Blasterborn, how to get the best out of them

I like the idea of blasterborn, but with a fairly short range, even inside their venom, it seems like a lot of points for a fragile unit that has to get in close before its effective. How do you all use them, or do you even use them at all?

Most people that I have seen using them put a 5 man squad in a venom, this allows them time to get in close and do their job.

I do not use them personally, so someone with actual experience will be able to give you a better answer.

Right. I actually meant more "how do you guys use them on the table". For simplicities sake, let's assume we're talking about a five man squad with four blasters in a venom.

For a start, that's a needlessly expensive build. You only need to take as many as you're taking blasters so that's usually 3 or 4.

Target saturation is very helpful with them. I often find my Ravagers draw more fire than my Blasterborn. They are like short range Ravagers though are often don't do much on T1 or 2.

Otherwise, just use them to hunt enemy vehicles.

I use to run 3 lots of 3 blasterborn a lot.. but more recently have switched to using dual splintercannon trueborn squads.

The short range of blasterborn does hurt them. getting them to where they can be effective can be tought against a good opponent as it's not all that hard to kill a venom and in killing it you often lose 1-2 of the blasterborn along with it, making it a particularly juicy kill for your opponent and a bigger than needed loss for you.

The good thing about ravagers is their ability to move and shoot which extends their range beyond the standard 36" of the lances meaning they can hit most things whereever they need to be. Blasterborn can reach 24", which is puts them in the bracket of range that can be evaded reasonably easily. Even if your opponent make your ravagers their top priority then they can usually manoeuvre such that they can hit your ravager while avoiding your blasterborn. That means they can deal with each threat one at a time, essentially turning your list into one which arrives in waves, which is not how DE work best. Alpha, concentrated fire and early game damage are the forte of DE and blasterborn tend to be in the bracket of turn 2-3 damage which for me is a luxury we can't really afford (unless it's say a beast pack moving forward which could pose a massive threat that the opponent needs to deal with from turn 1, before it gets to their lines).

I deep-strike mine in, on turn two i'm already in their face and reliably dropping most of my reserves which include a 10 man warrior w/ cannon in a raider with ff and splinter racks, two 4 man blasterborn in dual sp cannon venoms, and a razorwing just for good measure, into their back field (Minus the flyer). Deep-strike the venom in, disembark and viola, you have can shoot at two different units and thus created two targets for them to choose which is the most dangerous.

eris wrote:

I use to run 3 lots of 3 blasterborn a lot.. but more recently have switched to using dual splintercannon trueborn squads.

The short range of blasterborn does hurt them. getting them to where they can be effective can be tought against a good opponent as it's not all that hard to kill a venom and in killing it you often lose 1-2 of the blasterborn along with it, making it a particularly juicy kill for your opponent and a bigger than needed loss for you.

The good thing about ravagers is their ability to move and shoot which extends their range beyond the standard 36" of the lances meaning they can hit most things whereever they need to be. Blasterborn can reach 24", which is puts them in the bracket of range that can be evaded reasonably easily. Even if your opponent make your ravagers their top priority then they can usually manoeuvre such that they can hit your ravager while avoiding your blasterborn. That means they can deal with each threat one at a time, essentially turning your list into one which arrives in waves, which is not how DE work best. Alpha, concentrated fire and early game damage are the forte of DE and blasterborn tend to be in the bracket of turn 2-3 damage which for me is a luxury we can't really afford (unless it's say a beast pack moving forward which could pose a massive threat that the opponent needs to deal with from turn 1, before it gets to their lines).

This exactly. I look to blasterborn as ravagers 4-6 if ravagers and wyches are still not enough anti mech.. meaning I rarely even consider them anymore.

I run a 4 man blasterborn venom unit in most games i play. They do alright most of the time but also draw a lot of fire when used for that aim.

In most of the games they make their points back in a dead tank or MC but really make the opponent think about their movement phase to try and stay away from that unit and the 2 ravagers on the other side. That's what I use them for mainly as they aren't too expensive and can often survive a few turns unless your opponent puts some decent anti tank in to them meaning they aren't hitting the ravagers with that anti tank. Essentially I like to feed them to my opponent when they least expect it so they make a bit of a silly choice and go for that unit as opposed to the units that are going to hurt a lot more (If that makes and sense at all).