rather than a prime killing tool.

Back under the last Dex I would use rapid-fire as a prime killing tool, however (new S.Cannons sorta removed the need for that nowadays) and the goal then was one of singling out the target as something that was off on the flank of the enemy line or otherwise isolated, and then just beating the ever-loving heck out of it with multiple rapid-fire broadsides so there was nothing left to shoot/assault you afterwards.

Rapid fire is actually a primary use of my warriors, whether to soften something up before an assault, take out an MC, or remove some other threat. Works rather well, I'd say, seeing as one of my more frequent opponents has learned to dislike getting close to one of my gunboats.

That's pretty situational. I've moved Raiders into rapid fire range frequently, and mowed down the threat to the Raider. You can't really look at the unit in isolation, usually if I'm putting a Raider within charge range, I'm also preparing to charge the target with something else.

I use it only when i wolfpack isolated targets with multiple Kabalites on Venoms.Disembark and unleash hell.
Bottom line is - it aint a shooting contest , i do this only when i know target gonna be 100% dead after rapid fire, or we fasing something resemble actual battle which we dont fare well.

There is situation when i just want to disembark to multiply targets to chose before my opponent , if he only have one or so heavy ranged squad/tank. Playin the advantages of MSU. Dead Venom means dead Kabalites almost always, so what the hell let them go in the blaze of rapid-fire glory.
Maybe they will be lucky and they wont be chosen as target.

Good arguments across the board there. I've failed to see the synergy with assault units until now as I thought about a gunboat list the moment I started the thread. So you zoom up your raider 12" in front of enemy CC unit X ... pump out 21 poison shots +1 blaster shot (assuming the common setup 10 warriors, SC, Blaster in Raider) and have your wyches and/or another squad next to them to kill even more and then bind them in the assault phase... or put so many targets in their face that they might kill one unit, but will never get them all.

Sure you have to differentiate between big raider squads and the MSU blaster squads, who are bought just for the blaster. then the venom makes up for the splinter shots with the double SC at 36". Keeping the guys at blaster range should make them safe of anything short of beasts.

Still I often see "oh don't engage just splinter them to death" kind of advice and in a way that crosses out half the options outlined above and involves sacrificing at least one unit when you use the other.

depends on your list setup more than anything else. If you are using venomspam, then your more than likely not using the warriors to shoot infantry, as you have plenty of that with their venoms. All warriors do in that type of list (other than be there to actually buy the venom) is to use their blaster to increase the amount of darklight in the army.

in a raider w/ a ten man squad its different. now you have options. ofc they can move 12" disembark, and shoot, but then again they are T3 5+ models. What I like to do with these is let them sit at the 24" mark on the board and be reactive with them. just keep sitting still and shoot your rifles/cannons at anything you can, and when something finally punches through your front lines, drive over to them and unlease splinter hell. Personally I find these work best in 2s and with assault unit backup, and find that these work better with an overall army synergy, while the venom ones work better individually.

Dogmar wrote:

So, how do you make splinter rifles / rapid fire guns work. Am I missing something?

One of two ways:

1) I let the Reavers take care of it (if I use them in my games and they have a chance to shoot at any infantry)

2)When I use my splinter rifles on my warriors it could only mean two things; 1) I need the firepower to wipe out the remnants of my opponent's army, 2) I am so screwed that I needed the splinter rifle shots to begin with.

Otherwise I tend to rely on my Wyches, Archon, Haemonculi, Razorwing, Bladevanes on my Reavers (if I use them in my games) and my Venoms to handle all my anti-infantry needs.

But that saying it is the way I design my list; each unit of mine would have dual roles (Reavers with heat lances and bladevanes, wyches with haywire grenades and Razorwing) or they would work with their particular transport to allow the overall slot to have dual roles (ex: wyches as anti-infantry and their raider transport would be an anti-tank unit, warriors as anti-tank and their venom will be anti-infantry). When the whole list works in tandem with each other I have a balance of both anti-tank and anti-infantry throughout the entire list.

Well i guess, how I make my splinter rifles work is through teamwork. I like so have a raider with warriors covering my CC Units. Weaken the Target, Splinter Racks work great here ;-)

But it really comes around to how you play your army. I dislike the venom spam, as it is in contrast to our army wide special rule PfP. When shooting infantry with tanks and shooting tanks with infantry generates no pain token, and that really would help an army at the end of the day. But the venom spam fraction seems to get along quiet well without them ;-)

Quote :

So you zoom up your raider 12" in front of enemy CC unit X ... pump out 21 poison shots +1 blaster shot (assuming the common setup 10 warriors, SC, Blaster in Raider)

If you zoom 12" your not allowed to shoot with your passengers, so you move 6" and then you shoot(one of the reasons the raider warriors are not such a loved unit) and then you have 8*2 splinter rifle shots, 4 SC shots and 1 Blaster shot, so 21 shots in total.

You can zoom , disembark and then shoot rapid fire. Thats the reason why Splinter Racks are almost never taken.
They mostly serve only to help the remains of the squad which already disembarked and fired.(in this case - rarely will raider be fired at all)

Oh and if i take Raider Warriors that would certainly be Dark Lance + Blaster.Such a good opportunity in AT is not to be missed.

best way IMO to make them work is too kill units in each phase of the turn.

Movement phase- Reavers- Usaing bladevanes to do some massive damage in the movement phase is an unparelled advantage that can really soften up a unit .

Shooting phase-Rapid fire Splinter rifles- I play with a converted model of Duke Sliscus which gives my Kabalites a 3+ on the rifles, combine that with splinter racks which basically make all splinter weapons TL and you have a giant hail of poisened death that softens the target up even more.

Assault Phase- Wyches-most of the time its good to fleet the wyches into CC, so with a squad sliced and poisened it will be no problem for the wyches to charge in and cut the crap out of everything.

This tactic works really well against a spread out army. A friend of mine played IG and made the decision of fanning out his Gaurd because I was running 2 Razorwings and those blast templates can work some nasty magic vs IG infantry. So I snuck around back with my wyches and Reavers, Deep Struck my raider full of Kabalites, and riped though his left side. While he did take down my jet fighters, by the time he recovered I had 3 sqauds of pain-high DE to then run though his tanks and guard. All and all you have a vital component for a turn to kill units in each phase of the game