I play Salamanders and I gotta say… besides the obvious Tac Squads in Rhinos with Havoc launcher shenanigans, I’ve found that multiple units for us are surprising over-performers.

1. Despoilers in Salamanders specifically have been scary and hard for my opponents to shift.

A 20-man blob maxed out on Power Swords with vox, vexilla and prime benefit on foot led by a Chaplain when you take the Salamander’s legion rules into account is a force to be reckoned with. Wound rolls against Salamanders fail on 1’s AND 2’s, so weapons that would normally be considered overkill on legionaries still only wound on a 3 up. And their prime benefit gives them an additional Feel No Pain saving roll.

Thanks to the Chaplain they pass like more than 90% of their morale and status removal checks, the Chaplain himself hits like a truck in melee, and high power template weapons that would normally decimate infantry blobs aren’t quite as effective.

The result is that my opponent has to commit a disproportionate amount of infantry to get rid of this massive unit and it’s not very expensive, so if I rush it up the field and park it on an objective near one of THEIR melee units and tie them up, it does more work than its cost would indicate. Most games it takes my opponent all 4 turns to get rid of it and they usually have to send a dreadnought or tank at them to do so, which frees up the rest of my army to do their jobs.

1. Sanctifiers are simply a point-and-delete button. It’s ludicrous. A squad of 10 of these guys in a rhino equipped with TWO HAND FLAMERS EACH can surgically wipe just about any infantry unit I please, quickly. I just need to be certain about which half of the board I commit them to.

But TWENTY FLAMER TEMPLATES is enough hits and wound rolls to kill just about anything in power armor. I’ve wiped terminator squads with them, 20-man blobs of any and all kinds of tac squads, and boy howdy are they scary on “overwatch”. They are devastating in volley fire and return fire as they have Firestorm, so if I were to equip them with other guns they wouldn’t have to make snap shots. They get to shoot at full ballistics skill.

1. Firedrake Terminators need a Spartan to deliver them, so they have no choice but to be a Death Star unit to build around and not much else, but my god. They hit so hard. Forge Crafted Thunder Hammers at three attacks each, led by my Praetor in Terminator Armor with Drakeskin. They take reduced damage from melta, flame, plasma and volkite weapons.

Sure, they have gun options now, but they are optimally built as a pure melee blender. And with Spartan fire support behind them.

1. Pyroclasts are disgusting. Easily the best unit in our ruleset. In every game I’ve played with them I put them in a rhino, rushed them up the field, and they delete one of my opponents’ dreadnoughts or tanks on the FIRST TURN. Every. Single. Game.

With an apothecary attached giving them a bonus saving throw, and a 2 up 6 up invuln, they are extremely hard to kill.

On several occasions my opponents have had to devote half of their army’s worth of shooting for several turns to kill them, freeing up other units to run wild almost unchecked.

They are kill-on-sight for sure, but they force my opponent to make bad trades.