Drax wrote:its my understanding that grenades don't need to be represented even at tournys - is that not so?

yes most wouldn't bother about grens... bombs tho who knows about Melta BOMBS tho

Ruffian, that's just sick.

Flamers work well for units hiding in Difficult Terrain. If the enemy wants to charge, they run the risk of rolling poorly, and ending up just in from of the Flamers. They also wouldn't be permitted Cover Save from the terrain that just slowed them down.

@Ruffian: I have way more Flamers than that.

Drax wrote:its my understanding that grenades don't need to be represented even at tournys - is that not so?

I thought rule of thumb (worth checking with each individual one in advance, was that if it was a generic squad upgrade (or part of their basic load out like assault marines have had frags through 4th etc) that on those occasions those bits didn't need to be modelled.
But then look to was it adrianG(neigh algeroth) who got marked down for not having his combat knives (no 2nd CCW just a superfluous bit of kit) on soft scores at a tourney.

Flamers- work well when you can position them perfectly (so jump or bike things)Or a lot of flamers jumping out of a vehicle (4 chaos havocs with flamers jumping out of a rhino will kill a lot, as will guard etc equivalents) careful placement can also be used to terrify multiple small units (I managed to really get some pain on a bunch of seperate death cult assassins in a nice cross fire of flamers about a month back)
Their damage can be minimalised by gamers being careful and spreading coherency to the maximum,
As you are normally close enough to charge watch out for having an underwhelming shooting phase that just kills enough for you to lose out on the opportunity to charge them.
Also remember that as King has pointed out that range means that your only using it at a very few points in the game (e.g. nids baying at the door)
A big reason why you'll see more flamers is because in smurfville they are going from 6 points (only 4 points less than a plasma gun which could kill 2 termies a turn) to free and proportionately much cheaper than plas- they also are "free!" so therefore expect a lot of people to take the unit as is of the shelf (e.g. AOBR comes with a flamer guys and a missile guy- models will be fairly cheap etc)

Would you like to know more citizen

I rarely take a marine force without a flamer no matter who I'm playing. At least one of my tactical squads will have one. If I have assault marines, my 2 assault weapons will both be flamers. I think it's a far more effective combo and has the potential to kill far more then the other assault weapon alternatives. You can take krak/melta bombs if you want the assault team to have anti-tank (and no in CC you attack the rear armour anyway (non-walkers) so even without grenades you stand a good chance against a lot of vehicles).