Dawn of War Codex

I use raptors pretty much always, the suppression on landing is a great alternative to havocs against races that already have plenty of methods of disruption. And the power-fist is already very suitable at threatening light vehicles and heavy infantry alike.

So I never really felt the need to get the meltas on raptors.

Has anyone actually used them regularly? If so could you give your thoughts as to when and why you would use them?

Me

If your Raptors have levelled they can jump -> meltabomb. They also carry meltaguns. Net result = vehicle melted.

they are storm troopers that can jump and dont die instantly to any kind of retaliation

They are great. Very few upgrades change your army composition quite so drastically late game as giving meltaguns to your Raptors. Suddenly you have a squad that is probably level 2-3 that can jump with meltas and a melta bomb, that's some serious AV quickly in your opponent's face. What's especially great about it is that they don't have the Chaos "upgrade" animation where they float in the air, they just appear like other upgrades and you can go to town. Takes people by surprise a lot when their shiny new tank has this new dimension to face.

i love using them allows a bit more av options late game and they can still do a fair bit of damage in melee. Indird just casted a game were we both use them

i guess it works both ways since regular Raps now have partial AV with their Apostate ldr ,especially melta-raptors under khorne worship putting the pressure on vehicles . More AV threat for your opponent but less melee hehe

so my next batch of questions,

how are they vs non tank units.
and how much of their melee do they sacrifice by going melta (excluding the obvious of the power fist)

for example say ill want to jump them on a set up unit to tie it up or kill it , do they still do enough damage in melee to be a threat to the survival of the set up unit? or is it more of shoot them with melta until they hit x and then melee?

Anything that ties up a set-up unit in melee is bad news for them already ^^

saltychipmunk wrote:and how much of their melee do they sacrifice by going melta (excluding the obvious of the power fist)

This

So they don't lose that much in the way of close combat effectiveness, not wanting to fight ASM or other melee units, but the real problem for them would be losing that 40% melee resistance. Not bad.

They're awesome and I know you want them when the obligatory tanks starts rolling in t3, it's a no-brainer purchase or at least was before 2.3. They get murdered fast vs proper melee though, so make sure that jump/nade is worth it.

As for their melee, according to the codex lvl1 meltaraptors with ac should best case wipe a lvl1 shuri platform in ~7.7s, from ~4.9s without meltaguns.

Melta Faptors should get some shots in with their melta guns on setups doing decent damage to them and the do same melee dps as vanilla CSM.

But yeah. Melta Raptors are very good

If I have a unit of raptors in t3... they probably have meltas on them