# Obliterators, Help Please



## Lopspoon (Jun 23, 2009)

Most every person on this forum seems to think that obliterators are the most competitive option for a CSM heavy slot. I don't really understand this as you can get cheaper lascannons in a havoc squad, more ablative wounds in a havoc squad and you cannot move obliterators in transports. As well, most players have plasma or an AP 1-2 equvelent to which obliterators are vunerable to. I understand that they are very versatile with their alterable weapons but I would rather a deepstriking unit of terminators with combi weapons than a unit of Obliterators. If people are interested, I will do some mathammer for this topic.


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## englanda (Dec 2, 2008)

2x Lash + 9 Plasma Cannons. Bunch up the unit with lash and drop plasma shots.


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## DarKKKKK (Feb 22, 2008)

By all means, if you have a tactic or like a tactic better to do the same job that Obliterators do, go ahead and do it. One of the main reasons (besides the versatility) why Obliterators are taken more than other heavy support choices is by the time a person gets around to pickin a heavy support choice, not many points are available after HQ and troops in most Chaos armies. Since that is the case most of the time, grabbing some Obliterators is the most appealing option.


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## Cleitus_the_Black (Jun 8, 2009)

Personally I quite like Havoks, but I have to as they're all I've got for now. I find they do the trick as long as you equip them correctly. 5 havoks in a rhino with 4 meltas can be pretty fun.


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## Gul Torgo (Mar 31, 2008)

A Havok with a lascannon is 50 pts. You get a LOT for the investment of those extra 25 for the oblit. Extra wound, better armor, relentless, and of course the extra guns.

Plus Oblits can be devastating when they deep strike next to a valuable target vehicle and unload with meltas.

I find Havoks useful when given missile launchers (mostly against Dark Eldar and horde armies) or heavy bolters. Anything more heavy duty, Oblits are the better choice. Except of course for the price. At about $20 each, obliterators are certainly not cheap.


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## The Wraithlord (Jan 1, 2007)

Yeah it mainly stems from the fact that they have a lot of weapon options available to them and can be used in any situation. A LC Havoc squad is really only good against MC's and heavy armour, utterly useless vs hordes. An Oblit squad on the other hand can fire off their lc's to kill armour, meltas the same, and plasmaguns or cannons vs infantry/hordes. Not to mention the fact that they can even drop down 3 flamer templates when in need. Add to that the fact that they can fire all their weapons on the move and come with pfists for cost, terminator armour, and 2 wounds. Hands down the better choice.

Consider this: 3 Oblits are 225pts while a 5 man Havoc unit with 4 lc's is 215pts. Keeping in mind the above points, Oblits are the better option. Sure the price of the Havocs goes down if you take other weapons but then you no longer have a unit that can hunt heavy armour AND infantry with equal ease. If you are facing horde armies, a hbolter Havoc squad is a good buy but they ONLY hit infantry. Oblits can potentially do even more damage to infantry with their pcannons and still fire off at MC's/heavy armour with ease.

They are, hands down, the best HS choice in the codex.


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## Son of mortarion (Apr 24, 2008)

Gul Torgo said:


> A Havok with a lascannon is 50 pts. You get a LOT for the investment of those extra 25 for the oblit. Extra wound, better armor, relentless, and of course the extra guns.
> 
> Plus Oblits can be devastating when they deep strike next to a valuable target vehicle and unload with meltas.
> 
> I find Havoks useful when given missile launchers (mostly against Dark Eldar and horde armies) or heavy bolters. Anything more heavy duty, Oblits are the better choice. Except of course for the price. At about $20 each, obliterators are certainly not cheap.


I have to disagree with " a LOT" The extra wound and armor are minimal advantages when the unit will take a lot of fire, most of which will be able to cause instant death to the t4 pointsinks called obliterators, They do NOT get relentless, but slow and purposeless, which defeats the purpose of moving and firing a heavy weapon. you don't get the extra guns, since you cant use them all, you get one gun, with multiple profiles. ( there is no pont in paying such an extreme premium for the flexibility, especially when half of it is redundant)


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

At the end of it all,

If an opponent puts down a unit of 10 havoks with 4 [insert weapon], I can avoid them easily.
If an opponent puts down a unit of 3 obliterators, then its a different story.

at 75 points, an obliterator can 'do' everything.


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## b.anthracis (Nov 18, 2008)

Son of mortarion said:


> They do NOT get relentless, but slow and purposeless, which defeats the purpose of moving and firing a heavy weapon.


When you get S&P you automatically get relentless as well!


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## duckfromhelll (Mar 25, 2008)

I find especially in tournanents when you will be facing multiple armies obliterators are the best because no matter what their theme or strategey you have an answer to it. Where as havacs/pred/dread/defiler, whatever you equipped them with thats what they get for the whole tournament.

If you know what your opponent is going to field and its just one game*maybe* obliterators are too expensive. But most people i know join long lasting tourneys and could use the most versitile unit in the game. Who else can kill a monolith, wipe out orks, kill a whole space marine unit, and assault with powerfists?


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

Abaddon?


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## Lash Machine (Nov 28, 2008)

Obliterators all the way but you could always chuck in one defiler or vindicator to give the enemy something to shoot at.


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## deathbringer (Feb 19, 2009)

Variety is the spice of life and you dont get much more variety than in oblits.
Anti horde, anti tank, anti MEQ
you have to love them at the sort of points value as well


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## Cleitus_the_Black (Jun 8, 2009)

b.anthracis said:


> When you get S&P you automatically get relentless as well!


I think Son of Mortarion was referring to the fact that, despite having relentless, you will be moving around 3" per turn (or so, I don't know the actual average) which sucks so you might as well stand still.




Orochi said:


> Abaddon?


That's fantastic!


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## Master_Caleb (Jan 5, 2009)

Cleitus_the_Black said:


> I think Son of Mortarion was referring to the fact that, despite having relentless, you will be moving around 3" per turn (or so, I don't know the actual average) which sucks so you might as well stand still.


Considering anything else with a lascannon can't move, and shoot.... unless you wanna pay for a vehicle... 




Cleitus_the_Black said:


> That's fantastic!


Just wait till he gets killed by a SINGLE lasgun when the IG player didn't manage to finish him off with the heavy weapons... oh man it's hilarious. 

Thanks,

~MC


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## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

Obliterators are good, there is no question of this. The reason why I think that they're commonly seen as the "best" Heavy slot is because they take about three brain cells to use effectively. It's the same as Nidzilla, Mech Eldar or Mech Tau in 4th edition. Armies and units that play themselves are always popular with the competitive crowd because they're extremely reliable and even if you make an error with them, you can generally count on the reliability of the unit to make up for your error in judgement so you won't be punished too severely. Deploy a unit of Obliterators poorly? Not a huge deal, they can move and fire heavy weapons. Deploy Havocs poorly? Big deal in comparison! You're going to have to waste at least one turn of shooting while you rush to redeploy.


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## Cleitus_the_Black (Jun 8, 2009)

Master_Caleb said:


> Just wait till he gets killed by a SINGLE lasgun when the IG player didn't manage to finish him off with the heavy weapons... oh man it's hilarious.


Poor Abaddon. He had such plans!


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## artillo (Jul 7, 2009)

Sure Oblits are T4 and have 2 wounds but i think getting terminator armour on top of that more than makes up for the 4 toughness. 

What else is nice about oblits is being able to split the enemy's fire between 2 groups or 3 groups of oblits (each a unit of 1-3 of course) insted of havocs all being in one larger target area and risking total destruction for the same points cost.


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## Unforgiven302 (Oct 20, 2008)

I have to agree with the others here that Oblitorators have the flexibility. In that simple of an explanation this is the strongest point of this unit. I really hate going up against a squad of these guys as they have an answer for almost every situation. They are fire magnets, which can be good as they can soak up a lot of average to medium strength weapons fire and still keep going allowing the rest of your force a chance to execute some good moves. I haven't used them in a while because they do become overkill in small points games, (1,000 or less) and the game becomes unbalanced, at least in my experiences.


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## Crimzzen (Jul 9, 2008)

I run 3 obliterators and 2 defilers in my list. I find that early game, the lascannons on the oblits help to destroy guns that threaten my defilers. Once their armour is gone, obliterators have the capability to start removing infantry, etc whereas if you bring a havoc full of lascannons, once the vehicles are gone, your pretty much wasting those lascannon on infantry. I'd rather plasma plates at that point. Additionally, being able to move and shoot allows the possibility of opening new fire lanes once you've exhausted your initial ones. While I agree that anything str 8 ap 2 or better may insta-kill your oblit (at least he gets an invuln save), anything str 8 ap3 or better (which is more common) will insta-kill your squad of havocs (thinking battle cannons, boomguns, etc etc).


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## Son of mortarion (Apr 24, 2008)

b.anthracis said:


> When you get S&P you automatically get relentless as well!


read the post, I was differentiating between what was said, which was that they had relentless( a good thing) when they have slow and purposeless, they are not the same. With relentless there is no downside, with slow and purposeless, you can move and fire, but as if you were in difficult terrain. It is very different, especially since the 75 point cost of obliterators is not reduced by the downside of S&P.


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## Crimzzen (Jul 9, 2008)

Cleitus_the_Black said:


> Personally I quite like Havoks, but I have to as they're all I've got for now. I find they do the trick as long as you equip them correctly. 5 havoks in a rhino with 4 meltas can be pretty fun.



why not 5 chosen with 5 meltaguns in a rhino AND obliterators.... at least the chosen can then outflank/infiltrate


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## Gul Torgo (Mar 31, 2008)

Crimzzen said:


> why not 5 chosen with 5 meltaguns in a rhino AND obliterators.... at least the chosen can then outflank/infiltrate


Plus they do not take up a valuable Heavy Support slot. Chosen are a fantastic unit that get overlooked far too often because the other Elite choices are flashier.


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## Lash Machine (Nov 28, 2008)

I have used them, and whilst they give one unit a bad day, they don't stay around afterwards.

I like deep striking a unit of two obliterators near one of my various icons to give a veichle multi melta death or dish out some twin linked plasma or flamer.


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## Someguy (Nov 19, 2007)

Bear in mind that obliterators have access to weapons havocs can't even take, even if they did have the option of swapping. I really think they are far superior.

Consider, a havoc with lascannon costs less than an obliterator. However, you have to buy some other havocs as well. A squad of 5 havocs is 215 with 4 lascannons, compared to 225 for 3 obliterators.

The obliterator unit has more wounds with a 2+ save and an invulnerable. They are far less likely to lose shots from basic weaponry. They are fearless and they all have power fists. They have plasma cannons, multi-meltas, twin linked plasma and melta guns. All of these options are unavailable to the havocs. They also move and fire.

Obviously, it only half matters how far you can move when you fire. What's far more important is being able to move and fire at all. You can therefore deep strike and shoot, or walk on from dawn of war and shoot, which havocs cannot. That means you fire in turn 1 (assuming you can see an enemy in the dark, which is not guaranteed), when the havocs certainly don't. Failing that, you can just deploy somewhere out of sight, say behind a tank, and then move out to shoot on turn 1. Again, havocs can't do any of that.

To be fair, most havoc squads would come with missile launchers (or possibly meltas, though those are mostly on chosen). They don't come with lascannons anyway. It's therefore fairer to compare 4 missile launchers with 2 obliterators. I'd say that's a closer deal, but I'd still sooner have the obliterators. The whole point of missile launchers is their versatility, and obliterators seem to trump that.


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## Cleitus_the_Black (Jun 8, 2009)

If only Oblits were not so damn expensive (in real life). But then what kind of world would that be? Everyone using Oblits in their lists, plasma cannon-ing everything in sight. Oh, wait....


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## Khorothis (May 12, 2009)

I use a multitude of units for all the things Oblits can do, and while that does make my life harder points-wise, I can hunt both infantry and vehicle at the same time. Theres the combintation of Vindies-Chosen, or even Vindies-Chosen-Havoks, where you have 2 Vindes, 2 Chosen with 5 Plasma who Infiltrate and another Chosen and a Havok with Meltas in Rhinos who ouflank the opponent. Oblits don't have S10 guns, and they aren't always within plasma range, not to mention that most of the time they'll be busy with enemy armour, so a lot of their potential remains unexploited.

In a CSM army you can't afford to think of your units separately, meaning that if you do one thing with the Elites for example, that effects your Troops and your Heavy Support. HQ is pretty much separate from the rest of the list, because its always some kind of DP, or at best a Sorcerer with Lash. What I'm saying is that if you go tank-hunting with your Elites and your Heavy Support (because if you're not after heavy armour with your HS, you better go and see a doctor), then your Troops have to go after the infantry. In this case the pressure on HS isn't as great when they're the only ones who have a chance against enemy armour. For instance, if all I had against tanks were 3 Vindies, I'd probably be in trouble because they'd be overburdened and once they get blown to pieces, I'm left with nothing to blow up armour with. Thats why I always combine them with other units that can do things what they can't or shouldn't in that particular situation. For example, the opponent has a LR coming my way and two preds staying behind. The Vindies focus fire the LR for safety's sake, while the Meltas in Rhinos hunt down the Preds and destroy them, while the infiltrated Chosen mow down the Marines and provide a serious dilemma for the opponent: should he take my Plasma guns or Meltas down? When it comes to Oblits, there is no such dilemma, he just gets his biggest gun and guns them down. Hell, I wouldn't mind shooting these guys with Lascannons for safety's sake. Not to mention that they aren't as awesome in melee because of their PFs, which leave them hitting last, given that they survive the encounter.

My point is that while Obliterators are indeed awesome and I do recommend them in certain lists, but there are other worthy Heavy Weapons choices, though indeed less obvious and require additional planning and tweaking. Just don't give Havoks LCs, thats the dumbest thing you can do with those guys; its either Meltas in bigger lists or MLs in smaller ones. Maybe Plasma, but thats covered by other units, unless you know you're facing 2000 points of MEQs and TEQs and no vehicles, and you feel like deploying 3 Chosen and 3 Havoks, all armed to the teeth with Plasma guns, and some Plague Marines too with Plasma guns. Thats 34 Plasma guns. I don't think your opponent would be prepared for that.


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