Only if you imagine the shooting that removes the charging unit next turn as "free". If they fall back and other units shoot a bunch of TH/SS termies off the table with other units, the rest of your army isn't getting hammered as much.

Assault elements do need to be balanced with it in mind. Skirmishers aren't so crazy good when fallback is an option. But mainline assault units - the kind that hit the front lines - don't suffer as much as them.

All assault elements suffer. A lot.

Everything the marines have is expensive. Everything is a significant loss. Those TH/SS terminators are expensive. So what if the rest of my army isn't hit as hard? It's a tiny ineffectual army to begin with. Marines can't trade units like that.

Most lists can easily remove 500 pts of marines a turn. That's 4 turns and then no army left. Or, more importantly, 2 turns and the marines are crippled. It's all about unit costs.

Martel732 wrote:
All assault elements suffer. A lot.

Everything the marines have is expensive. Everything is a significant loss. Those TH/SS terminators are expensive. So what if the rest of my army isn't hit as hard? It's a tiny ineffectual army to begin with. Marines can't trade units like that.

Most lists can easily remove 500 pts of marines a turn. That's 4 turns and then no army left. Or, more importantly, 2 turns and the marines are crippled. It's all about unit costs.

In that case, why use tactical reserves turn 1 as a bandaid when the points cost and durability are the real issue here?

I agree. The tactical reserve thing was a bit of an end-around for the fact that punchy stuff sucks this edition.

I wouldn't necessarily say punchy stuff sucks this edition, I'd say they have the same issue as last edition: the only viable melee units are the ones with special rules allowing them to actually get into close combat effectively. Last edition we had invisible superfriends murdering their way across the board and Skyhammer Assault Marines, this edition we have Bloodletter bombs, infiltrating Berzerkers, and Death Company.

The problem is that this obviously means the base assault rules are busted. If the only way to effectively do something in melee is to be granted an exception to the core rules, any unit that doesn't recieve such an exception is going to be pretty poor in melee. It's part of the reason why Tactical Marines suck, for instance: they're paying for melee stats that they won't ever get to leverage effectively. It's also why there's not a single good melee unit in Codex: Space Marines (Vanguard Veterans are OK, not good, for the purposes of this argument).

The first turn alpha strike garbage was definitely an easy route to addressing an issue:

* should all melee armies be viable
* should the game have standard rules for terrain to help block line of sight
* should the game continue to use true line of sight
* should the game have standard rules for how much terrain is on a standard table
* should GW actually use statisticians to point cost their models instead of their decades old method of hoping things work by guessing

Death company is actually pretty crap post-FAQ.

Martel732 wrote:
Death company is actually pretty crap post-FAQ.

how come?

Their primary job was to clear chaff on turn 1 with a Lemartes-fueled deep strike.

Now that's a turn 2 strike, which is too late, or you takes your chances with forlorn fury. They are also 20 ppm power armor guys. Not very durable.

I've dropped DC from every list.

If the full effect of the beta rules go into effect, blood angels as a theme might as well not exist. Reason being is that the PL of their decent CC units (Death Co, Sang-Guard) is absurd when you add a single extra model. Needing 20PL on the ground to deep strike a 5 man SG squad or 10 DC is insane. Daemons are hurt because unless you are Slaanesh or Tzeench, your max movement for the bulk of your army is going to be about 9" after advancing. That means foot-slogging your double cost conscripts who never get cover bonuses across the board for 3 turns. Greater Daemons and Princes are faster, but generally they tend to get murdered by AT fire (Greater Daemons) or need to hide in/behind the horde so they don't get murdered by AT fire. Nids... well nids are fast and have cheap and effective shooting in their army, so nothing to be afraid of with them. Only change is now you'll see either all Kraken or Kronos.

On all the "oh lel surrounding is ez git gud n00b" stuff, it's a bit more complicated than just lern2charge. With my Swarm style Tyranids (120+ bodies) I generally have to successfully charge in 2 20+ units of gants/gaunts, normally with 9"+ on the dice roll to get a full surround. Against a 10strong unit on 30mm bases. And on the "just take a hostage scrublourde!", WHO THE HECK SPACES UNITS ANYMORE?!?!? Unless you're running ANTI DEEP STRIKE SCREENS there is 0 reason to not be blobbed all together anymore. Use that full 2" coherency and some boyz/gants/cultists might force you to remove two models from a unit! We need more nova/AoE weapons and abilities to get decent spacing again. Wanna talk realism? Want your magic space ninja-star shooter to deny every save forever? Well, the 10 dudes all grouped up in that foxhole should be chunky salsa after you lob 1 grenade (another dumb mechanic) into the group.
Berserkers I'm generally happy if I get to charge, let alone surround anything. My BA basically don't get to play anymore, as I stupidly run a thematic Lamenters army [minimal DC, lots of primaris/VGV/Assaultt squad].

I'm willing to give up t1 deepstrike into the opponent's deployment, if you also aren't allowed to shoot there t1 either. I just hope GW realises that having things too cheap is what killed fantasy in the first place. Needing 500 models to play a 'standard' game was a huge barrier of entry. They need to seriously adjust their cost formula, assuming it exists. Good BS with middle strength long range weapons is way more powerful than a sword. I'll go so far as to suggest this. Many people are saying that a stock tactical marine should be around 11 points. An assault marine with a jump pack should be the same. I also feel they should bring back the old "give up your jump-packs for reduced cost transport" bit they did for a while in 6th.

I understand this is going to come off as super inflammatory, but at this point I'm sick and tired of having to explain to Bobby-G's Used Tank Lot that surviving 2-3 turns of shooting, then having to rely on RNGeezus to take the wheel in the hope that I might get to apply damage after being shot once more in MY turn. Multiple turns where half+ of your army has 0 damage application, followed by random charge, and overwatch. Then to kill half the target only to have them fall back and get your combat units that actually got in murdered even faster than before. I'm honestly suprised no-one has suggested improving AP for shooting attacks against a unit that was retreated from.

/endrant I guess. My group already voted that in we're probably not using the beta rules at all. Maybe if enough people let GW know this idea is hot garbage they'll scrap it.

Thats the thing. Removing the abundance of alpha striking melee armies is one of the things bringing people near me back to the game. Keeping the alpha striking in the game as it stands now is our equivalent of hot-garbage.

Alpha melee was shut down hard by screens.

Alpha melee was mitigated by screens. Not completely shut down. And even so, people tended to not enjoy it as much.

Ideally, all alpha would be toned down.

Last two editions, there were rules that basically amounted to you can't alpha the turn you showed up. A lot of people don't like entire units locked up because one unit shows up from DS and charges, before any counterplay is possible.

OP gunline shooting alpha is a problem, too. But it needs to be OP to the point of remove the unit, not just engage the unit. CC alpha, against most targets, only needs to be able to engage the unit, and it's done it's job.

Well, Drukhari get 15 disintegrator on super fast vehicles alpha now. So, I guess I get to just die now.

Martel732 wrote:
Well, Drukhari get 15 disintegrator on super fast vehicles alpha now. So, I guess I get to just die now.

Why 15 disintegrators? That's only 5 ravagers, a single spearhead can fit 6 for 18 disintegrators lol.

3 ravagers, 6 raiders last time.

Martel732 wrote:
Alpha melee was shut down hard by screens.

It FORCES a playstyle. You HAVE to use screens, which means you HAVE to play an army that has the ability to screen well, and even then screens help mitigate, but alpha strike is still strong enough to roll screens (or it wouldn't be so common). Screens are not a hard counter, they are just the only thing that can even give you a remote chance of having a fun game, and you are forced to do it.

There should never be anything in the game that 100% forces people to have to play a certain way to have a good game. Thats not good game design IMO nor is it something a lot of people enjoy or want to spend money on.

 auticus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Alpha melee was shut down hard by screens.

It FORCES a playstyle. You HAVE to use screens, which means you HAVE to play an army that has the ability to screen well, and even then screens help mitigate, but alpha strike is still strong enough to roll screens (or it wouldn't be so common). Screens are not a hard counter, they are just the only thing that can even give you a remote chance of having a fun game, and you are forced to do it.

There should never be anything in the game that 100% forces people to have to play a certain way to have a good game. Thats not good game design IMO nor is it something a lot of people enjoy or want to spend money on.

This is all good and well, but it leads to my original premise in starting this post. GW basically brought melee to near equal footing with shooting, ie turn1 alpha strikes. The people who don't care for it complained enough and GW promptly nerfed it into the ground. But now that it's gone the community learned a crucial lesson, turn 1 charges are realistically the only way to play a pure melee army and have it be as competitively viable as a gunline. GW clearly felt melee armies shouldn't be as good as gunline armies, hence they made the change, hence now with these changes melee armies are severely handicapped. It appears the only way to enjoy effective melee units is when tucked into shooty armies in small numbers. A number of people on this thread have applauded that reality. They feel 40k isn't a game in which full melee armies should be both viable and competitive. You appear to be in this same camp. That's fine, but for people in that camp, please at least be intellectually honest and consistent. You're happy with the changes, but they definitely do two things: they render pure melee armies ineffectual in a high-end competitive environment, and they incentivize the competitive scene to lean heavily into robust pure-shooty gunline armies. If you can admit those two basic realities are true, I don't think you'll find much issue with the wider community. They may not like the changes as you do, but at least they'd be forced to find you both honest and consistent. The crux has been people in the community applauding the changes, while criticizing melee-centric players for being upset about it, and also claiming the beta rules don't severely nerf melee armies - please stop doing that. Just own the reality and we can all move on.

Except they didn't. Wraith-heavy CC lists were still garbage. SM CC were still garbage. Only certain units - and only certain armies - could pull off shenanigans that allowed 1st turn Alpha. It didn't generally improve the state of CC across the board.

If you have turn 1 charges, then there needs to be counters for turn 1 charges. It means you have to tune for it. So if CC units can top-of-1 charge, they need to be weak enough where that doesn't mean you auto win. If they're weak enough that they don't auto win if they get there wholly intact, without getting shot at, how can you balance them so going 2nd, or using CC that doesn't get there top-of-1 are going to have a chance?

It makes it so only gimmicks are viable in the game. I'd rather the numbers allow CC to be a component without needing gimmicks.

GW ddidn't bring melee to near equal footing with shooting.

It brought it up to near equal footing with
* extreme gunlines
* with little to no line of sight blocking terrain

If you aren't playing extreme gunlines and aren't playing on tables that are planet bowling ball like Adepticon tables are, then those melee armies are now as busted as the rhino rush days.

Extreme alpha striking FORCES you to field a certain list and FORCES you to play in a certain style if you want a good game.

The same as playing extreme gunlines on planet bowling ball do.

Both of those are extreme garbage and make the game a giant rotten piece of ****. If you want a healthy game then there need not be any extreme builds period that force their opponents to play a certain way or get stomped. Those arent' fun games. Those are the opposite of what a fun game would be. Those are like playing chess and your opponent shows up with nothing but queens.

Extreme anything should be at a disadvantage, either due to scenario rules / scoring or some other mechanic. If you throw all your eggs into one area you should pay dearly for ignoring the other facets of what an army is supposed to be.

IG would beat pre-faq ba in deployment. It's just not efficient chewing through 4 point models.

This change has not really affected flyrants or scions nearly as badly. They can easily afford to wait a turn because the rest of their list is doing work

Wait, how are 7 Flyrants waiting until turn 2 to deploy?

There were other changes applied with it - it wasn't applied in a vaccum.

Also, having a turn before those Scions come in is really helpful. Not as helpful as having a turn before everything I have is tied up in CC, but still helpful.

Not really. I barely notice any difference. Must be the rest of the ig gunline.

 peteralmo wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Alpha melee was shut down hard by screens.

It FORCES a playstyle. You HAVE to use screens, which means you HAVE to play an army that has the ability to screen well, and even then screens help mitigate, but alpha strike is still strong enough to roll screens (or it wouldn't be so common). Screens are not a hard counter, they are just the only thing that can even give you a remote chance of having a fun game, and you are forced to do it.

There should never be anything in the game that 100% forces people to have to play a certain way to have a good game. Thats not good game design IMO nor is it something a lot of people enjoy or want to spend money on.

This is all good and well, but it leads to my original premise in starting this post. GW basically brought melee to near equal footing with shooting, ie turn1 alpha strikes. The people who don't care for it complained enough and GW promptly nerfed it into the ground. But now that it's gone the community learned a crucial lesson, turn 1 charges are realistically the only way to play a pure melee army and have it be as competitively viable as a gunline. GW clearly felt melee armies shouldn't be as good as gunline armies, hence they made the change, hence now with these changes melee armies are severely handicapped. It appears the only way to enjoy effective melee units is when tucked into shooty armies in small numbers. A number of people on this thread have applauded that reality. They feel 40k isn't a game in which full melee armies should be both viable and competitive. You appear to be in this same camp. That's fine, but for people in that camp, please at least be intellectually honest and consistent. You're happy with the changes, but they definitely do two things: they render pure melee armies ineffectual in a high-end competitive environment, and they incentivize the competitive scene to lean heavily into robust pure-shooty gunline armies. If you can admit those two basic realities are true, I don't think you'll find much issue with the wider community. They may not like the changes as you do, but at least they'd be forced to find you both honest and consistent. The crux has been people in the community applauding the changes, while criticizing melee-centric players for being upset about it, and also claiming the beta rules don't severely nerf melee armies - please stop doing that. Just own the reality and we can all move on.

Shooting can be mitigated by proper amounts of terrain, whereas melee cannot. Melee ignores cover and intervening terrain. On the other hand, the vast majority of shooting needs line of sight, and being in cover increases durability. If you play Cities of Death rules, cover can even offer +2 to cover saves. The only tricky part is, of course, getting a "proper" board set up. So for me, I can easily set up a balanced board where gunlines are not viable, but I cannot set up terrain in a way to mitigate melee rush at all. So, as far as I'm concerned, the game is in a good spot with the FAQ.

You might not notice a difference. You're one of the armies that did it. But people who play combined arms in factions without decent screens, or who don't function with screens, certainly notice.

Martel732 wrote:
IG would beat pre-faq ba in deployment. It's just not efficient chewing through 4 point models.

This change has not really affected flyrants or scions nearly as badly. They can easily afford to wait a turn because the rest of their list is doing work

So the real problem is that the rest of your codex is garbage? And that guardsmen are too cheap? Those can still be addressed down the road.

 auticus wrote:
GW ddidn't bring melee to near equal footing with shooting.

It brought it up to near equal footing with
* extreme gunlines
* with little to no line of sight blocking terrain

If you aren't playing extreme gunlines and aren't playing on tables that are planet bowling ball like Adepticon tables are, then those melee armies are now as busted as the rhino rush days.

Extreme alpha striking FORCES you to field a certain list and FORCES you to play in a certain style if you want a good game.

The same as playing extreme gunlines on planet bowling ball do.

Both of those are extreme garbage and make the game a giant rotten piece of ****. If you want a healthy game then there need not be any extreme builds period that force their opponents to play a certain way or get stomped. Those arent' fun games. Those are the opposite of what a fun game would be. Those are like playing chess and your opponent shows up with nothing but queens.

Extreme anything should be at a disadvantage, either due to scenario rules / scoring or some other mechanic. If you throw all your eggs into one area you should pay dearly for ignoring the other facets of what an army is supposed to be.

I understand you've thought your position out and explained it clearly, unfortunately it's functionally meaningless because GW doesn't police the game via the individual army rules or BRB rules to accomplish your described ideal scenario of balanced armies with plentiful terrain that all has good LoS blocking rules attached to it. The bottom line is people can still create hyper-powerful static gunlines if they want to, there is no rule to stop them from building armies that way. And although the BRB RECOMMENDS a good amount of terrain, you still can't control it from TO to TO and there will be times when then terrain is minimal. So whether you like it or agree with it, ultra-powerful take-out-half-your-army gunlines are perfectly legal, competitive players do field them, and with the beta rules there are no equivalent melee alpha lists to counter them, so the competitive meta will be gunlines against gunlines. As much as you want well-balanced lists to be mandated, until GW forces the reality by only allowing very strict army compositions, it is what it is.

Of the top 10 at recent tournies, how many of them do you think actually coudl remove 50% of the opposing list in one round from shooting?

I'm guessing it occurred less than 25% of games, but don't have hard data. Anyone here have hard data on that?

Bharring wrote:
Of the top 10 at recent tournies, how many of them do you think actually coudl remove 50% of the opposing list in one round from shooting?

I'm guessing it occurred less than 25% of games, but don't have hard data. Anyone here have hard data on that?

I don't have any hard data on that, I was being hyperbolic. But to speak in all seriousness, Guard, Eldar, Ad Mech, and Mixed Imperium (DA/UM/Sisters/ETC) gunlines can certainly achieve enough kills in there turn 1 alpha shooting to cripple the opponent making it extremely mathematically improbable for them to come back. Does this half to be exactly 50% of their army? Probably not, maybe it's somewhere between 30-50%, but I've seen it too many times to count. A really competitively built and tuned gunline that gets to go first and rolls average to slightly above average completely lays waste to the opponents army to the point that they really can't win beyond that point outside of dumb luck via all the tactical objectives going there way and things like that.

I suppose I did the same thing in one of my posts where I mentioned my entire army being charged top of 1.

Turn 1 alpha has always been nasty and problematic for the game. A good fix has never been done, really.

I don't think the solution to potential T1 shooting alpha is introducing (/retaining) T1 CC alpha, though.

Dandelion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
IG would beat pre-faq ba in deployment. It's just not efficient chewing through 4 point models.

This change has not really affected flyrants or scions nearly as badly. They can easily afford to wait a turn because the rest of their list is doing work

So the real problem is that the rest of your codex is garbage? And that guardsmen are too cheap? Those can still be addressed down the road.

Yes, I admit the first turn deep strike thing was just an end-around to these problems.

 peteralmo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Well, Drukhari get 15 disintegrator on super fast vehicles alpha now. So, I guess I get to just die now.

Why 15 disintegrators? That's only 5 ravagers, a single spearhead can fit 6 for 18 disintegrators lol.

Raiders can take them. So can Razorwings. It's an exteremely powerful weapon even if it was properly priced because it has all the good stuff. Str 5 is one of the most efficient strengths ap-3 is perfect 2d is amazing. It's also undercosted by about 10 points too.

I do not think that kind of gunline would be a great choice for a tournament player though.
It is a list that wins or loses against its mirror purely by whoever gets the first turn. There is not much skill involved in playing it, its all in the list building.
An army like that is a poor choice for a good tournament player, because with every match being a 50% diceroll and no way to to impact that with skilled play, the chances of getting a good result over a full tournament are poor.

Does not mean its existance is good for the game, because the players that do bring it will take wins from others purely by going first. Then will lose other games due to not going first and not getting aynwhere near the top ranks either. So playing the tournament is like trying to dodge a minefield of suicide attackers that are trying to take you down with them...

Dandelion wrote:

 peteralmo wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Alpha melee was shut down hard by screens.

It FORCES a playstyle. You HAVE to use screens, which means you HAVE to play an army that has the ability to screen well, and even then screens help mitigate, but alpha strike is still strong enough to roll screens (or it wouldn't be so common). Screens are not a hard counter, they are just the only thing that can even give you a remote chance of having a fun game, and you are forced to do it.

There should never be anything in the game that 100% forces people to have to play a certain way to have a good game. Thats not good game design IMO nor is it something a lot of people enjoy or want to spend money on.

This is all good and well, but it leads to my original premise in starting this post. GW basically brought melee to near equal footing with shooting, ie turn1 alpha strikes. The people who don't care for it complained enough and GW promptly nerfed it into the ground. But now that it's gone the community learned a crucial lesson, turn 1 charges are realistically the only way to play a pure melee army and have it be as competitively viable as a gunline. GW clearly felt melee armies shouldn't be as good as gunline armies, hence they made the change, hence now with these changes melee armies are severely handicapped. It appears the only way to enjoy effective melee units is when tucked into shooty armies in small numbers. A number of people on this thread have applauded that reality. They feel 40k isn't a game in which full melee armies should be both viable and competitive. You appear to be in this same camp. That's fine, but for people in that camp, please at least be intellectually honest and consistent. You're happy with the changes, but they definitely do two things: they render pure melee armies ineffectual in a high-end competitive environment, and they incentivize the competitive scene to lean heavily into robust pure-shooty gunline armies. If you can admit those two basic realities are true, I don't think you'll find much issue with the wider community. They may not like the changes as you do, but at least they'd be forced to find you both honest and consistent. The crux has been people in the community applauding the changes, while criticizing melee-centric players for being upset about it, and also claiming the beta rules don't severely nerf melee armies - please stop doing that. Just own the reality and we can all move on.

Shooting can be mitigated by proper amounts of terrain, whereas melee cannot. Melee ignores cover and intervening terrain. On the other hand, the vast majority of shooting needs line of sight, and being in cover increases durability. If you play Cities of Death rules, cover can even offer +2 to cover saves. The only tricky part is, of course, getting a "proper" board set up. So for me, I can easily set up a balanced board where gunlines are not viable, but I cannot set up terrain in a way to mitigate melee rush at all. So, as far as I'm concerned, the game is in a good spot with the FAQ.

Screening units have been a part of 40k since it's inception. The form has changed (Fish of Fury, terminator rhino convoys, The march of death, distraction carnifex) but the function has always been the same so saying it forces you to play a style which has been played for YEARS doesn't mean anything. If anything it just means your incompetent at tactics and are one of those players who doesn't like it when your opponent outsmarts you or exploits a gaping hole that you refused to address.

Melee has always been the short end until this edition. But is still outshone by shooting cause shooting can do it better. When you can get dependable damage across the board for dirt cheep then people are gonna abuse it. Melee is nowhere near cheep enough to justify sending whole units across the board to hit someone with a sword. and with the amount of chance required compared to point and click shooting, it makes you question why people even go melee in the first place.

For most people, it's either because of the satisfaction of watching your opponent rage as his poorly placed units are being sliced apart in the HONORABLE COMBAT that is melee, but other times it's because of fluff and lore.

Terrain does jack all as a equilizer, last editions this would of been true because of cover saves, which most of the time were better saves than the armour of the unit. But now that cover is different and LOS doesn't mean anything anymore (I can see the tip of the guys sword through that window, i can still shoot him no problem. Artillery? who needs LOS?) and the fact the +1 to only ARMOUR saves is the equivalent of putting a codpiece on some units and making others semi tanky is just hillarious to even discuss.

6+ armour save units (Orks, Daemons (yes, cause we have a 6+ armour as normal) IG,Kroot,Wyches) have piss poor armour saves, and they usually have one of two factors:

1: Numbers
2: Invulnurables

Which none of these benefit from the +1 to armour when the amount of shots poured into them means the unit gets wiped out usually two or three times over. And considering that the shooting unit in question is probably half the cost of the melee unit. Saying terrain is this great "Equilizer" is a load of horse manure.

What should be addressed is the fact that shooting once again is far superior at deep striking than melee. So why not just adress the shooting element by adjusting the points to make shooting deep strike MUCH more expensive than it is right now? Maybe even make it that a shooting army is paying 1.2 to 1.5 times more to be able to use a gun over the deep striking units that get no access to guns/ or restricted access to guns? Address the problems on the unit by unit level before something like this is used.

Cause right now, melee deep striking is actually balanced. Shooting deep strike is not.

PS. No one plays cities of death in a matched play scenario. too many rules and it still doesnt address the issue

PPS. If you aint playing with screens, then don't come crying when your army gets stomped. You just need to Get Gud

Bharring wrote:

Last two editions, there were rules that basically amounted to you can't alpha the turn you showed up.

Yeah and everyone complained about the game being in one of it's worst states ever and shooting being the only viable tactic and saw more people leave the game than ever before, leading to 40k growing smaller at a time when tabletop miniature had never been bigger. Why do you think they had to shut down brick and mortar stores etc around this time even though pricing was sat at especially profitable numbers? It was not because people were preferring this.

You should not be mentioning the last two editions as though they are positive example of how to do assault. You should be using it as an example of exactly what not to do.

mchammadad wrote:


Screening units have been a part of 40k since it's inception. The form has changed (Fish of Fury, terminator rhino convoys, The march of death, distraction carnifex) but the function has always been the same so saying it forces you to play a style which has been played for YEARS doesn't mean anything. If anything it just means your incompetent at tactics and are one of those players who doesn't like it when your opponent outsmarts you or exploits a gaping hole that you refused to address.

Melee has always been the short end until this edition. But is still outshone by shooting cause shooting can do it better. When you can get dependable damage across the board for dirt cheep then people are gonna abuse it. Melee is nowhere near cheep enough to justify sending whole units across the board to hit someone with a sword. and with the amount of chance required compared to point and click shooting, it makes you question why people even go melee in the first place.

For most people, it's either because of the satisfaction of watching your opponent rage as his poorly placed units are being sliced apart in the HONORABLE COMBAT that is melee, but other times it's because of fluff and lore.

Terrain does jack all as a equilizer, last editions this would of been true because of cover saves, which most of the time were better saves than the armour of the unit. But now that cover is different and LOS doesn't mean anything anymore (I can see the tip of the guys sword through that window, i can still shoot him no problem. Artillery? who needs LOS?) and the fact the +1 to only ARMOUR saves is the equivalent of putting a codpiece on some units and making others semi tanky is just hillarious to even discuss.

6+ armour save units (Orks, Daemons (yes, cause we have a 6+ armour as normal) IG,Kroot,Wyches) have piss poor armour saves, and they usually have one of two factors:

1: Numbers
2: Invulnurables

Which none of these benefit from the +1 to armour when the amount of shots poured into them means the unit gets wiped out usually two or three times over. And considering that the shooting unit in question is probably half the cost of the melee unit. Saying terrain is this great "Equilizer" is a load of horse manure.

What should be addressed is the fact that shooting once again is far superior at deep striking than melee. So why not just adress the shooting element by adjusting the points to make shooting deep strike MUCH more expensive than it is right now? Maybe even make it that a shooting army is paying 1.2 to 1.5 times more to be able to use a gun over the deep striking units that get no access to guns/ or restricted access to guns? Address the problems on the unit by unit level before something like this is used.

Cause right now, melee deep striking is actually balanced. Shooting deep strike is not.

PS. No one plays cities of death in a matched play scenario. too many rules and it still doesnt address the issue

PPS. If you aint playing with screens, then don't come crying when your army gets stomped. You just need to Get Gud

Oh my... that's quite the retort. Anyway, I personally dislike playing against melee heavy lists because they're boring and monotonous. Oh boy I get to make a square formation again. I'm so excited...

But that's still beside the point. As far as the current rules go, I can easily hamstring gunlines using terrain. I cannot do that with melee. Melee is unaffected by any amount of positioning or terrain other than the tried and true screen. Which is why I think it makes for a terrible game. Losing has nothing to do with it. It's about enjoying the fight.

And if you think 4pt guard with 4+ saves is nothing, well, I'd love to see what you're facing 'cause it must be actual hell.

Now, I will point out that I've never played in a competitive tournament setting. My games are pretty casual. My observation was based around my experiences. And in my experience, shooting is heavily neutered by judicious use of terrain, while melee is not. So if I find a gunline to be too good, I can simply add more terrain. But if a melee army is too good, the only option is screens.

P.S. I only play cities of death at this point. Which means those 4pt guardsmen are at a 3+ save. And Tau FW are at 2+ saves. Shooting is definitely ineffective at that point. Heck, at that point Tau are almost as good at punching guardsmen as they are at shooting them.

Dandelion wrote:

Oh my... that's quite the retort. Anyway, I personally dislike playing against melee heavy lists because they're boring and monotonous. Oh boy I get to make a square formation again. I'm so excited...

Sounds like the problem is your army then

Massed deep striking...a tool used by gamers too stupid to use tactics and too lazy to move their figs 2 feet across the battlefield...................

licclerich wrote:
Massed deep striking...a tool used by gamers too stupid to use tactics and too lazy to move their figs 2 feet across the battlefield...................

its kinda a lot less lazy then camping up in a ball on your own side of the map and shooting at everything trying to run all the way across the field. You know, the tactic that its designed to counter...

Monotonous is when your melee army gets obliterated before they even reach the first units on the enemies side. With what i run (Khorne daemons) vs most of the people i play against (Eldar, tyranids,IG,Tau,Orks) my army, unless im fighting the orks who really like CC as much as me usually results in 7/8th or 2/3rds of my army dead before the first charges with this beta rule.

And this ain't even factoring in that the people i play usually don't run crazy spam list unless they feel like they want the win. Most of the time I am playing against mobile or static gunline armies, with a decent amount of terrain (1/2 the table has something) and the results are usually still the same, complete wipeout before i even reach the second unit in their army.

Also, no one plays Cities of death near my place, no tourney will ever play cities in their games where i am and no one really cares about the extra layer of rules on basically matched play rulings.

We play matched play all the time. No open or narative play, we only play tournament style play because that is what most of the people around our area and around the nation play

My normal list usually runs about 70+ models on the field. majority of them are only T3 5++, i never get any benefit from cover, and the amount of mobile or mass firepower my opponents roll with is enough to obliterate over half of that in a single turn. And that's not even counting if they run "cheese" list. In that case it's more reliable to obliterate 2/3rds of my units instead.

Point being, this beta rule has crippled my previous playstyle, where i was able to win half my games (If my dice were hot). Most of our games came down to the wire without this rule.

It's only when you take out the cheese that you realise that the deep strike rules are decently balanced

 DominayTrix wrote:

He called you out for your "You can't talk about melee unless you play melee" excuse for being a blatant attempt to invalidate opinions just because people don't use melee. You could use the same type of reasoning that melee people don't understand the costs of falling back because they don't play shooting armies. It isn't very productive either way. I can tell you that falling back has drawbacks. You can tie up multiple fire warrior squads and anything that survives is likely to just die to the next round of charges unless I have all my units bunched up sacrificing board control for the sake of anti charge defense. If I am bunching up, why are you trying to table me instead of just playing objectives and using terrain to deny LOS?

Your first premise is incorrect. My point was that several people were explaining to Melee people why melee shouldn't be relevant and they shouldn't have to deploy their armies against melee. The next point was people in Gunline armies explaining how having 1 unit falling back (keeping in mind that unit wouldn't have been able to shoot anyway because they were in CC) and not being able to shoot is a huge burden. Then they explained to melee armies how easy it is to tie up units in CC by surrounding. The conversation boils down to someone with no experience playing a pure CC army and only experience playing against one, telling the experienced player how their army should play and what its capabilities are. This would be fine except that every point they made was incorrect based upon every CC persons comments. As to playing the other side? I have a gun line army, I know both sides of the equation.

Bharring wrote:
I think a lot of disagreement is coming from looking at things differently.
I see Fall Back as a viable reaction to being Assaulted, and thus which costs are "Fall back" costs, and which costs are "having been assualted" costs is a difficult line.
Perhaps the conversation would be better suited talking about costs of being assaulted, instead of costs of falling back.
Costs of being assaulted are certainly less than previous versions. Restrictions to assaults is less. But offense - both CC and shooting - seems to be up. And CC offense going up won't matter if you can't make CC because shooting offense went up.

I disagree, CC is down a LOT for me. My Warboss last edition could mulch a Land Raider in 1-2 CC phases easy enough, my Nobz could usually handle T10-13 Vehicles last edition without to much worry, now? Nope. Now, not even Ghazghkull can kill a Predator in 1 turn. Hell he will struggle to kill a Rhino in 1 turn. Now, boys in general are doing a bit better but only in large mobz. Anything below 20 models and you were probably doing more dmg last edition. (Charging giving +1 attack meant trukk boyz had 4 attacks each, now its 3)

Dandelion wrote:

Shooting can be mitigated by proper amounts of terrain, whereas melee cannot. Melee ignores cover and intervening terrain. On the other hand, the vast majority of shooting needs line of sight, and being in cover increases durability. If you play Cities of Death rules, cover can even offer +2 to cover saves. The only tricky part is, of course, getting a "proper" board set up. So for me, I can easily set up a balanced board where gunlines are not viable, but I cannot set up terrain in a way to mitigate melee rush at all. So, as far as I'm concerned, the game is in a good spot with the FAQ.

Shooting can be mitigated if you use TONS OF TERRAIN! Why didn't I think of that? why didn't 12 people not suggest that already...ohh thats because it isn't true..Terrain restricts what you can see, so ignoring the units that don't require LOS to blow you off the table lets explore why this is a false premise. 1: You will NEVER have your entire army hidden behind terrain and be even remotely competitive as a CC army. Why? Because you need to be moving to get into CC, so not being shot off the table turn 1 is good, it doesn't help turn 2-4 where you are slowed down by all the terrain so it takes even longer to get into CC. As for deep strikers, well terrain actually did matter. My army used Kommandos, I had the option of appearing in cover and getting a wicked 4+ save for 1 turn but not being able to assault because -2 to charge. OR I could deploy out in the open and risk a 45-49% chance to get into CC with them or die gloriously. 2: Cover increases durability...not really. For some it does, but for Nidz and Orkz and some Demons not so much. You try cramming 30 Models into a piece of terrain and let me know how it goes. Plus, even if you do, guess what? you now have a 5+ save WHOOPEE! 3: The game is in a good spot. So melee armies which weren't even winning events just got hit with the nerf hammer hard and you feel that by making the weaker option weaker the game is in a better place? Now keep in mind that isn't opinion that is an actual fact. So you are admitting that you are happy that its going to be a lot easier for your Gunline to kill CC armies.

licclerich wrote:
Massed deep striking...a tool used by gamers too stupid to use tactics and too lazy to move their figs 2 feet across the battlefield...................

Wow....just wow. So I am stupid and lazy for fielding 45-90 Kommandos in my lists? Ok, So it takes more skill and tactics to sit still all game long and pick which unit to obliterate with a gunline? Lets address this because I find it funny.

My Kommando Horde are less efficient and useful boyz. I can take them in units of 5-15. There ONLY uses, and I do mean ONLY uses is to turn 1 deep strike and tie up units that would otherwise be shooting me off the board turn 1-3 OR to deploy turn 3 on objectives. Their success rate is slightly less then 50% because of the 9in charge rule and the rerollable charges that Orkz come standard with. I Therefore have to properly amass my units so that I can either charge 2-3 units into 1 enemy unit or pull off several multi charges for the same reasons. From there its all about consolidation and pile ins to try and get as many screening or shooting units tied up as physically possible, this is because those Kommandos die turn 2 if they aren't in CC. Ohh did I mention they are worse in CC then my Boyz but cost 50% more? As for the "Im lazy" aspect. I play Orkz, So if I have 90 Kommandos deep striking I usually have 90-120 slowly (emphasis on slowly) moving up the board so just one component of my army has probably more models then your entire army put together, and that is of course before we even touch on my Stormboyz, I have 50 of them so sometimes I'll field the whole horde. But im sure me not liking the changes is me being both stupid and lazy.

licclerich wrote:
Massed deep striking...a tool used by gamers too stupid to use tactics and too lazy to move their figs 2 feet across the battlefield...................

Comments like this really do not help or add anything to a discussion.

Let's please refrain from making statements like this.

I don't know if this has been suggested before, but if you couldn't fall back if you have been charged that turn (lets call it "battle shock") then melee troops that make the charge are not going to be left high and dry the next turn and open for shooting?

It gets rid of the trying to tie up a unit shenanigans, if the charging unit kills the unit it charged, then fair enough.

Almost like a semi tarpit?

 gkos wrote:
I don't know if this has been suggested before, but if you couldn't fall back if you have been charged that turn (lets call it "battle shock") then melee troops that make the charge are not going to be left high and dry the next turn and open for shooting?

It gets rid of the trying to tie up a unit shenanigans, if the charging unit kills the unit it charged, then fair enough.

Almost like a semi tarpit?

That is both fair and balanced. Unfortunately, I highly doubt gunline players will go along with any kind of nerf towards them getting an easy kill on a CC unit.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Oh my... that's quite the retort. Anyway, I personally dislike playing against melee heavy lists because they're boring and monotonous. Oh boy I get to make a square formation again. I'm so excited...

Sounds like the problem is your army then

Oh my god. At least try to understand my point. The whole discussion was about guns being better than melee post faq. I just pointed out that guns are nerfed by adequate terrain. Melee is not. If guns are too good then bring more terrain. This helps every army out there, other than gunlines which are the problem in the first place.

That's why I like the faq. It brought deep strike in line with other means of playing the game. You know, positioning that matters. Deep strike now has a serious drawback which means players get to actually move before engaging.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:


Shooting can be mitigated if you use TONS OF TERRAIN! Why didn't I think of that? why didn't 12 people not suggest that already...ohh thats because it isn't true..Terrain restricts what you can see, so ignoring the units that don't require LOS to blow you off the table lets explore why this is a false premise. 1: You will NEVER have your entire army hidden behind terrain and be even remotely competitive as a CC army. Why? Because you need to be moving to get into CC, so not being shot off the table turn 1 is good, it doesn't help turn 2-4 where you are slowed down by all the terrain so it takes even longer to get into CC. As for deep strikers, well terrain actually did matter. My army used Kommandos, I had the option of appearing in cover and getting a wicked 4+ save for 1 turn but not being able to assault because -2 to charge. OR I could deploy out in the open and risk a 45-49% chance to get into CC with them or die gloriously. 2: Cover increases durability...not really. For some it does, but for Nidz and Orkz and some Demons not so much. You try cramming 30 Models into a piece of terrain and let me know how it goes. Plus, even if you do, guess what? you now have a 5+ save WHOOPEE! 3: The game is in a good spot. So melee armies which weren't even winning events just got hit with the nerf hammer hard and you feel that by making the weaker option weaker the game is in a better place? Now keep in mind that isn't opinion that is an actual fact. So you are admitting that you are happy that its going to be a lot easier for your Gunline to kill CC armies.

1) Terrain does not slow you down one bit. infantry can climb over wall with no penalty. As for cover, it's really easy, just put some sandbags in squares and declare that area to be cover. Or get a bunch of trees and declare it's cover. You just need to be within a terrain feature. It doesn't need to be a building.

2) See point 1. Also, aren't Ork players the ones complaining that going from a 5+ to a 6+ to hit neuters your shooting because it halves your hit rate? Well going from a 6+ to a 5+ doubles it. So yes, it impacts the game.

3) I could not care less what competitive games are doing, I am only saying that for MY games, 8th is in a decent spot. I never claimed otherwise.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mchammadad wrote:

Also, no one plays Cities of death near my place, no tourney will ever play cities in their games where i am and no one really cares about the extra layer of rules on basically matched play rulings.

Not my problem. I enjoy cities of death a lot more than the regular rules. Also:

A lot of people claim that "8th terrain rules suck" to which you say "no one cares about the extra layer of rules"
k

SemperMortis wrote:

 gkos wrote:
I don't know if this has been suggested before, but if you couldn't fall back if you have been charged that turn (lets call it "battle shock") then melee troops that make the charge are not going to be left high and dry the next turn and open for shooting?

It gets rid of the trying to tie up a unit shenanigans, if the charging unit kills the unit it charged, then fair enough.

Almost like a semi tarpit?

That is both fair and balanced. Unfortunately, I highly doubt gunline players will go along with any kind of nerf towards them getting an easy kill on a CC unit.

Guess I should float it in the rules section then, see how it fairs!

Dandelion wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:


Shooting can be mitigated if you use TONS OF TERRAIN! Why didn't I think of that? why didn't 12 people not suggest that already...ohh thats because it isn't true..Terrain restricts what you can see, so ignoring the units that don't require LOS to blow you off the table lets explore why this is a false premise. 1: You will NEVER have your entire army hidden behind terrain and be even remotely competitive as a CC army. Why? Because you need to be moving to get into CC, so not being shot off the table turn 1 is good, it doesn't help turn 2-4 where you are slowed down by all the terrain so it takes even longer to get into CC. As for deep strikers, well terrain actually did matter. My army used Kommandos, I had the option of appearing in cover and getting a wicked 4+ save for 1 turn but not being able to assault because -2 to charge. OR I could deploy out in the open and risk a 45-49% chance to get into CC with them or die gloriously. 2: Cover increases durability...not really. For some it does, but for Nidz and Orkz and some Demons not so much. You try cramming 30 Models into a piece of terrain and let me know how it goes. Plus, even if you do, guess what? you now have a 5+ save WHOOPEE! 3: The game is in a good spot. So melee armies which weren't even winning events just got hit with the nerf hammer hard and you feel that by making the weaker option weaker the game is in a better place? Now keep in mind that isn't opinion that is an actual fact. So you are admitting that you are happy that its going to be a lot easier for your Gunline to kill CC armies.

1) Terrain does not slow you down one bit. infantry can climb over wall with no penalty. As for cover, it's really easy, just put some sandbags in squares and declare that area to be cover. Or get a bunch of trees and declare it's cover. You just need to be within a terrain feature. It doesn't need to be a building.

2) See point 1. Also, aren't Ork players the ones complaining that going from a 5+ to a 6+ to hit neuters your shooting because it halves your hit rate? Well going from a 6+ to a 5+ doubles it. So yes, it impacts the game.

3) I could not care less what competitive games are doing, I am only saying that for MY games, 8th is in a decent spot. I never claimed otherwise.

1: Terrain does in fact slow you down, especially LOS terrain because guess what? you still have to walk around it, you can't just magically leap 12 inches over the terrain, nor can you "climb over walls with no penalty" I have yet to come across a gamer who has a unit walk through a 3-6in tall wall and say "i can do this with no penalty" unless he was using flyers or a jump unit

2: Again, go ahead and cram those boyz into cover and let me know how it goes, keep in mind that the new rule says I have to have 100% of the unit in cover. As for the next comment, If i shoot you 30 times with a shoota unit thats 10 hits, going to a 6+ to hit makes it 5. A 50% reduction in hits. Going from a 6+ save to a 5+ save doesn't take away half your dmg. If you inflict 18 wounds on me, and I am in cover it goes from me losing 15 Boyz to only losing 12, So I saved 3 more models which means your unit goes down in killing efficiency by 1/6th or 16.6%. Good attempt comparing gaining 1 armor to losing 50% of your shooting.

3: Great, then don't comment about whats wrong with the FAQ if you don't care

Dandelion wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Oh my... that's quite the retort. Anyway, I personally dislike playing against melee heavy lists because they're boring and monotonous. Oh boy I get to make a square formation again. I'm so excited...

Sounds like the problem is your army then

Oh my god. At least try to understand my point. The whole discussion was about guns being better than melee post faq. I just pointed out that guns are nerfed by adequate terrain. Melee is not. If guns are too good then bring more terrain. This helps every army out there, other than gunlines which are the problem in the first place.

That's why I like the faq. It brought deep strike in line with other means of playing the game. You know, positioning that matters. Deep strike now has a serious drawback which means players get to actually move before engaging.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:


Shooting can be mitigated if you use TONS OF TERRAIN! Why didn't I think of that? why didn't 12 people not suggest that already...ohh thats because it isn't true..Terrain restricts what you can see, so ignoring the units that don't require LOS to blow you off the table lets explore why this is a false premise. 1: You will NEVER have your entire army hidden behind terrain and be even remotely competitive as a CC army. Why? Because you need to be moving to get into CC, so not being shot off the table turn 1 is good, it doesn't help turn 2-4 where you are slowed down by all the terrain so it takes even longer to get into CC. As for deep strikers, well terrain actually did matter. My army used Kommandos, I had the option of appearing in cover and getting a wicked 4+ save for 1 turn but not being able to assault because -2 to charge. OR I could deploy out in the open and risk a 45-49% chance to get into CC with them or die gloriously. 2: Cover increases durability...not really. For some it does, but for Nidz and Orkz and some Demons not so much. You try cramming 30 Models into a piece of terrain and let me know how it goes. Plus, even if you do, guess what? you now have a 5+ save WHOOPEE! 3: The game is in a good spot. So melee armies which weren't even winning events just got hit with the nerf hammer hard and you feel that by making the weaker option weaker the game is in a better place? Now keep in mind that isn't opinion that is an actual fact. So you are admitting that you are happy that its going to be a lot easier for your Gunline to kill CC armies.

1) Terrain does not slow you down one bit. infantry can climb over wall with no penalty. As for cover, it's really easy, just put some sandbags in squares and declare that area to be cover. Or get a bunch of trees and declare it's cover. You just need to be within a terrain feature. It doesn't need to be a building.

2) See point 1. Also, aren't Ork players the ones complaining that going from a 5+ to a 6+ to hit neuters your shooting because it halves your hit rate? Well going from a 6+ to a 5+ doubles it. So yes, it impacts the game.

3) I could not care less what competitive games are doing, I am only saying that for MY games, 8th is in a decent spot. I never claimed otherwise.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mchammadad wrote:

Also, no one plays Cities of death near my place, no tourney will ever play cities in their games where i am and no one really cares about the extra layer of rules on basically matched play rulings.

Not my problem. I enjoy cities of death a lot more than the regular rules. Also:

A lot of people claim that "8th terrain rules suck" to which you say "no one cares about the extra layer of rules"
k

I'm usually against the argument that someone who doesn't play something as their main army shouldn't speak on it. But it's a post like this that just makes it so clear when someone has literally only ever played one style of army and hasn't even TRIED to even envision the cons associated with a different playstyle. I've never seen a less accurate summary of cc.

I also don't get why people who don't play competitive 40k choose to weigh in on how the game plays at a competitive level. Casual matched play is not representative of how this ruleset works when broken down - literally any strategy can work in not high level play. Handwaving it by saying "yes I only play casually but that's not relevant here" doesn't change it.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but it's really the honest reality of it.

@semper- if the Los blockers are ruins (as most seem to be) infantry can in fact walk through said walls with no penalty per the rules.

Breng77 wrote:
@semper- if the Los blockers are ruins (as most seem to be) infantry can in fact walk through said walls with no penalty per the rules.

very true, and the other million or so types of walls are not ruins and can not be walked through.

SemperMortis wrote:

1: Terrain does in fact slow you down, especially LOS terrain because guess what? you still have to walk around it, you can't just magically leap 12 inches over the terrain, nor can you "climb over walls with no penalty" I have yet to come across a gamer who has a unit walk through a 3-6in tall wall and say "i can do this with no penalty" unless he was using flyers or a jump unit

2: Again, go ahead and cram those boyz into cover and let me know how it goes, keep in mind that the new rule says I have to have 100% of the unit in cover. As for the next comment, If i shoot you 30 times with a shoota unit thats 10 hits, going to a 6+ to hit makes it 5. A 50% reduction in hits. Going from a 6+ save to a 5+ save doesn't take away half your dmg. If you inflict 18 wounds on me, and I am in cover it goes from me losing 15 Boyz to only losing 12, So I saved 3 more models which means your unit goes down in killing efficiency by 1/6th or 16.6%. Good attempt comparing gaining 1 armor to losing 50% of your shooting.

3: Great, then don't comment about whats wrong with the FAQ if you don't care

Sigh...
Let me reiterate my opinion for you:
- I like the FAQ as is. My casual games are a lot more fun now.
- Sure melee got nerfed, but I ( me personally, i'm not telling you to do anything) can scale down guns very easily using terrain. Thus bringing both sides into a balanced match.
That's it. My games are more interesting now. And that's all I can say.

As for your points:
1. True, I will give you that. But if you're behind a 3in wall, aren't you safe from most shooting?

2. Ah, but instead of only saving 3 boyz, you saved 6. That's a 100% increase in the number of models saved. Statistics are dastardly right? Also, you can easily make a terrain feature as big as you like. Throw some trees and some bushes down in a 4ft^2 area and you now have cover in those areas. It only takes a little creativity. Or just throw down a whole bunch of rocks.

3. I do care, because I like the FAQ. Just because I don't play tournaments doesn't mean I can't weigh in on a rule that affects me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:

I'm usually against the argument that someone who doesn't play something as their main army shouldn't speak on it. But it's a post like this that just makes it so clear when someone has literally only ever played one style of army and hasn't even TRIED to even envision the cons associated with a different playstyle. I've never seen a less accurate summary of cc.

I also don't get why people who don't play competitive 40k choose to weigh in on how the game plays at a competitive level. Casual matched play is not representative of how this ruleset works when broken down - literally any strategy can work in not high level play. Handwaving it by saying "yes I only play casually but that's not relevant here" doesn't change it.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but it's really the honest reality of it.

See above.
I understand the cons of playing melee. You get shot a lot while trudging along and doing no damage. I'm just saying that for my games I can manipulate the board to an extent where guns aren't nearly as good. Which, for me, solves the issue of melee not being viable, because I can make them viable. If however, melee was much better than guns, then I would be hard pressed to even the playing field using just terrain.

Also, the faq affects everyone, not just competitive folks. So I'm not weighing in on how it plays competitively. In fact, the whole reason why I brought that up is because I was giving a non-competitive point of view.

Dandelion wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

1: Terrain does in fact slow you down, especially LOS terrain because guess what? you still have to walk around it, you can't just magically leap 12 inches over the terrain, nor can you "climb over walls with no penalty" I have yet to come across a gamer who has a unit walk through a 3-6in tall wall and say "i can do this with no penalty" unless he was using flyers or a jump unit

2: Again, go ahead and cram those boyz into cover and let me know how it goes, keep in mind that the new rule says I have to have 100% of the unit in cover. As for the next comment, If i shoot you 30 times with a shoota unit thats 10 hits, going to a 6+ to hit makes it 5. A 50% reduction in hits. Going from a 6+ save to a 5+ save doesn't take away half your dmg. If you inflict 18 wounds on me, and I am in cover it goes from me losing 15 Boyz to only losing 12, So I saved 3 more models which means your unit goes down in killing efficiency by 1/6th or 16.6%. Good attempt comparing gaining 1 armor to losing 50% of your shooting.

3: Great, then don't comment about whats wrong with the FAQ if you don't care

Sigh...
Let me reiterate my opinion for you:
- I like the FAQ as is. My casual games are a lot more fun now.
- Sure melee got nerfed, but I ( me personally, i'm not telling you to do anything) can scale down guns very easily using terrain. Thus bringing both sides into a balanced match.
That's it. My games are more interesting now. And that's all I can say.

As for your points:
1. True, I will give you that. But if you're behind a 3in wall, aren't you safe from most shooting?

2. Ah, but instead of only saving 3 boyz, you saved 6. That's a 100% increase in the number of models saved. Statistics are dastardly right? Also, you can easily make a terrain feature as big as you like. Throw some trees and some bushes down in a 4ft^2 area and you now have cover in those areas. It only takes a little creativity. Or just throw down a whole bunch of rocks.

3. I do care, because I like the FAQ. Just because I don't play tournaments doesn't mean I can't weigh in on a rule that affects me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:

I'm usually against the argument that someone who doesn't play something as their main army shouldn't speak on it. But it's a post like this that just makes it so clear when someone has literally only ever played one style of army and hasn't even TRIED to even envision the cons associated with a different playstyle. I've never seen a less accurate summary of cc.

I also don't get why people who don't play competitive 40k choose to weigh in on how the game plays at a competitive level. Casual matched play is not representative of how this ruleset works when broken down - literally any strategy can work in not high level play. Handwaving it by saying "yes I only play casually but that's not relevant here" doesn't change it.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but it's really the honest reality of it.

See above.
I understand the cons of playing melee. You get shot a lot while trudging along and doing no damage. I'm just saying that for my games I can manipulate the board to an extent where guns aren't nearly as good. Which, for me, solves the issue of melee not being viable, because I can make them viable. If however, melee was much better than guns, then I would be hard pressed to even the playing field using just terrain.

Also, the faq affects everyone, not just competitive folks. So I'm not weighing in on how it plays competitively. In fact, the whole reason why I brought that up is because I was giving a non-competitive point of view.

-The FAQ doesn't address the actual problem of the game and just introduces another in it's place. The whole point of the FAQ was to tone down Shooting Deep Strike because of it's destructive nature. As a consequence it destroyed it's other spectrum which was Melee
Addressing the problem actually involves unit by unit adjusting so that those units that are utterly devastating because of their potential (posted about scions in a previous post where you could get a scion bomb with supporting elements for less than 200 pts) are adjusted so that the option falls in line with other tactics. Not this blanket rule that doesn't even adress it. (whoo, turn 2 bombs instead. With a gunline army I'm still obliterating half ur army turn 1, geez. This rule does nothing to my army)

-Just because you can "scale" your guns down with terrain means nothing. People who are playing tournaments (The guys whom these changes effect the most because tournaments) don't get a saying in a few factors of the game (Deployment, Terrain, Mission) so your logic makes zero sense. You must understand that playing casual and giving comments about "casual" play means nothing to the guy trying to win a prize pool. 40k changes when you have an incentive to win

As for your counterpoints.

1. No, cause to use that wall means that your opponent has done their job and the unit in question is reduced to single digits, hardly a threat anymore.

2. saving an additional 100% of your models means nothing when the volume of firepower doubles. Say that the unit just got shot by one of his 5 units of guardsmen with ranked fire (this is not including anything else in the army) that was just one unit, now multiply that by 5. That unit is gone and has done nothing at all to contribute to the army. And considering that was just a small part of his army, he still has everything else to deal with your melee horde.

3. Just because you like the FAQ doesn't mean that it actually addressed the problem. As far as i can see, the problem is still there. And it actually got worse because of this. Only playing casual means that you cannot see the implications of this rule when the ruling means the difference between placing in a tournament and actually winning it.

Most of us who play melee based armies can see the rule for what it is. A rule that was intended to nerf deep strike SHOOTING but instead is effecting how we as a melee army use deep strike in our play style, which is a distraction screening for our main force to advance unhindered

If you cannot look at a rule and see how it effects everything, then you cannot judge others who see it that way. Because by your nature you are biased towards the rule, because it doesn't effect you

Haven't won a game with BA since the FAQ. Glad it's all working as intended.

Really glad melee got nerfed with this.

In my experience first turn alpha was straight up stupid. It made every game follow the same sequence - whether it was a shooty or a choppy unit. At that point why not just make deployment zones right next to each other.

Terrain helps mitigate a gunline, sure - but maybe the solution should be fixing the transport rules to allow disembarking/embarking after the transport moves, as long as both don't happen in the same turn. Might actually make them worth their points.

As if guardsmen existing weren't enough of a nerf on melee.

mchammadad wrote:

-The FAQ doesn't address the actual problem of the game and just introduces another in it's place. The whole point of the FAQ was to tone down Shooting Deep Strike because of it's destructive nature. As a consequence it destroyed it's other spectrum which was Melee
Addressing the problem actually involves unit by unit adjusting so that those units that are utterly devastating because of their potential (posted about scions in a previous post where you could get a scion bomb with supporting elements for less than 200 pts) are adjusted so that the option falls in line with other tactics. Not this blanket rule that doesn't even adress it. (whoo, turn 2 bombs instead. With a gunline army I'm still obliterating half ur army turn 1, geez. This rule does nothing to my army)

-Just because you can "scale" your guns down with terrain means nothing. People who are playing tournaments (The guys whom these changes effect the most because tournaments) don't get a saying in a few factors of the game (Deployment, Terrain, Mission) so your logic makes zero sense. You must understand that playing casual and giving comments about "casual" play means nothing to the guy trying to win a prize pool. 40k changes when you have an incentive to win

As for your counterpoints.

1. No, cause to use that wall means that your opponent has done their job and the unit in question is reduced to single digits, hardly a threat anymore.

2. saving an additional 100% of your models means nothing when the volume of firepower doubles. Say that the unit just got shot by one of his 5 units of guardsmen with ranked fire (this is not including anything else in the army) that was just one unit, now multiply that by 5. That unit is gone and has done nothing at all to contribute to the army. And considering that was just a small part of his army, he still has everything else to deal with your melee horde.

3. Just because you like the FAQ doesn't mean that it actually addressed the problem. As far as i can see, the problem is still there. And it actually got worse because of this. Only playing casual means that you cannot see the implications of this rule when the ruling means the difference between placing in a tournament and actually winning it.

Most of us who play melee based armies can see the rule for what it is. A rule that was intended to nerf deep strike SHOOTING but instead is effecting how we as a melee army use deep strike in our play style, which is a distraction screening for our main force to advance unhindered

If you cannot look at a rule and see how it effects everything, then you cannot judge others who see it that way. Because by your nature you are biased towards the rule, because it doesn't effect you

The faq nerfed deepstrike. Good. Did melee get screwed in the process? Yes, because that was one aspect the devs did not like. Melee deepstrike was just as targeted as shooting deepstrike. Melee deepstrike turn one is gone forever at this point. No amount of arguing will change that and the faq will likely stay as is, minus maybe some Da Jump style clarifications. Maybe now we can focus on other ways to make melee viable instead. I simply proposed that terrain is a decent way to level the playing field for the time being.
Unless you want to suggest that no amount of terrain will ever affect shooting at all. Which is something I disagree with. And as far as I'm concerned, if you're (not you specifically, but players) not interacting with terrain in a meaningful way then you're not really playing a wargame.

So to recap, the FAQ did exactly what it was supposed to do, nerf all deepstrike.

I get that, but melee is likely unrecoverable. Shooting toodles along like always.

Martel732 wrote:
I get that, but melee is likely unrecoverable. Shooting toodles along like always.

Well, I wasn't aiming that at you per se. Though I still firmly believe that all armies should get good shooting components so that individual factions aren't tiered based on how shooty they are. So in your case, whirlwinds would need to be as good as manticores/basilisks for example, and we need more anti-horde guns. That way you can trade shots with guard on an equal footing, and then your jump packs land and disrupt the gunline. But that's not really in the realm of deepstrike.

Perhaps expanding terrain rules to include to hit modifiers would help a bit as well. Oh, and the cities of death rules should really just be standard rules. +2 to your cover save is really effective.

The cruel irony is too much terrain helps IG gunlines. Especially the ones with 20+ mortars.

Martel732 wrote:
The cruel irony is too much terrain helps IG gunlines. Especially the ones with 20+ mortars.

True. And expanding terrain rules for things like -1 to hit with no los would be an excellent start I reckon. But that really is outside of the realm of deepstrike shenanigans which is why ultimately I feel that while this FAQ is a good change, it's still an incomplete change.

I guess I shouldn't complain too much, b/c the deep strike assault was easier to shoot down than deep strike shooting anyway.

Martel732 wrote:
I guess I shouldn't complain too much, b/c the deep strike assault was easier to shoot down than deep strike shooting anyway.

As in melee deep strike was less reliable? If so, I agree. My buddy's full scion list was much scarier than melee as far as deep striking was concerned. I'm glad that got hit a bit.

It got delayed by a turn. Whooo

a scion bomb is still a scion bomb when it kills the target it was going for. Considering the fact that the melee option has to go by chance to be given the opportunity to do damage and even then needs to roll for said damage and then get promptly deleted off the board regardless of how effective it was is not a valid reason why the shooting option can do the job first time,every time.

I would love to have less than 200 points take out that land raider on the second turn, or third turn. Means my opponent just got his 300pt+ land raider killed by a unit at about half it's price. Seems reasonable.

While the equivalent melee unit has probably a slim chance at doing the same job. Got a powerfist/Powerclaw/x2 weapon. That'll cost extra.. Want a re-roll with that? tht'll cost extra more

This rule is stupid, and should be treated as such.

Instead Deep striking shooting should get a 50pt's added cost to them to make it so that it's not an auto take, but rather another option (Melee's fine cause there are tactics around stopping melee, and chance is way higher. Like rolling a 9 on 2d6 (Which is what most melee units are doing) is a lot harder than it seems, even with re-rolls

Also. Terrain does diddly squat when your unit has to walk through said terrain to get to the enemy army. Cause next turn the enemy can shoot the enemy that has to walk out into the open to do damage

I, honest to god, have no idea what your point is.

Just to be clear, multiple changes to bolster melee have been proposed throughout this thread. Including making transports cheaper, or more crucially, allowing disembarkation after the vehicles move. But one assumption has been clear throughout: the beta rule hurts melee armies significantly more than shooty ones. And the majority of the community hopes this was a stupid on GW's part, because why would you knowingly do that when melee always was an uphill battle to begin with, as opposed to point and click.

mchammadad wrote:
It got delayed by a turn. Whooo

a scion bomb is still a scion bomb when it kills the target it was going for. Considering the fact that the melee option has to go by chance to be given the opportunity to do damage and even then needs to roll for said damage and then get promptly deleted off the board regardless of how effective it was is not a valid reason why the shooting option can do the job first time,every time.

When they get 2 full turns of shooting out of it it's possible the ideal target has already done it's job as well.

I'm not necessarily saying anything else concerning whether or not this is a bad rule or who is affected worse by it, but let's not confuse it as not making a difference.

 SHUPPET wrote:

mchammadad wrote:
It got delayed by a turn. Whooo

a scion bomb is still a scion bomb when it kills the target it was going for. Considering the fact that the melee option has to go by chance to be given the opportunity to do damage and even then needs to roll for said damage and then get promptly deleted off the board regardless of how effective it was is not a valid reason why the shooting option can do the job first time,every time.

When they get 2 full turns of shooting out of it it's possible the ideal target has already done it's job as well.

I'm not necessarily saying anything else concerning whether or not this is a bad rule or who is affected worse by it, but let's not confuse it as not making a difference.

But if you have first turn it only has one turn to do anything.

And most big targets arent effective in one turn. I mean it's just like a melee un.....

ohh wait

mchammadad wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

When they get 2 full turns of shooting out of it it's possible the ideal target has already done it's job as well.

I'm not necessarily saying anything else concerning whether or not this is a bad rule or who is affected worse by it, but let's not confuse it as not making a difference.

But if you have first turn it only has one turn to do anything.

Wish I knew the trick to rolling first turn every single game.

mchammadad wrote:

And most big targets arent effective in one turn. I mean it's just like a melee un.....

ohh wait

I have no idea the point you are trying to make here.

 peteralmo wrote:
Just to be clear, multiple changes to bolster melee have been proposed throughout this thread. Including making transports cheaper, or more crucially, allowing disembarkation after the vehicles move. But one assumption has been clear throughout: the beta rule hurts melee armies significantly more than shooty ones. And the majority of the community hopes this was a stupid on GW's part, because why would you knowingly do that when melee always was an uphill battle to begin with, as opposed to point and click.

Well, you do have to consider that GW probably wanted to all deep strike. Melee doesn't get a pass. You can think it's stupid or unfair, but the rule is working as intended. I think the solution is to tweak other rules to make melee better, but turn 1 deep strike assault is dead for everyone. And I appreciate that.

Also, for your comment of point and click, isn't that what deep strike was?

Lastly, how does the rule affect melee ds more than shooting ds? They are both equally affected by the same rule. I would even argue that shooting deepstrike was deadlier than melee deep strike, so putting it off for one turn is nice.

Dandelion wrote:

 peteralmo wrote:
Just to be clear, multiple changes to bolster melee have been proposed throughout this thread. Including making transports cheaper, or more crucially, allowing disembarkation after the vehicles move. But one assumption has been clear throughout: the beta rule hurts melee armies significantly more than shooty ones. And the majority of the community hopes this was a stupid on GW's part, because why would you knowingly do that when melee always was an uphill battle to begin with, as opposed to point and click.

Well, you do have to consider that GW probably wanted to all deep strike. Melee doesn't get a pass. You can think it's stupid or unfair, but the rule is working as intended. I think the solution is to tweak other rules to make melee better, but turn 1 deep strike assault is dead for everyone. And I appreciate that.

Also, for your comment of point and click, isn't that what deep strike was?

Lastly, how does the rule affect melee ds more than shooting ds? They are both equally affected by the same rule. I would even argue that shooting deepstrike was deadlier than melee deep strike, so putting it off for one turn is nice.

There's a lot wrong so I'll go through it carefully. "I think the solution is to tweak other rules to make melee better." This is what the thread has been trying to come up with. If you go back and look at the beginning I was clear in my belief that the rule was here to stay, so I asked the question of what new rules could be introduced to bolster melee.

"Also, for your comment of point and click, isn't that what deep strike was?" Only for deep strike shooting units, melee units are not point and click at all. Also all shooting is point and click, not just deep strike shooting.

"Lastly, how does the rule affect melee ds more than shooting ds? They are both equally affected by the same rule." This was the comment that had me leaping in my seat. They absolutely weren't affected in the same way, not even close. Melee is much harder, first you have to make a 9" charge which fails 2/3's of the time, and you have to deal with the screens preventing you from charging in the first place. DS shooting has no such limitation, usually your deep striking plasma or an equivalent type weapon, meaning there is no barrier to entry, you simply arrive and blast your target away, no need to make a roll that's successful 33% of the time, and screens really can't work against you when you have 24" range guns.

Please cease and desist from this line of reasoning that somehow melee and shooting are on the same footing and were affected equally, it couldn't be further from the truth.

 peteralmo wrote:

"Lastly, how does the rule affect melee ds more than shooting ds? They are both equally affected by the same rule." This was the comment that had me leaping in my seat. They absolutely weren't affected in the same way, not even close. Melee is much harder, first you have to make a 9" charge which fails 2/3's of the time, and you have to deal with the screens preventing you from charging in the first place. DS shooting has no such limitation, usually your deep striking plasma or an equivalent type weapon, meaning there is no barrier to entry, you simply arrive and blast your target away, no need to make a roll that's successful 33% of the time, and screens really can't work against you when you have 24" range guns.

See this is the one I don't get. Melee deep strike was already unreliable. Shooting deep strike is reliable. Removing turn 1 deep strike significantly reduces shooting damage, much more so than melee because melee doesn't alway get in. Melee deep strike was bad before and it''s bad now. Shooting deep strike was much more deadly, which means that removing it turn 1 is a much bigger nerf than the unreliable melee.

So shooting went from 100% success rate to 0%, while melee went from 33% success rate to 0%. See what I mean?

Dandelion wrote:

 peteralmo wrote:

"Lastly, how does the rule affect melee ds more than shooting ds? They are both equally affected by the same rule." This was the comment that had me leaping in my seat. They absolutely weren't affected in the same way, not even close. Melee is much harder, first you have to make a 9" charge which fails 2/3's of the time, and you have to deal with the screens preventing you from charging in the first place. DS shooting has no such limitation, usually your deep striking plasma or an equivalent type weapon, meaning there is no barrier to entry, you simply arrive and blast your target away, no need to make a roll that's successful 33% of the time, and screens really can't work against you when you have 24" range guns.

See this is the one I don't get. Melee deep strike was already unreliable. Shooting deep strike is reliable. Removing turn 1 deep strike significantly reduces shooting damage, much more so than melee because melee doesn't alway get in. Melee deep strike was bad before and it''s bad now. Shooting deep strike was much more deadly, which means that removing it turn 1 is a much bigger nerf than the unreliable melee.

So shooting went from 100% success rate to 0%, while melee went from 33% success rate to 0%. See what I mean?

I do see what you mean. But I don't know if we can really claim that shooting went from 100% to 0%, of course yes on the turn 1, but looking at the game as a whole, not so much, your scion bomb should still be at near full efficacy on turn 2. Melee is a bit trickier, since it's so much more affected by screening, and under the new rules a player will have one to two turns to really spread out there screening, making the chances of the turn 2 melee deep strike being successful extremely low to downright hopeless. The extra turn or two of spreading out can effect some DS shooting, like 12" range melta, but guns with a 24" range or better should still be largely unaffected, even with two turn of spreading out.

Yes, deep strike shooting got hit, but I really don't think it compares, even a little bit, to how hard melee took it in the cohones. Which brings me back to hoping GW provides future rules updates to melee focused DS armies (blood angels, grey knights, daemons) that bolster them back up and over the hole the beta rule put them in.

 peteralmo wrote:


I do see what you mean. But I don't know if we can really claim that shooting went from 100% to 0%, of course yes on the turn 1, but looking at the game as a whole, not so much, your scion bomb should still be at near full efficacy on turn 2. Melee is a bit trickier, since it's so much more affected by screening, and under the new rules a player will have one to two turns to really spread out there screening, making the chances of the turn 2 melee deep strike being successful extremely low to downright hopeless. The extra turn or two of spreading out can effect some DS shooting, like 12" range melta, but guns with a 24" range or better should still be largely unaffected, even with two turn of spreading out.

Yes, deep strike shooting got hit, but I really don't think it compares, even a little bit, to how hard melee took it in the cohones. Which brings me back to hoping GW provides future rules updates to melee focused DS armies (blood angels, grey knights, daemons) that bolster them back up and over the hole the beta rule put them in.

Ah, ok I'm seeing it now. Though, if we take scions for example, the plasma shots are rapid fire, which means they lose half their shots at over 12" which is a lot. And quite frankly, if you're deep striking with a long range gun you can still just deep strike in your deployment zone which isn't much different from a gunline anyway which is another beast entirely.

But still, deep strike melee was a band-aid that ultimately helped (among other things) to narrow the game to turn 1 tabling. The more we remove the ability for all armies to hit turn 1 the better the overall game will be. Deep strike was just the first to go.

 peteralmo wrote:
Just to be clear, multiple changes to bolster melee have been proposed throughout this thread. Including making transports cheaper, or more crucially, allowing disembarkation after the vehicles move. But one assumption has been clear throughout: the beta rule hurts melee armies significantly more than shooty ones. And the majority of the community hopes this was a stupid on GW's part, because why would you knowingly do that when melee always was an uphill battle to begin with, as opposed to point and click.

Yes, we agree. It hurt melee armies.

But the fact that this was what made them decent is also stupid.

Watched a player with full mastery and understanding of Necron stratagems with 4K smash a 2K marine and 2K CSM team off the table like they were insects. Being able to get reanimation protocols up to 3+ is nuts, and all the flying stuff falling back to shoot marines was also nuts. I don't know if the FAQ really made any difference, but it underscored how incredibly gakky marine melee is currently. The necron guy ended with only a few hundred points actually dead. It was really crazy.

Martel732 wrote:
Watched a player with full mastery and understanding of Necron stratagems with 4K smash a 2K marine and 2K CSM team off the table like they were insects. Being able to get reanimation protocols up to 3+ is nuts, and all the flying stuff falling back to shoot marines was also nuts. I don't know if the FAQ really made any difference, but it underscored how incredibly gakky marine melee is currently. The necron guy ended with only a few hundred points actually dead. It was really crazy.

Got a link to that?

Also. Yea, reanimation protocols has kinda been an interesting rule, even during it's old wording. It allows necrons to basically ignore a huge portion of damage, while dealing out a decent amount of firepower in the process. But im guessing that the CSM and SM armies were mostly melee focused? If so, the result was predictable.

This is why there needs to be rules that empower melee, but also not to make it too powerful as to make it an auto take. If you had to tweak it it would probably be three things: Fall back, Overwatch and points.

Let me explain:

Fall back has been the boogeyman for melee this edition. The idea that one unit (Or two units) forgo their shooting or melee (with exceptions) so that the melee unit in question is opened to mass firepower on your side is really one sided. Last editions this was what tarpits were designed to hold back because of the sheer wounds and models in the unit (Nurgle stuff were hillariously good at tarpitting) Now that tarpitting is gone because of fall back that tactics is thrown out of the window, and instead it's a game of charge-Fight-Fallback-shoot. With the melee unit either destroyed or completely crippled after one round of combat.

Overwatch, since it's inception in 6th edition, has always been a fickle thing. One one hand it is the face melting "Destroy your unit before they even think of charging" shooting. Or it's done barely anything. However, this edition has shown an increase of volume of fire (Rapid fire got a number next to it now, most guns are shooting 2 or 3 shots on average) and the fact that overwatch became multiple times doesn't come up that often, but when it does it is devastating. I can think of 3+ units that can dish out a crazy amount of firepower (Pink horrors, Termangaunts,Leman Russ,Baneblades, ect.) that makes overwatch just devastating to one unit, now you have that same unit dishing out multiple shots that frankly makes them feel like they just did 2-3 shooting phases (even on hit on 6's)

Points is my last thing. And this is kinda the main one. shooting and melee should be adjusted to realise how powerful one form is over the other. a T3/4 model with a 24" Rapid fire gun (Standard weaponry) is alot more powerful in terms of points to that same unit with a 12" or no shooting weapon. So points should reflect that, but at the same time we want to avoid the fantasy trap of everything too cheap as that pulls out players who have an interest in this game because of the high model count to start.

Addressing these three things would make melee just as viable as ranged. But at the moment, those who are playing range don't want to listen or even think of these changes because their armies have the distinct advantage over their melee counterparts.

40k has always been about two things; the story and the journey. The story of seeing such a rich history made for this game, and even how grim and dark it is to our modern times. How we would like our armies to be a reflection of that story and the journey we take to slowly build it over time into something we love as hobbyist.

I watched it live, sorry. I'm down on marines and even I was shocked as to how little actual damage the marines could get to stick on the Necrons. Squads of 5-6 destroyers are brutal.

Between the two marine lists, there was a quite a bit of shooting, but they needed to have had so much more to get anything meaningful done... I don't even know where to start with BA lists right now.

Martel732 wrote:
I watched it live, sorry. I'm down on marines and even I was shocked as to how little actual damage the marines could get to stick on the Necrons. Squads of 5-6 destroyers are brutal.

Between the two marine lists, there was a quite a bit of shooting, but they needed to have had so much more to get anything meaningful done... I don't even know where to start with BA lists right now.

You could try the direction I went in LOL, a few amazing BA characters and Sanguinary Guard paired up with another codex. I've actually had the most success pairing Slamguinius, the Sanguinior and some Sanguinary Guard with a majority mechanized sisters army, mass repressors. The transports give me the mobility and durability to keep on trucking while I wait on the melee element to arrive. Here's one of the lists I tried out. Bear in mind I still consider this a medium-tier competitive list, mostly for fun, and I'd never take it to a major tournament over my eldar or necrons. And the sad thing is my pure sisters lists are just better lol.


Battalion & Vanguard Detachments 9 CP

<Battalion Detachment>
HQ – Saint Celestine
HQ – Canoness w/ Storm Bolter & Chainsword

Troops – 5x Battle Sister Squad w/ 3x Storm Bolters
Troops – 5x Battle Sister Squad w/ 3x Storm Bolters
Transport – Sororitas Repressor w/ Heavy Flamer, 2x Storm Bolters & Dozer Ram

Troops – 5x Battle Sister Squad w/ 3x Storm Bolters
Troops – 5x Battle Sister Squad w/ 3x Storm Bolters
Transport – Sororitas Repressor w/ Heavy Flamer, 2x Storm Bolters & Dozer Ram

Fast Attack – 5x Dominion Squad w/ 4x Melta Guns & Combi-Melta
Transport – Sororitas Repressor w/ Heavy Flamer, 2x Storm Bolters & Dozer Ram

Fast Attack – 5x Dominion Squad w/ 4x Melta Guns & Combi-Melta
Transport – Sororitas Repressor w/ Heavy Flamer, 2x Storm Bolters & Dozer Ram

Fast Attack – 5x Dominion Squad w/ 4x Melta Guns & Combi-Melta
Transport – Sororitas Repressor w/ Heavy Flamer, 2x Storm Bolters & Dozer Ram

<Vanguard Detachment>
HQ – Death Company Captain w/ Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield & the Angel’s Wing (Warlord: Gift of Foresight)
HQ – The Sanguinor

Elites – Sanguinary Ancient w/ Angelus Boltgun, Encarmine Sword & the Standard of Sacrifice
Elites – 4x Sanguinary Guard w/ Angelus Boltguns & Encarmine Swords
Elites – 4x Sanguinary Guard w/ Angelus Boltguns & Encarmine Swords

Getting rid of initiative was a mistake.

Martel732 wrote:
Watched a player with full mastery and understanding of Necron stratagems with 4K smash a 2K marine and 2K CSM team off the table like they were insects. Being able to get reanimation protocols up to 3+ is nuts, and all the flying stuff falling back to shoot marines was also nuts. I don't know if the FAQ really made any difference, but it underscored how incredibly gakky marine melee is currently. The necron guy ended with only a few hundred points actually dead. It was really crazy.

How can Necrons get a 3+ RP? The Cryptek buff doesn't stack.

They stack onto the strat, right?

Cryptek gives you a 4+ RP and the stratagem allows you to re roll 1's. Warriors can get two separate rounds of RP in the same turn with a ghost ark.

Ah okay. I didn't question b/c i was watching. This makes the dw strat less bad.

Martel732 wrote:
Ah okay. I didn't question b/c i was watching. This makes the dw strat less bad.

Yes the deathwatch look like they may be the strongest SM variant at the moment, which is frustrating because there models, although beautiful, are expensive, and so few people play them, so GW is setup pretty well to make a killing in sales, almost like they planned it....

Nah, I'm just using intercessors. I think the rest of the DW stuff costs too much.

Martel732 wrote:
Nah, I'm just using intercessors. I think the rest of the DW stuff costs too much.

Yeah but those mixed primaris kill teams seem really really good.

I'm not sure how much I'm going to get out of mixing in the more expensive Primaris variants, honestly. It take 5 T5 models to get the squad up to T5. The only choices are aggressor and inceptors.

The other issue with them is just mobility, being mixed you have neither repulsor or deep strike options, if you go with an inceptor for the fall back rule, so are you just walking them up the board?

DW can pay cp to deepstrike.

Martel732 wrote:
DW can pay cp to deepstrike.

Well there you go, that sounds fantastic.

Why not change the beta rules to only allow DS in turn one when you are the second player? This would make sure you eat one rouind of shooting not two

amanwing wrote:
Why not change the beta rules to only allow DS in turn one when you are the second player? This would make sure you eat one rouind of shooting not two

you shoot at what they don't care about hiding out of LOS, and the alpha strike hits just as hard coming down anyway. That being said, the PL changes may have been enuogh

 SHUPPET wrote:

amanwing wrote:
Why not change the beta rules to only allow DS in turn one when you are the second player? This would make sure you eat one rouind of shooting not two

you shoot at what they don't care about hiding out of LOS, and the alpha strike hits just as hard coming down anyway. That being said, the PL changes may have been enuogh

It may make sense not to alpha strike turn 1 a lot too. After turn one the thing you really want to hit may have been moved to where you can get a better shot. Just my 2 cents for those who feel burned, which I can understand and not judging.

How do people use paladins or terminators with the change, it seems to be impossible to build a list in a such a way that it has half its points on the board and doesn't die turn 1, and has strong enough deep strike to actually use its stormbolters at shorter range?

Are there something like stratagems for GK that let them deep strike turn 1, or something like that?

It's easy to cheat the system. Just make your strike squads into 6 men units rather than the usual 5. It takes them from PL7 to PL14. An entire unit of 10 paladins is PL 32. So if you take 3 strike squads you more than balance out the paladins for deep strike purposes.

I have only one strike squad and it is 5 model strong, most of my army is made out of 15 terminators/paladins. I thought there was some way to make them deep strike without the rule being in effect. It makes it harder to use my army, and it is not like it was easy before.

Take 1 Termie Squad of 6 = 26PL + 1 strike squad of 5 = 7PL. Then use your remaining 9 Paladins = 32PL. Just remember that if you have any special weapons to distribute them properly (1 in the Termies max, 2 in the paladins max).

Play with more terrain. There, fixed.

Northern85Star wrote:
Play with more terrain. There, fixed.

Best comment of the day.

Can't beat Tau because of their gunline and ignores LOS and cover weapons? Add More Terrain
Having problems assaulting because short range fire power is killing your troops? Add More Terrain
Tournaments don't have enough terrain and you keep losing? Add More Terrain!

It is almost like we have heard that same ridiculous comment a million times.

SemperMortis wrote:

Northern85Star wrote:
Play with more terrain. There, fixed.

Best comment of the day.

Can't beat Tau because of their gunline and ignores LOS and cover weapons? Add More Terrain
Having problems assaulting because short range fire power is killing your troops? Add More Terrain
Tournaments don't have enough terrain and you keep losing? Add More Terrain!

It is almost like we have heard that same ridiculous comment a million times.

It’s like adding a band aid to a sucking chest wound.... pointless

Infantry can move through walls of ruins, cancelling overwatch. So you should make sure to play with ruins.

As to Tau, they’re not in my meta (luckily, from the batreps i’ve seen they look like the most boring army to play against).

As for tournaments.. well, if you’re going there, it is to WAAC. Pick another army.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Make matched play use the Night Fight rules. There, all but 1 of your units is now -3 to hit. Hurts Gunlines, buffs assault and close range firefight armies and lowers first turn alpha strike.

That sounds like a much better idea.

Northern85Star wrote:
Play with more terrain. There, fixed.

Most of the armies I play against move too fast for terrain to matter. Plus terrain doesn't help much they can see me through doors and windows anyway.

Some rules like ITC's don't allow for openings on the ground floor of a building. As such you can't shoot through the buildings into a unit of troops that are behind/within it.

From the ITC packet:
In ITC events using any missions, the following modification to Ruins type terrain should be used: Ruins: For this event, the bottom level walls of all ruins are considered to block LoS even if they do not actually do so. This means existing openings in them such as those created by windows, doors, bullet holes, etc. block LoS. This rule does not mean the players create walls where none existed. If in doubt as to where to define these barriers, clarify with your opponent before the game begins.

Yeah, i always play ITC. It is more balanced, which makes for more exciting games. None of that lucky card draws.

That means all bottom floor walls block LOS, even if they have holes - and infantry can move through walls and floors, which boosts them. It also makes games smoother.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
... it also means that first turn advance is countered by the second player knowing exactly how many units or objectives he needs to win the battleround.

I love that people criticize GW for bad terrain rules, and then give an example of ITC having better terrain rules.

The ITC rules say the same thing as GW: "Agree with your opponent before the game."

Because in order to dick over their rule, just say "I am in doubt about where to define these barriers" about every single hole in every single wall, and you're back to "discuss with your opponent when the game starts." - which is GW's rule. A dickish opponent is going to be a dickish opponent anywhere there is ambiguity, and considering Terrain from 40k can be anything from leaves & gravel grabbed outside to 60" high Hive City walls on a floor-apocalypse board, there's always going to be tons of ambiguity.

The terrain rules should really say "don't play dickish opponents".

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I love that people criticize GW for bad terrain rules, and then give an example of ITC having better terrain rules.

The ITC rules say the same thing as GW: "Agree with your opponent before the game."

Because in order to dick over their rule, just say "I am in doubt about where to define these barriers" about every single hole in every single wall, and you're back to "discuss with your opponent when the game starts." - which is GW's rule. A dickish opponent is going to be a dickish opponent anywhere there is ambiguity, and considering Terrain from 40k can be anything from leaves & gravel grabbed outside to 60" high Hive City walls on a floor-apocalypse board, there's always going to be tons of ambiguity.

The terrain rules should really say "don't play dickish opponents".

This is a theory argument and doesn't come up.

The ITC terrain series is very well constructed for tournaments, should any store use it. Major GTs hosted or sponsored by ITC will.

Some RTs have funky terrain, but any store that wants a 40k presence invests in making functional terrain. Simple foam like the London GT would do honestly for a competitive environment.

And the ITC absolutely does have better terrain rules. Remember, their terrain setup is bog-standard and the rules for the terrain make sense in the context of 8th.

There really isn't ambiguity unless you try to force it, and you won't win the argument, just make an unpleasant gaming experience.

EDIT:

For those interested, they sell this terrain for home use. It's laser-cut wood and comes in packs that are pre-arranged to match a tournament setup. Including the mat it's relatively inexpensive. The terrain itself is actually decent quality, it's that laser cut wood and has some weight to it. In a general sense it's good to play with terrain that is approved for tournament use. That way you have a good frame of reference for understanding the majority of balance discussions, and can increase or decrease your terrain level as you see fit from there. It would make the discussion easier, too, if you have genuine ideas about terrain vs balance. For example, "I added two L-shaped buildings to the bog-standard setup and it really improved XXX".