Heavy Weapons Squad

Heavy Weapons Squad is a Gladius infantry unit equipped to deal with heavily armoured targets..

Description
Infantry heavy weapons are typically crewed by a team of two men; one fires the weapon while the other supplies the ammunition, and between them they can relocate their weapon if needs be.

Strategy
The Heavy Weapons Squad is the glass cannon unit of the Astra Militarum. Low health, armor and morale are balanced with low cost, long range and a damage output slightly higher than a Leman Russ against heavily armored targets.

Unlocked at Tier 2, this unit also enables early game rush strategies for the Astra Militarum. 3 range puts the unit outside of all other factions' city defenses, allowing the Heavy Weapons Squad to attack with impunity. Paired with Guardsmen, a city's early defenders can be wiped out and the city destroyed with little trouble.

Beyond early rush strategies, the Heavy Weapons Squad acts as the primary damage dealer of the Astra Miltarum. The 3 range allows the unit to deal killing blows to low health infantry and weaken enemy vehicles as they try and punch through the lines of guardsmen. Due to their low cost, it will be easy to have many of these units dishing out damage across the battlefield. However, the Krak Missile Launcher has the Heavy trait, which effectively reduces the damage output of the Heavy Weapons Squad by half if they move. This make the unit very bad at pushing into the enemy. Using guardsmen to lure enemies into range mitigates this weakness. Predictably, when pushing into a heavily armored or fortified position, Tanks reign supreme.

A key weakness of the Heavy Weapons Squad is their low health and damage output reduction they incur from the Heavy Trait as they retreat. This makes it essential to cover them with other units. Most of the time, this will be guardsmen. Guardsmen pair extremely well with the Heavy Weapons Squad, dealing high damage against infantry and able to soak lots of damage from other units. This synergy is hard countered by low model count melee infantry units or by units who ignore zone of control.

The Heavy Weapons Squad benefits from 4 upgrades, Extra Infantry Armour, krak grenades, Frag Grenades, and Frag Casings. Of these, Frag grenades and the Frag Casings offer the Heavy Weapons Squad the most noticeable upgrade. Frag grenades offer a viable counter to enemy melee units who out flank the forward guardsmen, and Frag Casings take the already high damage of the Heavy Weapons Squad and boost it even further. Extra Infantry armor will give the squad just that much more time to retreat to a better position and Krak Grenades do not suffer from the Heavy Trait, giving the Heavy Weapons Squad a way to do damage against vehicles even after moving.

Heavy Weapons Squads combine well with Lord Commissars and with Wyrdvane Psykers, both of which offer ways of increasing the damage of the Squad. Valkyries also offer a way to move Heavy Weapons Squads into position to set up an ambush, though it is recommended to bring a unit of guardsmen along unless it is a suicide mission.

In the late game, Heavy Weapons Squads fit into damage specialist role. Not quite eclipsed by Basilisks against cities, and being so cheep to produce solidify the Heavy Weapons Squad as a vital component of any military.