Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Heavy Bolter in Exterminatus Beginner’s Guide

I love the full-size bolter, but the easiest thing to do with it is burning all that ammo and not get a lot done. It’s no good dropping hundreds of rounds on enemies that the hammers and meltas are going to kill without trouble anyway. You should be expending as much ammo as possible, but on what?

Priority One: Shoot Back

It sounds obvious but it’s easy to forget: You are among the best equipped to counter the shooters and rockets that hang back and cut up your team while they’re doing their job (dealing more decisive damage to hard and heavy targets). Even if something else is threatening you, your team can solve that for you, but not if they’ve been chewed up in a crossfire, so knock out that nest ASAP.

Some will say this is the Assault’s job and that can certainly work, but he can only be one place at a time, and I’d rather see him cracking armor and bailing us out of ambushes.

Priority Two: Stem the Tide

When you’re covering a capture point, don’t fixate on the orks your friends are fighting, shoot the horde spawning in behind them. Kills aren’t even crucial here – stagger them, scatter them, keep them from swarming all at once. On full-auto, you have some low-key utility here.

Priority Three: Overwatch

The same vantage points that give you access to the best targets also give you awareness of new threats. Look around, put down what you can, and keep your team aware of the remainder.

Priority Four: Pour It On

Of course, if you’ve got nothing better to point at, lay into that nob chasing your friend down the street.

Endgame: Peel the Potato

Without spoilers: The enemies with regenerating shields are tough for all classes, especially when they are coordinated and cover each other to regenerate. What the bolter can do best here is keep those shields down. Find a buddy and focus your fire. You peel’em (weaken the shield), he boils’em (the killing shot), or the other way around if he’s got plasma or a laser.

Work Together

That’s just my game plan, not the only one! I consider the bolter kind of a support weapon, but your team can change a lot. If your Assault loves to hunt those shoots for you, or if your Tacticals would rather run interference to guard you on the capture point, or if a fellow Devastator has crowd-control on lock, shift your priorities. Light’em up!