Topic: Elites or Heavy Support?

[Murkglow]

This question might be too small or nit-picky for some but, since I'm a bit obsessive on these kinds of details, its been on my mind.  Say you have a unit that you could place in either the Elites or the Heavy Support section of your army (Devastator Squads with "Honor Your Wargear" or Dreadnoughts with "Heed the Wisdom of the Ancients"), which would you place it in?  Seeing as how you place Heavy Support before Troops, and Elites after that, I could see reasons for putting them in either.  Obviously this question depends on what your army looks like, but never the less...

Anyone have any thoughts on this subject?
~Murkglow

[Magus_42]

It's almost always better to deploy devastators later rather than earlier. Much better to deploy a devastator squad after most of your opponent has committed much of his army to the table, so that he cannot deploy to limit their LoS.

The same thing can apply to dreads, although I can think of a couple situations where deploying a dread earlier could be advantageous:

1) As a sacrificial unit deployed at the very edge of your deployment zone to push back your opponents deployment. Very useful against fast assault armies and in table quarters deployment.

2) To delay the deployment of other units. Dreads are reasonably tough, and able to move and shoot, so their deployment is less critical than some other units. By deploying the dread earlier, you get more of your opponent's army on the board before you have to deploy other units whose deployment can be more critical to your battle plan.

It's also advantageous to deploy fast units early if you want to create a refused flank deployment. Marines aren't very good at this, but you could perhaps use the Be Swift as the Wind trait to move a couple of bike squads into the troop slots to setup a decoy. Not sure that's worth the trait, but it's a thought.

1) It's tough enough to be deployed at the edge of your deployment zone in order to
2) It's very fast, and can be used to

[Purgatory]

I'd take them as Elites if possible, but then again, I only use Honour your Wargear in one of my lists and that's because I've already filled up my HS slots w. Predator, Whirlwind and Land Raider (lol, Iron Warriors).

In any case, I like to deploy my shooty units at a good spot, pereferably in cover and with a sweet lane to shoot from, in which case it's always better to deploy after your opponent has finished deploying his Heavy Support.

Also, if you take them as Elites, they have access to Tank Hunters and Infiltrate, and both are quite useful to the Devastators.

Purg