5th ed was a mech-meta rules edition, and I predict that 6th ed will be even moreso. This is because the new mech lists are roughly the same as the old ones, while foot lists got much worse. Because mech lists got relatively better compared to the alternatives, we'll be seeing more of them.

Foot lists have gone from being roughly equal to mech lists to being only borderline viable, for lots of reasons, but the main one is cover. Foot lists rely a lot on cover, which just got a lot worse:

- Cover now only applies to models, not to units. This means that you literally have to have something between whoever is getting shot and whoever is doing the shooting.

- Even if you mostly do this, your opponent can now use focus fire to pick out the models that don't have a cover save.

- Cover is now only 5+, not that it matters if you're not getting a save in the first place.

All this means that you're going to be taking a lot more casualties in those critical first couple of turns. This is doubly true given that Ap is actually going to matter somewhat now. Plus, in order to use cover properly, you're now going to have to bunch up more (now that some of the models can no longer give cover to the rest), which will make you much more vulnerable to blast and template weapons.

And then, of course, 6th ed crucified assault-based armies. Some units can still be good in assault (like certain HQ's and retinues), but assault based armies like power blobs and slugga tides are comprehensively finished. As basically everyone who wanted to play an assault army played a foot army, and assault armies are done, it necessarily will make foot lists in general much rarer.

Shooty foot lists obviously aren't so poorly off, but they're now going to be spending most of their time as a static gunline hiding in cover (especially since you can now buy them cover), which is bad given all the new objectives missions we got.

What about mech lists? Yes, transports got easier to kill, but it's still not bad relative to foot lists. The main reason for this is cover. While foot lists can now get dismantled piecemeal, if a transport is in cover 100% of the unit is in cover, defying the bane of foot lists. Moreover, you now only need 25% obstruction in order to gain a cover save, which means that while foot lists are now struggling to get cover, mech lists just got a boost here. Also, I'd note that because things like bolters and heavy bolters just got a fair bit better, the fact that transports makes the guys inside immune to small arms fire, actually matters. Even for marines, now that Ap will be sometimes used.

Moreover, you've got to look at mech killing power. While transports just got a little glassier, they also just got a little hammerier. Mech lists have always relied on delivering a strong alpha strike, and heavy weapons just got better across the board. Furthermore, while you can now be glanced to death, you no longer suffer ill effects from glances. You now no longer need to worry about shaken or stunned results stopping your firepower. This means that you're more likely to kill those things that threaten the vehicles, improving their survivability. While foot lists just lost, mech lists both lost and gained.

And then you have to take into consideration all that stuff that made mech lists popular in the first place. Mech lists are still cheaper to build, and faster to play, and still dovetail best with the way tournaments alter 40k. As go tournament lists, as go the masses. Also importantly, if you're a mech commander, you don't have to learn anything new, or play your list in any way different to the way you were playing it before. It's still the same army, it just got a little more extreme in its strengths and weaknesses.

Meanwhile, many foot commanders are going to have to seriously rework how they play, and adapt to being made weaker over all. Static foot gunlines haven't been all that particularly powerful since the eclipse of 3rd ed by 4th, but they're now what dedicated foot commanders are going to have to figure out how to work with. Likely, we're going to see a lot of foot commanders go back to the hybrid lists of 4th ed, wherein there was a foot component more from a desire to not have to spend points on transports than anything else.

As such, 6th ed is going to be mechier than 5th. All hail the new mech.

I see the point, what with sniping and the like also possible, but to me 6th does seem to be the age of the terminator. 2+ armour is king. If you have 10 terminators then snipe who you want the other 9 will still get you.

On mech I think that rhinos and razorbacks die too easily now as a couple of glances and they're dead when they could live through a mass of glances under 5th. Flyers though do seem to be very strong at present, although how/where flak ammo for missiles comes in can change that.

Exciting times though after the staleness of late 5th edition.

I dont think this is true. Infantry lists are likely to have alot of meat, e.g guard and orks so snipe away, theres plenty more fodder where that came from!

Basically Mech lists were all whatever anyone took in 5th editions and now mech lists are weaker(no more eldar holofield spam or razor spam lists) its forced people to diversify their lists and balanced out the entire game.

No longer do I fear facing 3 vindicators or practically unkillable eldar grav tanks thanks to being able to glance things to death.

Flyer spam lists will be the tough ones to face(ive already seen necron lists rocking around with 9 flyers...) so get hooked up with your aegis defence lines as things are going airbourne!

If you're relying on Rhinos to stay alive for the entire game, you're doing something wrong. Rhinos are meant to take Tac Squads midfield and drop them off. Granted yes, there are advanced tactics such as mobile terrain and such, but you're expecting a bit too much for 35 points.

Overall I think vehicles got hurt in some places, such as CC survivability and Plasma cannons, but got better in others, such as being able to fire weapons as snap fire and the new cover save rules(my guard can finally be a meat shield for my tanks as they have always dreamed of).

I'm not as worried about power weapons getting nerfed as everyone else is. Monstrous Creatures, plasma, melta, las cannons, and any other ap 1/2 weapon that an army can get a lot of is just as good as it was.

But then again, I'm biased.

ruminator wrote:I see the point, what with sniping and the like also possible, but to me 6th does seem to be the age of the terminator. 2+ armour is king. If you have 10 terminators then snipe who you want the other 9 will still get you.

So, just as small, durable, expensive, elite infantry units can still do close combat, so they will probably be good in other areas I'd agree. Not everyone can field mass terminators, of course.

ruminator wrote:On mech I think that rhinos and razorbacks die too easily now as a couple of glances and they're dead when they could live through a mass of glances under 5th.

They couldn't be killed by glances, but now you don't need to worry about shaken and stunned results. Now your vehicle is much more likely shooting every turn until it dies, rather than spending some amount of time stunned or weapons getting picked off before it dies.

Deathbysoup wrote:I dont think this is true. Infantry lists are likely to have alot of meat, e.g guard and orks so snipe away, theres plenty more fodder where that came from!

Infantry gain no more meat than they had before, while now being much easier to carve up.

AresX8 wrote:If you're relying on Rhinos to stay alive for the entire game, you're doing something wrong.

I suppose perhaps this new edition will cause sloppy mech players to learn to play mech better.

Will probably still be more mech players, though.

Ailaro, that was a well thought out post. Perhaps my experiences with 6th edition games have been different.

Ailaros wrote:6th ed crucified assault-based armies. Some units can still be good in assault (like certain HQ's and retinues), but assault based armies like power blobs and slugga tides are comprehensively finished.

I have gotten my ass handed to me in the past 2 games of 6th ed by assault based armies. I think as you play more, your going to find the same thing. Assault is not dead in 6th. Different yes, but not dead.

You are correct that infantry based assault armies are less effective. On the other hand, fast moving assault armies are more effective. This includes jump pack troops, calvary, beasts, and FMCs. These units can still usually get into assault on turn 2. (12" move, d6" run, 12" move, 2d6" assault)

After this first wave has hit, you can use slower assault armies to support them -- they will hit a turn or two later.

Ailaros wrote:While foot lists can now get dismantled piecemeal,

I think your not giving enough credit to the effect 50 man units have on a situation. 10 marines shooting bolters at 24" at a IG blob will kill ~4.5 guard a turn. That means, without any return fire, they will kill that blob off in 1.5 games.

Everything counts in large amounts. This same applies to boots on the table. The same thing applies to 180 orks on the table -- they are a major pain to dislodge.

I've only gotten a couple of games in so far for 6th, but I have to say that it seems that Mech got significantly better.

The new glancing rules mean that more of my tanks are going to be able to fire a turn then before. So far, since I've been able to put down threats faster, my tanks have ended up living longer then they normally would.

labmouse42 wrote: fast moving assault armies are more effective. This includes jump pack troops, calvary, beasts, and FMCs. These units can still usually get into assault on turn 2. (12" move, d6" run, 12" move, 2d6" assault). Assault is not dead in 6th. Different yes, but not dead.

Fair enough. 6th ed looks like it's biased towards "elitehammer", as in, it disproportionately buffs strong individual models and strong low-model count unit, while penalizing throngs of goobers.

labmouse42 wrote:I think your not giving enough credit to the effect 50 man units have on a situation. 10 marines shooting bolters at 24" at a IG blob will kill ~4.5 guard a turn. That means, without any return fire, they will kill that blob off in 1.5 games.

A 50-man guard blob, with no upgrades whatsoever, costs just shy of 300 points. It's not exactly fair to compare to a tac squad. More importantly, assuming that all 10 of them have boltguns for some reason, they're killing 9 guardsmen a turn, not 4.5. There's no way you're giving an entire 50-man unit cover (or really even a majority), and you can always focus fire to make sure that Ap5 actually sticks. Plus, the marines can still get into close combat, pick out the commissar, and sweep those guys they didn't kill with bolters.

And this is just small arms. Lootas now just became VERY scary to guardsmen, as have heavy bolters and lots of other shooting stuff.

Haw haw.

Now all your vehicles can be blown up by glancing hits too.

/thumbs nose at all the other armies

Ailaros wrote: There's no way you're giving an entire 50-man unit cover (or really even a majority),

Aegis Defense Line. Add Uriah Jacobus for FNP for the Blob.

Plus, the marines can still get into close combat, pick out the commissar, and sweep those guys they didn't kill with bolters.

Challenges don't work like that and you still have LOS. You can feed them sargents (you have 5) before they ever get to kill a Commissar by challenge. Precision strikes get alleviated by LOS as well.

The new assault rules on vehilces make a lot of difference though.

Hitting Dreadnaughts on WS with grenades has made walkers all but unuseable.

Hitting Skimmers on 3+ is going to kill them.

Rhinos and Razorbacks are not much worse off though.

try lilling 20 sisters of battle lead from the front by the Saint. Add Jacobus for FNP and it is very easy to walk across the board.

Add in the fact 6th is all about objectives and vehicles can do sqaut to them...= infantry based edition.

Also meltas got way better at killing tanks and hand to hand is death to vehicles. Tank hunter fliers are also a pain. And 2+ saves are the name of the game now!

Yeah, a guard blob can dismantle a vehicle easily with Straken nearby. S4 glances kill quick.

Straken and Uriah are a disgusting combo in a IG foot guard army.

pretre wrote:

Ailaros wrote: There's no way you're giving an entire 50-man unit cover (or really even a majority),

Aegis Defense Line. Add Uriah Jacobus for FNP for the Blob.

Fitting 50 dudes in a single aegis?

I hate to exaggerate, but...



That's 25 models under a single template. Frag missiles hitting 9 models per shot will also make me sad.

pretre wrote:

Plus, the marines can still get into close combat, pick out the commissar, and sweep those guys they didn't kill with bolters.

Challenges don't work like that and you still have LOS. You can feed them sargents (you have 5) before they ever get to kill a Commissar by challenge. Precision strikes get alleviated by LOS as well.

You don't need challenges. Precision strike, new wound allocation, and compulsory character movement will be good enough.

Exergy wrote:The new assault rules on vehilces make a lot of difference though.

Dreads, granted, are much worse, but everything else...

Ailaros wrote:, they're killing 9 guardsmen a turn, not 4.5.

Remember, I said 24" away. 10 shots. 2/3 hit, 2/3 kill, so 4/9 chance of killing per shot. Less if the squad has a MG or seargent with a CCW and BP. A bit more if you have a LC.

You were probably thinking of 12" away.

Remember, the guard blob also packs 5 PGs and 5 ACs. If you have cast divination on the blob, and FRFSRF on the blob, you can expect to clear out those 10 MEQ pretty quickly.
I tried the SW rune priest / blob last weekend and it put out a ton of firepower. Even after being assaulted by 12 furious charging scarabs, they still managed to kill all the scarabs. (divinations base power lets you reroll 'to hits' in assault as well) Sure the blob was 500 points, but it took nearly all my enemies focused fire/assault all game to stop it.

When he assaulted me with a lord, i just fed him a seargent, then made him break from losing the assault due to me killing 3 scarab bases.

Ailaros wrote:Lootas now just became VERY scary to guardsmen, as have heavy bolters and lots of other shooting stuff.

Lootas overall got a lot better. They also now can move and snap fire half as good as they used to. Heavy bolters are no longer 'completely useless'.

Inquisitor_Dunn wrote:
Also meltas got way better at killing tanks

Meltas got not better at killing tanks. If you need to use the hull points you are doing something wrong. Meltas will destroy a vehilce on 4+ with a pen. Same as last edition. Same chance to pen, same chance to destroy. If somehow they glanced(really low roll or over half range) they use to be able to destroy 16% of the time. Now they can only remove a hull point. Seems they got worse

Ailaros wrote:Fitting 50 dudes in a single aegis?

You don't have to be IN it. You have to have it between you and the enemy.

pretre wrote:You don't need challenges. Precision strike, new wound allocation, and compulsory character movement will be good enough.

Umm. Even with compulsary character movement and precision strike, you still have LOS and you still have 40 other guys.

I mean, don't let me break up the pity parade, but foot guard got better not worse.

Aegis defense lines can give lots of dudes cover. heck, even LRBTs get cover from them(yea 25% obscurement for a 4+ cover save)

Grey Templar wrote:Aegis defense lines can give lots of dudes cover. heck, even LRBTs get cover from them(yea 25% obscurement for a 4+ cover save)

Yeah and they are something like 20-30" long, so you can literally just set it up in front of your deployment zone and give pretty much your whole army a 4+ cover save.

Grey Templar wrote:Aegis defense lines can give lots of dudes cover. heck, even LRBTs get cover from them(yea 25% obscurement for a 4+ cover save)

5+ isn't it? Or do vehicles benefit from terrain types as well?

Chenkov could be put to use in blobs I suppose.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:Aegis defense lines can give lots of dudes cover. heck, even LRBTs get cover from them(yea 25% obscurement for a 4+ cover save)

5+ isn't it? Or do vehicles benefit from terrain types as well?

Yep, vehicles benefit from terrain types.

if there's a bastion on the table and you are 25% obscured by it, you get a 3+. More commonly, ruins are 4+. There's even an example with a vehicle getting 4+ from a ruin in the book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Decio wrote:Chenkov could be put to use in blobs I suppose.

Umm Chenkov is a PCS. he can't be part of a blob.

Call me crazy, but Purifiers got a HUGE boost in 6th. Why? 4 Incinerators in a 10 man unit as well as their Soul fire shenanigans. Because Psykers are now harder to stop, you are more likely to get that power off, which can be done after you are assaulted. Which means you get to Overwatch (Flamer templates give d3 hits, and you have 4), you get your psychic attack and THEN blows are struck. The Purifiers could HALVE the size of a unit that assaults them before having to do combat. So, while most combat got worse, Purifiers seem to have been boosted to crazy levels.

pretre wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:Aegis defense lines can give lots of dudes cover. heck, even LRBTs get cover from them(yea 25% obscurement for a 4+ cover save)

5+ isn't it? Or do vehicles benefit from terrain types as well?

Yep, vehicles benefit from terrain types.

if there's a bastion on the table and you are 25% obscured by it, you get a 3+. More commonly, ruins are 4+. There's even an example with a vehicle getting 4+ from a ruin in the book.

Wow, as much as I like 6th ed, I have to admit that that's a bit silly.
It should be 50% to get complete cover.

Wait what? Psykers are harder to stop?
They seem easier to stop than before. Back then you got no defense.
Now you have defense.

Happygrunt wrote:Call me crazy, but Purifiers got a HUGE boost in 6th. Why? 4 Incinerators in a 10 man unit as well as their Soul fire shenanigans. Because Psykers are now harder to stop, you are more likely to get that power off, which can be done after you are assaulted. Which means you get to Overwatch (Flamer templates give d3 hits, and you have 4), you get your psychic attack and THEN blows are struck. The Purifiers could HALVE the size of a unit that assaults them before having to do combat. So, while most combat got worse, Purifiers seem to have been boosted to crazy levels.

How many Purifier squads take 4 Incinerators?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Wow, as much as I like 6th ed, I have to admit that that's a bit silly.
It should be 50% to get complete cover.

Why? They threw vehicles a bone after the drubbing they took from hull points. MCs got 25% cover rule as well.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, who in their right mind would assault a purifier squad with a big squad if they have 4 incinerators? You assault them with something else first and they OW it, then you assault with your big squad.

pretre wrote:I mean, don't let me break up the pity parade, but foot guard got better not worse.

You are kidding, right?

What makes foot guard better? The boys are dying A LOT faster then before (new cover). They have the same firepower. They will have bigger problems with CC (it is way easier to kill a commissar than it was in 5th edition). What makes foot guard better? Enlighten me...

Alright, good point with the 25% cover needed to offset the HP. Not as silly now.

Well, infantry can now fire and move heavy weapons and RF weapons to their full effect (with a Snap shot penalty for the heavy weapons), granting a greater deal of mobility.
A bunch of orks coming towards you 24" away? Move back and hose them with lasfire. Also an excuse to give everyone autocannon platforms and whatever.

pretre wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:Call me crazy, but Purifiers got a HUGE boost in 6th. Why? 4 Incinerators in a 10 man unit as well as their Soul fire shenanigans. Because Psykers are now harder to stop, you are more likely to get that power off, which can be done after you are assaulted. Which means you get to Overwatch (Flamer templates give d3 hits, and you have 4), you get your psychic attack and THEN blows are struck. The Purifiers could HALVE the size of a unit that assaults them before having to do combat. So, while most combat got worse, Purifiers seem to have been boosted to crazy levels.

How many Purifier squads take 4 Incinerators?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, who in their right mind would assault a purifier squad with a big squad if they have 4 incinerators? You assault them with something else first and they OW it, then you assault with your big squad.

Mine will.

I know a lot of people at my local store would. And it might not be perfect, but the thought of 10 men halving the size of a unit before blows are struck is just too good to pass up.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Decio wrote:Chenkov could be put to use in blobs I suppose.

pretre wrote:Umm Chenkov is a PCS. he can't be part of a blob.

Well, if you were using conscripts it would work. But there wouldn't be any
special weapons. Oh well. Or Sergeants. Calling in the next wave would ensure
limitless meatshield reinforcements. Especially if you have multiple platoons.

Think about it: Get 50 conscripts and send out in front and follow with the Infantry Squad blobs.
Repeat multiple times. Use call in the next wave to support blobs if they haven't died yet.
Use Heavy Weapons to take down armored threats.

Overall, the way I see it concerning MECH lists, the heavy tanks got easier to kill, with the lighter, transport vehicles becoming a bit more sturdy and harder to kill. Reason is that in 5th, someone could glance a Chimera and then destroy it if they rolled high enough with the right weapon, but now that you need to glance a Chimera 3x times now just to destroy it, it makes it a lot more worth its points. Heavy Tanks that where hard to kill now can be glanced to death, meaning that Land Raiders and ohter 14 armor vehicles are not as scary as they used to be. Its going to take some time to get used to but overall I like the new changes to the Vehicle damage chart.

As for running a MECH list, the IG is still one of the armies that can run one of the most effective MECH lists, as Chimeras got better survivability, making them very good weapon platforms and even better, great protection for your infantry inside of them. The only other armies I have seen run an effective MECH ist at this time are Space Marines (obviously(, as Razorbacks and Rhinos are still good choices for there points, and Dark Eldar are still a very nasty and can run one of the is not the best MECH list in 40k.

MECH lists are still very effective, the only thing they have to be aware of is Necrons, as they are the ultimate Anti-Mech list with there Gauss weapons.

Some static foot gun lines got a major boost, namely long fangs, in 6th ed.

I think transports got hosed. Its not the fact that transports got easier to destroy, its all of the penalties that got trumped up on the passengers.

You cant score while in one. Starting on turn five, you will be fighting on foot.

Transport got wrecked? No assaults for you.

Transport got stunned/shaken? No shooting for you even if you get out. And no assaults.

Transport got both? Now you dont have a ride, cant shoot or assault.

I think russes got better. I think most gun platform vehicles broke even, barely.

I think ork nob bikers are very scary now.

Necrons laugh at all mech armies.

Just some ramblings. I will make a more in depth response when I get home tonight.

Nids now laught at armour (for once in our existance). Between high strength troops (with AG), being able to hit on 3+ in CC, Rending and MCs and FMCs the hive guard is no longer a must have (Keep an eye out for the new flavor of the Codex, the Tervifex).

Flyers are a bit diffrent, but we still have ways of killing them (not as many as most, but we have them). If it wasn't for the changes to Outflank and Infiltrate it would be the Golden Age of the Tyranid.

Gloomfang wrote:Nids now laught at armour (for once in our existance). Between high strength troops (with AG), being able to hit on 3+ in CC, Rending and MCs and FMCs the hive guard is no longer a must have (Keep an eye out for the new flavor of the Codex, the Tervifex).

Flyers are a bit diffrent, but we still have ways of killing them (not as many as most, but we have them). If it wasn't for the changes to Outflank and Infiltrate it would be the Golden Age of the Tyranid.

Well, you do have harpies, which I guess could work.
What's its loadout? Heavy venom cannon? Or is that a blast weapon?

Lothar wrote:

pretre wrote:I mean, don't let me break up the pity parade, but foot guard got better not worse.

You are kidding, right?

What makes foot guard better? The boys are dying A LOT faster then before (new cover). They have the same firepower. They will have bigger problems with CC (it is way easier to kill a commissar than it was in 5th edition). What makes foot guard better? Enlighten me...

Snap Fire, Rapid Fire, Look Out Sir, Power Weapon options for Higher Strength, Glances kill vehicles faster with HP, Vehicle can't contest objectives, Allies who can give blobs fearless and FNP, etc so on.

Worse cover is only one part of the deal.

imweasel wrote:Some static foot gun lines got a major boost, namely long fangs, in 6th ed.

I think transports got hosed. Its not the fact that transports got easier to destroy, its all of the penalties that got trumped up on the passengers.

You cant score while in one. Starting on turn five, you will be fighting on foot.

Transport got wrecked? No assaults for you.

Transport got stunned/shaken? No shooting for you even if you get out. And no assaults.

Transport got both? Now you dont have a ride, cant shoot or assault.

I think russes got better. I think most gun platform vehicles broke even, barely.

I think ork nob bikers are very scary now.

Necrons laugh at all mech armies.

Just some ramblings. I will make a more in depth response when I get home tonight.

Agree with you about MECH armies having to watch out for Necrons, however I disagree with you that ALL transports got worse. Guard Chimeras got a lot better in this edition, as now they have a chance to actually get a few turns of extra movement and shooting, plus in the case of IG, if they get in assult they are dead anyways so I am perfectly fine of staying in my Chimera until the final turn to jump out and steal my opponents objective. Granted Im sure some armies arent as effective as they used to be MECH-wise, but some armies (Dark Eldar and IG in particular) can still run effective MECH lists.

Also on a side note, foot IG can still be really good, especially with the Orders they can give to there troops Creed just got a whole lot scarier this edtion, as his orders and his range with Krell make foot IG armies just nasty.

labmouse42 wrote:You were probably thinking of 12" away.

ah, oops.

labmouse42 wrote:Remember, the guard blob also packs 5 PGs and 5 ACs. If you have cast divination on the blob, and FRFSRF on the blob, you can expect to clear out those 10 MEQ pretty quickly.

Now you're comparing at LEAST 530 points of guard against 170 points of space marines. Hardly seems fair.

pretre wrote:Yeah and they are something like 20-30" long, so you can literally just set it up in front of your deployment zone and give pretty much your whole army a 4+ cover save.

But aegises giving your entire army cover help foot and mech lists equally. Actually, it's slightly in favor of mech as they have a smaller footprint, which means you can set up the aegis in more of a U-shape.

pretre wrote:I mean, don't let me break up the pity parade, but foot guard got better not worse. Snap Fire, Rapid Fire, Look Out Sir, Power Weapon options for Higher Strength, Glances kill vehicles faster with HP, Vehicle can't contest objectives, Allies who can give blobs fearless and FNP, etc so on.

Worse cover is only one part of the deal.

It is only part of the deal. Here's the comprehensive reasons foot guard are done.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Well, infantry can now fire and move heavy weapons and RF weapons to their full effect (with a Snap shot penalty for the heavy weapons), granting a greater deal of mobility.

The problem, of course, is that it's snap fire. Heavy weapons excel in the beginning of the game, which means you're not going to want to waste that valuable time snap firing when you could just fire regularly to better effect. Snap firing may be more useful later on as targets become scarcer, but that still requires the squad to survive that long, which is now a more difficult feat to achieve.

imweasel wrote:You cant score while in one.

This is probably the one real disadvantage that mech lists, but you'll have to forgive me if I think it's one that's deserved. Scoring from inside transports never seemed all that fair.

Another thing I'd like to note is that mech lists, at least for guard, just got better against assault.

Think about it. You shoot at the guys who are assaulting. Then you shoot overwatch when they assault your transport. Then you shoot them again. Then you overwatch them AGAIN when they assault the guys inside. If you're talking about plasma vets in a chimera, this is a ludicrous amount of firepower levied against assaulters.

If they were Grey Knights the cost would go up and even out.

Cost-effectiveness, hmm..

The +2 for AP1 (melta, broadsides railguns, reaver heat lances) make a big difference to low armour T3 GEQ armies in transports, because those S4 hits are going to hurt badly.

The people who say that melta finishes off transports in 6ed on a 4+ pen just like in 5ed clearly do not field GEQ armies. That significantly increased chance of an Explode result makes a very big difference to some of us.

I find it a bit unbelievable that it took until page 2 before someone brought up scoring units.

Vehicles can't even contest anymore, that is SO HUGE. And 5/6 of the book missions are objective based.

Yes the shooting phase got more violent (for tanks as well as infantry). But the assault phase got more forgiving for most infantry, and utterly crippled tanks.

And to top it all off all the points you spend on tanks... completely useless for grabbing objectives.

I do think MSU shooting/mech armies are still good (with a number of buffs and nerfs). But saying that infantry armies are dead is a massive overstatement.

Ailaros wrote:But aegises giving your entire army cover help foot and mech lists equally. Actually, it's slightly in favor of mech as they have a smaller footprint, which means you can set up the aegis in more of a U-shape.

Except it is easier to hide infantry behind the aegis and infantry can g2g for a 2+ cover behind an aegis and then get ordered to get back in the fight.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Well, you do have harpies, which I guess could work.
What's its loadout? Heavy venom cannon? Or is that a blast weapon?

FMCs do not have skyfire for some stupid reason. And both of the harpy's main guns at blast weapons (HVC and SC). Stinger salvo is thing that can hit a flyer on it and it is S5 without Skyfire. Oh and on a harpy Vector Strike is a S5 as well and can't even glance AV12.

We do have more psykers then you can shake a stick at and if you come at us with Mech we will OM you to death. I dropped an entire Valk squadrion the turn it came into play with OM. Nids now LOVE squadrons.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:Vehicles can't even contest anymore, that is SO HUGE. And 5/6 of the book missions are objective based.

But it doesn't matter until the end of the game. The relative advantage of mech lists turns 1-6 more than outweigh the problem of having to get someone out at the last minute to contest something.

That's the whole point of mech lists, really. You kill off everything seriously threatening of your opponents by turn 3. This just became a much easier feat to accomplish.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But the assault phase got more forgiving for most infantry, and utterly crippled tanks.

What? Assault got more forgiving? Where is this coming from?

As for tanks, they were already terrible against strong units at close ranges. This hasn't changed all that much. "Crippled" implied that they were good and now they're not.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote: But saying that infantry armies are dead is a massive overstatement.

So, I'll repeat again why power blobs are dead, but things in there aren't exclusive to power blobs. In the case of a slugga green tide, they now have to deal with fleet no longer allowing you to assault, random assault ranges, no hidden klaw, better rapid fire, no +I from furious charge, and overwatch. And that's including cover getting worse, and wound allocation killing you out of assault range, as well as things in the linked article.

Shooty foot lists don't suffer from several of these problems, but now we're talking about a static foot gunline, which is a pretty weak place to start from.

Gloomfang wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Well, you do have harpies, which I guess could work.
What's its loadout? Heavy venom cannon? Or is that a blast weapon?

FMCs do not have skyfire for some stupid reason. And both of the harpy's main guns at blast weapons (HVC and SC). Stinger salvo is thing that can hit a flyer on it and it is S5 without Skyfire. Oh and on a harpy Vector Strike is a S5 as well and can't even glance AV12.

We do have more psykers then you can shake a stick at and if you come at us with Mech we will OM you to death. I dropped an entire Valk squadrion the turn it came into play with OM. Nids now LOVE squadrons.

Are you sure? I don't have my book with me to check, but I'm sure swooping FMC can get skyfire.
Sucks that their only decent weapons can't even hit flyers at all though.

So far, I care to disagree with the OP. I usually play meched guard. In 6th edition, my 3/4 sides of AV10 on the chimeras mean bolters can take them out with three 6's. I decided that it is time to run infantry guard. The list that I have been playing ended up being more of a hybrid list. 2 blobs, 2 CCS, 2 Lord Commissars, 2 vet squads in chimeras, 3 vendettas, PBS in chimera, and a hydra. All of my vehicles got glanced to death right off of the bat. To me it seems that the foot elements improved to the point where they were more effective than my vehicles. To me it seems that the key to 6th edition is mobility, I for one will be putting my investments into bikers for the marines and fliers to the guard. I don't plan on running mech lists any more. Just my .02

pretre wrote:Snap Fire, Rapid Fire, Look Out Sir, Power Weapon options for Higher Strength, Glances kill vehicles faster with HP, Vehicle can't contest objectives, Allies who can give blobs fearless and FNP, etc so on.Worse cover is only one part of the deal.

Look out sir? Oh, you are kidding again. My question was, why are the blobs better? Look out sir is much worse for character survival then in 5th edition, where your characters and all other models had in fact automatic look out. Look out sir is nothing what makes blobs better.

Power weapons with higher STR? Agree with this. Axes are better then sword for guard.

Rapid fire? Not for power blob. Power blob is trying to get to the enemy, into CC. Power blob is using Move, move, move! order, it is not firing very often (I only fired with power blob if some vehicle was close enough for meltas, because meltas could have been in front of the blob, which is not possible now). On the other hand, Gunline blob is sitting somewhere (probably around victory point) and not moving. You could fire its rapid fire the same way as in 5th edition. No particular bonus here.

Glances kill vehicles faster? This is not generaly true. It is true when it comes to vehicles with good AV. Vehicles with poor AV (Rhinos) or poor AV and open topped (vypers, scout sentinels, dark eldar stuff) survive more than before and are more killier - no stunned or shaken results on glance hit, no imobilization, no weapon destroyed. More of this, transports can now flat out if they want. All of them. That means they can be 50% faster if they want to (12" in 5th edition, 18" in 6th edition).

Vehicles cant contest? Agree with this. Especially when playing against eldar and invulnerable holo Falcon.

Allies can give blob fearless and FNP? Fearless was not necessary in 5th edition. You had commissars with stubborn and reroll morale. FNP is nice bonus, but this 5+ save will not make it for 4+ cover we have lost. Yes, I had 4+ cover almost all the time back in 5th edition. Now, I usually dont have ANY cover save and sometimes 5+ cover save. Only Static blob behind Aegis can have its 4+. But it costs you. And the characters from allies also costs you. You are paying alot point for those bonuses and they are not as good as the bonuses which blob had in 5th edition (cover and wound allocation).

I played power blobs (and sometimes shooty blobs) in 5th edition all the time. They are a LOT worse now. You should try a few games with them and I am certain you will think this also. Try a power blob list with power axes and Jacob and you will see it is not so strong as power blob with power swords and commissar in 5th edition...not to mention you can upgrade only one blob with that Jacob fella.

Re: your article.
Cover is now harder to get.
You're actually wrong in this part. If you're shooting between models in another unit, you get cover for the unit behind.

Cover saves are avoidable.
Sure.

Cover is now worse.
You're wrong again here. Defense Lines and Ruins both give 4+. Defense lines give a 2+ G2G. Area terrain gives +2 G2G.

Wound allocation is different.
Sure, you can still hide your guys in the middle of 40 other guys.

Sniper weapons and characters get precise shot.
And you got LOS. They got a 15% chance to get precise shot, which then has to wound and then you get a 50% chance to avoid it.

You have to bunch up
This is just wrong. You don't have to bunch up to avoid precise or wound allocation, you just have to arrange models so your Comm and Sgts aren't hanging out in the wind.

Overwatch.
This works both ways. 50 guys with lasguns can actually do some damage.

Random assault ranges.
Same for everyone. Since we don't have fleet, it averages out to a better charge for guard.

Challenges.
You can give them whoever you want to take the challenge or just pull them out of combat and decline.

Wound allocation... again.
If you have 40 guys who can die, chances are they are closest and die first. Plus you can LOS still.

Precise strike.
Still LOS.

Power weapons just got worse.
And better. Bonus Strength for someone who strikes last anyways? time to model Power Axes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lothar wrote:Rapid fire? Not for power blob. Power blob is trying to get to the enemy, into CC. Power blob is using Move, move, move! order, it is not firing very often (I only fired with power blob if some vehicle was close enough for meltas, because meltas could have been in front of the blob, which is not possible now). On the other hand, Gunline blob is sitting somewhere (probably around victory point) and not moving. You could fire its rapid fire the same way as in 5th edition. No particular bonus here.

Instead of running now, you can move 6 and fire to full effect at full range. That's a big deal.

Glances kill vehicles faster? This is not generaly true. It is true when it comes to vehicles with good AV. Vehicles with poor AV (Rhinos) or poor AV and open topped (vypers, scout sentinels, dark eldar stuff) survive more then before and are more killier - no stunned or shaken results on glance hit, no imobilization, no weapon destroyed. More of this, transports can now flat out if they want. All of them. That means they can be 50% faster if they want to (12" in 5th edition, 18" in 6th edition).

This is just wrong. Hull Points are a nerf to vehicle survivability.

Allies can give blob fearless and FNP? Fearless was not necessary in 5th edition. You had commissars with stubborn and reroll morale. FNP is nice bonus, but this 5+ save will not make it for 4+ cover we have lost. Yes, I had 4+ cover almost all the time back in 5th edition. Now, I usually dont have ANY cover save and sometimes 5+ cover save. Only Static blob behind Aegis can have its 4+. But it costs you. And the characters from allies also costs you. You are paying alot point for those bonuses and they are not as good as the bonuses which blob had in 5th edition (cover and wound allocation).

If you put the aegis on the halfway point of the board, that's a lot of cover for your movement. 90 points for either fearless or FNP isn't a lot. Add in a sisters squad for 140 points and you got better.

I played power blobs (and sometimes shooty blobs) in 5th edition all the time. They are a LOT worse now. You should try a few games with them and I am certain you will things this also. Try a power blob list with power axes and Jacob and you will see it is not so strong as power blob with power swords and commissar in 5th edition...not to mention you can upgrade only one blob with that Jacob fella.

Jacob gives +1 Att, FNP and rerolls on the charge. That's a pretty good deal.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Are you sure? I don't have my book with me to check, but I'm sure swooping FMC can get skyfire.
Sucks that their only decent weapons can't even hit flyers at all though.

Positive. Over at the Hive it was one of the things we went "This can't be right, can it?"

Right now antiflyer for Nids are:

1) MCs with TL Devourers. 6 S6 hits with rerolls is about as good as it gets for Codex shooting.

2) Hive guard with PE. Small chance of hitting, good chance of Pening.

3) Pyskers: Spamming OM is not as hard as it sounds. On TK there are only 5 powers most can roll. Standard Nid list (Not even a Spam list) has about 6-9 Psykers with between 12-18 Powers. If we go all TK that is 2-4 OMs. If we want to spam them we can get over 30 Powers and get 5-6.

4) Gun Emplacements: Yes we can use the Quad-gun AND Icaruss LC and manually fire them. People misread our FAQ and the rulebook. Can't manually fire Emplaced Weapons folks, not Gun Emplacements. Read the rules. (Pet Peeve)

5) Flying HT vector strike: Not bad. Dakka Flyrant now real common. 1 Vector Strike followed by TL Devourer to the rear armour.

Mech isn't king in 6th. Heck flyers aren't even king. There is just to much stuff to counter everything else now. I guess that is balance.

Ailaros wrote:
Foot lists have gone from being roughly equal to mech lists to being only borderline viable, for lots of reasons, but the main one is cover. Foot lists rely a lot on cover, which just got a lot worse:

- Cover now only applies to models, not to units. This means that you literally have to have something between whoever is getting shot and whoever is doing the shooting.

- Even if you mostly do this, your opponent can now use focus fire to pick out the models that don't have a cover save.

- Cover is now only 5+, not that it matters if you're not getting a save in the first place.

You can now bring lots of cover placed by yourself for only 50pts. It even gives a boost to gone-to-ground. Also, have you actually played any 6th ed games? In my experience cover did not really get that much worse, especially because of the aegis line. For MC's and vehicles, cover is easier to get than before, a big boost to static firepower vehicles like artillery, but not that great for parking lots.

Ailaros wrote:
And then, of course, 6th ed crucified assault-based armies. Some units can still be good in assault (like certain HQ's and retinues), but assault based armies like power blobs and slugga tides are comprehensively finished. As basically everyone who wanted to play an assault army played a foot army, and assault armies are done, it necessarily will make foot lists in general much rarer.

Shooty foot lists obviously aren't so poorly off, but they're now going to be spending most of their time as a static gunline hiding in cover (especially since you can now buy them cover), which is bad given all the new objectives missions we got.

Offensive assault has gotten generally worse for many units, but neither orks or guard have to rely on offensive assault from unsuited units. Shoota boys are now much better than before because of fearless changes, powerblobs got better because of S4 power weapons, allies, IC changes, transfering special rules and new spells. You will generally also be able to hold 2-3 objectives in your own zone, so defensive infantry works fine.

Ailaros wrote:
What about mech lists? Yes, transports got easier to kill, but it's still not bad relative to foot lists. The main reason for this is cover. While foot lists can now get dismantled piecemeal, if a transport is in cover 100% of the unit is in cover, defying the bane of foot lists. Moreover, you now only need 25% obstruction in order to gain a cover save, which means that while foot lists are now struggling to get cover, mech lists just got a boost here. Also, I'd note that because things like bolters and heavy bolters just got a fair bit better, the fact that transports makes the guys inside immune to small arms fire, actually matters. Even for marines, now that Ap will be sometimes used.

Moreover, you've got to look at mech killing power. While transports just got a little glassier, they also just got a little hammerier. Mech lists have always relied on delivering a strong alpha strike, and heavy weapons just got better across the board. Furthermore, while you can now be glanced to death, you no longer suffer ill effects from glances. You now no longer need to worry about shaken or stunned results stopping your firepower. This means that you're more likely to kill those things that threaten the vehicles, improving their survivability. While foot lists just lost, mech lists both lost and gained.

Parking lots are doomed to full strength blasts, doom rays, and insane vulnerablity to close combat. Necrons pretty much shut down 5th ed mech lists by themselves. Vehicles are still usable, but not in the same way as in 5th.

Ailaros wrote:
Meanwhile, many foot commanders are going to have to seriously rework how they play, and adapt to being made weaker over all. Static foot gunlines haven't been all that particularly powerful since the eclipse of 3rd ed by 4th, but they're now what dedicated foot commanders are going to have to figure out how to work with. Likely, we're going to see a lot of foot commanders go back to the hybrid lists of 4th ed, wherein there was a foot component more from a desire to not have to spend points on transports than anything else.

Everyone is going to have to adapt. Saying that the changes to cover = death of everything but mech is silly. Play some games, the cover changes aren't really that groundbreaking, other changes like flyers, allies and psychic powers have a much bigger impact on play from my 6th ed experience (which is with non-mech lists).

pretre wrote:Cover is now harder to get.
You're actually wrong in this part. If you're shooting between models in another unit, you get cover for the unit behind.

But now the unit doesn't get cover, only the models do. That means that shots taken from oblique angles are now much, much more likely to have at least a couple models out of cover every time they shoot (rather than the roughly 0).

pretre wrote:You're wrong again here. Defense Lines and Ruins both give 4+. Defense lines give a 2+ G2G. Area terrain gives +2 G2G.

And then you're neither moving nor shooting. It does ameliorate some of the problems of holding objectives, but not all of them, and in the meantime you've got to make the squad worthless.

pretre wrote:Wound allocation is different.
Sure, you can still hide your guys in the middle of 40 other guys.

Not against barrage weapons. Or against anything with precise shot (I don't get where this idea that characters will always be out of LOS is coming from).

It also still has the problem of getting your stuff killed out of assault.

And it also comes with new problems against deepstrikers.

This is still a very serious issue. One that only effects foot lists.

pretre wrote: you just have to arrange models so your Comm and Sgts aren't hanging out in the wind.

That's to stop them getting picked out (which it, strictly speaking, doesn't), but there are still several other things that cause bunching.

Once again, something that mech lists don't care about anymore than they did before.

pretre wrote:If you have 40 guys who can die, chances are they are closest and die first. Plus you can LOS still.

Precise strike.
Still LOS.

I don't get what you're talking about here, honestly. Characters are obliged to run forward as fast as they can. Meanwhile, it's not terribly difficult to see an enemy character with your own.

Furthermore, the other 40 guys aren't proper abblative wounds. As characters need to rush forward, they're going to be in the front row after a round or two of combat. Plus, you're not going to be able to have an entire 40-dude squad literally in base to base contact. You will only be able to keep the characters safe until the rest of the front row is gone, which, against small units, won't be very many.

pretre wrote:Power weapons just got worse.
And better. Bonus Strength for someone who strikes last anyways? time to model Power Axes.

Power axes can't kill something with a power fist before it gets to strike. Power axes are a consolation prize stuck on a now otherwise worthless unit.

pretre wrote:If you put the aegis on the halfway point of the board, that's a lot of cover for your movement. 90 points for either fearless or FNP isn't a lot. Add in a sisters squad for 140 points and you got better.

Vehicles hide behind aegis lines just as well as infantry. Except better, because you have more flexibility with the aegis.

pretre wrote:Jacob gives +1 Att, FNP and rerolls on the charge. That's a pretty good deal.

Which means you can take exactly one power blob, and it still suffers from all the other problems that make blobs non-viable.

Ailaros wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:Vehicles can't even contest anymore, that is SO HUGE. And 5/6 of the book missions are objective based.

But it doesn't matter until the end of the game. The relative advantage of mech lists turns 1-6 more than outweigh the problem of having to get someone out at the last minute to contest something.

That's the whole point of mech lists, really. You kill off everything seriously threatening of your opponents by turn 3. This just became a much easier feat to accomplish.

Foot army offense starts on Turn 1 now. The extra range, lack of ubiquitous cover, and hull points means many kinds of foot troops are doing damage immediately.

Mech army offense doesn't effectively start until you get out of your vehicles. Transports are not even faster at delivering shooting troops anymore, as shooting troops can walk just as far as a vehicle moves if they want to shoot in the same turn.

How is moving 18" in one turn not faster than a foot army?

DarknessEternal wrote:Mech army offense doesn't effectively start until you get out of your vehicles.

What?

Last I checked, leafblower guard was good because of the amount of long-range up-front damage it could dish out, and were never encumbered by the vets inside needing to get out to be effective. Likewise, razorspam was all about up-front damage. Most razor players I saw never voluntarily disembarked.

That they now have to on turn 5 is going to make little difference in how people play mech lists.

Ailaros wrote:But now the unit doesn't get cover, only the models do. That means that shots taken from oblique angles are now much, much more likely to have at least a couple models out of cover every time they shoot (rather than the roughly 0).

Sure, but cover is still easy to get.

And then you're neither moving nor shooting. It does ameliorate some of the problems of holding objectives, but not all of them, and in the meantime you've got to make the squad worthless.

You can set your defense line up at the halfway mark of the board and get cover as long as your opponent is between you and him. Not to mention ruins and all those other things are out on the board.

Not against barrage weapons. Or against anything with precise shot (I don't get where this idea that characters will always be out of LOS is coming from).

Not Line of Sight. Look out Sir! Put your important guys in the middle of the squad. Magic.

I don't get what you're talking about here, honestly. Characters are obliged to run forward as fast as they can. Meanwhile, it's not terribly difficult to see an enemy character with your own.

Look Out Sir!

Furthermore, the other 40 guys aren't proper abblative wounds. As characters need to rush forward, they're going to be in the front row after a round or two of combat. Plus, you're not going to be able to have an entire 40-dude squad literally in base to base contact. You will only be able to keep the characters safe until the rest of the front row is gone, which, against small units, won't be very many.

The characters have to move to be in base if they can. If they c an't make it, they just try. If there's 20 guys already surrounding the opponent, they don't displace those guys to get into base.

Power axes can't kill something with a power fist before it gets to strike. Power axes are a consolation prize stuck on a now otherwise worthless unit.

Except higher strength and AP2 are both a bonus. I'm not sweating PF on my blobs.

Vehicles hide behind aegis lines just as well as infantry. Except better, because you have more flexibility with the aegis.

Vehicles can't G2G for a 2+ cover save.

pretre wrote:Jacob gives +1 Att, FNP and rerolls on the charge. That's a pretty good deal.

Which means you can take exactly one power blob, and it still suffers from all the other problems that make blobs non-viable.

You can take more power blobs, just that one is better than the rest. Kyrinov gives out 6" fearless if you want somethign to help everyone.

Ailaros wrote:
This is probably the one real disadvantage that mech lists, but you'll have to forgive me if I think it's one that's deserved. Scoring from inside transports never seemed all that fair.

Another thing I'd like to note is that mech lists, at least for guard, just got better against assault.

Think about it. You shoot at the guys who are assaulting. Then you shoot overwatch when they assault your transport. Then you shoot them again. Then you overwatch them AGAIN when they assault the guys inside. If you're talking about plasma vets in a chimera, this is a ludicrous amount of firepower levied against assaulters.

Precisely. I had a game versus a Nid player. Tyrant assaults chimera, eats a wound the overwatching Melta Vets. He pops the vehicle, and in the following turn assaults the contents. He fails his charge distance, but eats another wound from overwatch. The next assault phase he eats another wound from overwatch, but manages to successfully assault. After splatting a few vets, he was killed by a handful of krak grenades. 155 pts of Melta Vets roflpwned 240ish points of Hive Tyrant. It probably would have been even more one sided had they been plasma vets.

Ailaros wrote:

pretre wrote:

Ailaros wrote: There's no way you're giving an entire 50-man unit cover (or really even a majority),

Aegis Defense Line. Add Uriah Jacobus for FNP for the Blob.

Fitting 50 dudes in a single aegis?

I hate to exaggerate, but...

While trying to hide a 50-man blob behind an Aegis Line would be problematic (actually suicidal, evidenced by the above photo!), I have so far had a lot of success hiding static x4 heavy weapons teams behind it with Creed's CCS (and either Kell or a Lord Commissar to give ld10 orders hiding behind a Quad Gun). They are not too bunched up. That's 30 models. Anymore than that then they could be quite easily templated to death.
While you are right that having an entire army as a static gunline like this would make objective grabbing extremely difficult, I have found that combining the above with a few infantry squads and some Vets in Chimeras make up for the static gunline part of the army camping behind the Aegis. These guys can grab objectives while that Gunline behind the Aegis can dish out the long-range firepower and Leman Russ's can support the advancing Chimeras.
So I don't think footlists are completely dead. Infact, with the Aegis Defence Line and the fact that lascannons and autocannons are now better and more effective than ever (ap2 +1 and glancing to death vehicles) i'd say that heavy weapons squads got better IF (and this is vital) they are combined with some mobility and mechanised elements.

If anything I think hybrid lists will be more common place. Why? Because pure footlists have been nerfed so heavily. This I think will cause a lot of ex-footlist players who don't want to sell their souls to pure mech-lists will go hybrid instead.

ThatguyovertherePrecisely wrote:. I had a game versus a Nid player. Tyrant assaults chimera, eats a wound the overwatching Melta Vets. He pops the vehicle, and in the following turn assaults the contents. He fails his charge distance, but eats another wound from overwatch. The next assault phase he eats another wound from overwatch, but manages to successfully assault. After splatting a few vets, he was killed by a handful of krak grenades. 155 pts of Melta Vets roflpwned 240ish points of Hive Tyrant. It probably would have been even more one sided had they been plasma vets.

1) The Nid player should have know better and killed it with shooting before assaulting. Then he could have assaulted the turn it popped.

2) Failing that charge roll is very hard to belive if the unit was in the chimera. Worse case you would have had to move, then run to get way from him. Then he would have had to move and roll less on 2D6 then you rolled on 1D6. I would not count on that happening often.

3) Anyone who assults meltabomb vets with an MC is not that good a player. That is what gaunts are for and they have just as good a chance to pop the Chimera now (assuming AG and at least 10 guants) as the Tyrant.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:Aegis defense lines can give lots of dudes cover. heck, even LRBTs get cover from them(yea 25% obscurement for a 4+ cover save)

5+ isn't it? Or do vehicles benefit from terrain types as well?

Vehicles have always gotten the same cover save as the Terrain type giving them the cover save, it was that way in 5th and its that way in 6th.

Only difference is now you only need to be 25% obscured to get the cover save instead of 50%


Aegis defense lines give a 4+ cover save.

Generic Area Terrain gives 5+, but Ruins and such give 4+. Fortifications give a 3+ cover.

If a Tank is hiding behind/in an Ironbark Forest it will have a 3+ cover save.

Gloomfang wrote:[
1) The Nid player should have know better and killed it with shooting before assaulting. Then he could have assaulted the turn it popped.

2) Failing that charge roll is very hard to belive if the unit was in the chimera. Worse case you would have had to move, then run to get way from him. Then he would have had to move and roll less on 2D6 then you rolled on 1D6. I would not count on that happening often.

3) Anyone who assults meltabomb vets with an MC is not that good a player. That is what gaunts are for and they have just as good a chance to pop the Chimera now (assuming AG and at least 10 guants) as the Tyrant.

1) He was attempting to pop all the chimeras as fast as possible so that the vet squads would be out in the open. His Tryant's shooting for that turn was directed at another Chimera, which he successfully popped.

2) He moved his Tyrant further away from the squad, in an attempt to get side shots at another chimera, which he also successfully popped along with shots from a Dakkafex and a Pod.

3) They weren't Meltabomb vets, they just had standard krak grenades.



I didn't mean to make him out to be a bad player, his actions made more sense when not considered in a vacuum.

How was he assaulting units different from what he shot at?

pretre wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Fitting 50 dudes in a single aegis?

You don't have to be IN it. You have to have it between you and the enemy.

I've been playing it as line of sight. So a flyer can see over it as long as the figure is not tucked right up against the wall. And, from personal experience, you can't get all 50 guardsmen including 5 autocannon bases tucked right up against the wall. And if you do, you are subject to blast and flamer templates, as Ailaros said. Doesn't mean I don't think the 50 man is viable, because I do, but you have to be realistic about the shortcomings.

pretre wrote:

You don't need challenges. Precision strike, new wound allocation, and compulsory character movement will be good enough.

Umm. Even with compulsary character movement and precision strike, you still have LOS and you still have 40 other guys.

I mean, don't let me break up the pity parade, but foot guard got better not worse.

I think that for foot guard to be viable you need allies. Ailaros doesn't want to use them, or at least to be forced to use them. I want to use allies, and since I do my foot guard list seems quite strong. However, to be fair, I am using them as a gunline, not an assault unit that moves across the board. I never liked that strategy in the first place, so I don't miss it. And I agree that trying to use guard infantry as an assault unit is far harder in 6th.

bb

So the Footguard behind the Aegis are vulnerable to Flamers and Blast weapons(but only blasts that are Barrage)

What else is new?

beerbeard wrote:I've been playing it as line of sight. So a flyer can see over it as long as the figure is not tucked right up against the wall. And, from personal experience, you can't get all 50 guardsmen including 5 autocannon bases tucked right up against the wall. And if you do, you are subject to blast and flamer templates, as Ailaros said. Doesn't mean I don't think the 50 man is viable, because I do, but you have to be realistic about the shortcomings.

Yes, a flyer or elevated target can see over it, of course.

Ailaros wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:Vehicles can't even contest anymore, that is SO HUGE. And 5/6 of the book missions are objective based.

But it doesn't matter until the end of the game. The relative advantage of mech lists turns 1-6 more than outweigh the problem of having to get someone out at the last minute to contest something.

That's the whole point of mech lists, really. You kill off everything seriously threatening of your opponents by turn 3. This just became a much easier feat to accomplish.

Games are won/lost in the last turn. I can have three models left and literally killed nothing. If I'm in the right spot and you're not, I win.

And tabling from shooting is easier, I'm not ready yet to say it's easy. And an army that is tooled up to do such a thing is going to be weak in their own troops. So if I can snipe their troops out, and play evasive and hide with mine, they are going to have a very hard time winning. Such a list needs to table all the time do well. Yes it's possible, but it won't happen often enough to succeed in most tournament formats.

And we haven't even taken into account how much shooting people are going to waste trying to hit MCs and flyers. Just because fire out put goes up doesn't neccesarily mean shooting casualties go up.

Ailaros wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But the assault phase got more forgiving for most infantry, and utterly crippled tanks.

What? Assault got more forgiving? Where is this coming from?

As for tanks, they were already terrible against strong units at close ranges. This hasn't changed all that much. "Crippled" implied that they were good and now they're not.

Nerf to power weapons protects models in 2+ armor.
LOS protects characters.
Buff to ID nerfs fists.
Removal of fearless wounds saves umpteen models every assault phase.
Now that you can't escort units off the table, if I get away from an assault I can regroup right away instead of running off the table.
If I'm in assault with something I can't hurt I can try and run away.
Random charges means there is a reasonable chance I won't actually die in assault because they'll miss their needed distance.
No first turn assaults, no assaults off reserves.

I'm not saying assault got better, far from it. I'm saying quite a few less models are going to die in the assault phase.

Except for tanks, which will die from a sharp glare. And that was not the case before. If I moved over 6, there was only a slim change anything short of scarabs or an MC with a lot of attacks was going to bring me down. That was all the more powerful when I could zoom 12" blow smoke to screen me in shooting and know that I have a 90%+ chance of surviing the assault phase to contest a quarter or objective.

Now a tac squad charging, on the math, will wreck a rhino/chimera no matter how far it moved. That is VERY different than it was before.

Ailaros wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote: But saying that infantry armies are dead is a massive overstatement.

So, I'll repeat again why power blobs are dead, but things in there aren't exclusive to power blobs. In the case of a slugga green tide, they now have to deal with fleet no longer allowing you to assault, random assault ranges, no hidden klaw, better rapid fire, no +I from furious charge, and overwatch. And that's including cover getting worse, and wound allocation killing you out of assault range, as well as things in the linked article.

Shooty foot lists don't suffer from several of these problems, but now we're talking about a static foot gunline, which is a pretty weak place to start from.

I think assault blobs aren't as good as they used to be (though not dead). Shooty blobs are mean now IMO. If you ally a rune priest with divination, and forget the commisars. Who wants to be stubborn? I want to run away, auto regroup and shoot you all over again. Plus FRFSR out to 24" all the time adds up.

And your power klaws can still be hidden, with smart deployment/movement. You just need to be concious of it now. It's not a given that you need to take 30 wounds before the klaw gets hit.

It sounds like a lot of the shifts you are takling about come from assault nerfs and shooting buffs. I agree assaulting in general took a serious blow. That is independent of infantry vs tanks. Infantry stil have plenty of advantages, and tanks got their own helping of disadvantages to offset the increased fire out put.

I think you're making a big deal out of something that is generally too early to really see. Further, you're making a lot of assumptions about mech lists and I don't think you have much experience playing them (as in running the list). You're missing several key disadvantages.

The entire point of the transports was that my scoring troops could not be shot or assaulted until the transport was destroyed. Every single objective I ever claimed was claimed by a squad either inside a transport, or a squad whose transport was destroyed. Now, I have to weather 2 turns (on average) of shooting and assaults if I want to claim an objective. Going from 0 turns of being shot at to 2 is a big difference. Sure, the transport can block some LOS, but since transports go down easier this is less reliable than you think.

Now, vehicles can't contest on the last turn of the game. Know how many games this came up in? Every close game. This was a huge boost, being able to shove something 12-18" inches on the last turn and deny your opponent those key points.

Vehicles have it much worse in assault than they used to. Getting hit easier and getting your rear armor smacked is a bad combination - now everything with rear armor 10 can be glanced to death by S4 marines... gaunts... orks... etc. This wasn't even possible before, and now you scrap an av 10 vehicle for every 18 attacks (on average, I'm away from books right now so my math may be off). Know any vehicles with av 10 rear armor? Maybe not 'crippled', but it makes a difference.

Necrons. The fact that you didn't even acknowledge their destructive power against mech brings your perspective in question. Any day of the week a Necron player would rather see a mech list than foot spam, and considering they're the FotM (a concept you seem to hate so much) this is not a point to be ignored.

Try a few games and see before you preach the end of the world.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:Games are won/lost in the last turn. I can have three models left and literally killed nothing. If I'm in the right spot and you're not, I win.

Certainly, but you can't ignore the entire rest of the game up until the last movement phase.

For most of the game, you're able to play your mech list in the exact same way that you were playing it before. There's now just one small change at the very end (assuming the transports survived that long, which was never certain, even in 5th).

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:Now a tac squad charging, on the math, will wreck a rhino/chimera no matter how far it moved. That is VERY different than it was before.

But let's be real here. The transport is going to get shot at by autocannons turns 1-3, and it's then going to be shot at by plasma turns 1-3 and by melta turns 2-3. If, by some miracle, a tac squad has a living transport in range, then it's still attacking rear armor, just like before. There is just one variable that has changed (the odds of hitting), while everything else is basically the exact same as before. And it's mostly moot given that transports will likely be killed in the shooting phase before close combat ever hits.

And the guys inside get to overwatch when the transport is assaulted.

Plus, multi-assaulting got a lot worse, so you don't need to worry about that as much as well.

Transports were always weak against assault in those relatively rare times you'd have to bother with it. Tac squads charging chimeras doesn't seem like such a dire threat that it will push people into taking foot lists.

Ricter wrote:The entire point of the transports was that my scoring troops could not be shot or assaulted until the transport was destroyed.

The point of transports has always been to focus your killing power better than foot lists. That it gave some durability was largely canceled by the fragility of the transports themselves, and the fact that you had to take fewer infantry models to bring them.

Ricter wrote:Every single objective I ever claimed was claimed by a squad either inside a transport, or a squad whose transport was destroyed. Now, I have to weather 2 turns (on average) of shooting and assaults if I want to claim an objective.

In this case, mech lists are brought down to the level that foot lists were and still are operating at. Even if things were worse than before in this regard, they're not now worse than foot lists.

Ricter wrote:Necrons

That's a single army. A single army, which, I would note, can also do some very, very ugly things to foot lists.

Also, to tackle the cries of "look out, sir!". That's only on a 4+ for non-independent characters. 4+ is not the same as hidden. Not by a long shot.

Thatguyoverthere wrote:
1) He was attempting to pop all the chimeras as fast as possible so that the vet squads would be out in the open. His Tryant's shooting for that turn was directed at another Chimera, which he successfully popped.
2) He moved his Tyrant further away from the squad, in an attempt to get side shots at another chimera, which he also successfully popped along with shots from a Dakkafex and a Pod.
3) They weren't Meltabomb vets, they just had standard krak grenades.

I didn't mean to make him out to be a bad player, his actions made more sense when not considered in a vacuum.

Uhmmm 1 and 2 are both against the rules. You can only charge at the unit you shoot. So he made 2 illicit shooting/charge attempts. Also if he wanted to pop chimeras then he should have been doing that and not messing around with the troops inside. And if he was doing it RAW then he would have oppened up with the guns before charging and probably taken out a lot of the unit before he charged. Would have lived too.

3) My mistake. I read meltavets as meltabombs.

And finally your point about how mech is much better includes at least 3 transports getting blown up in 2 turns?

Regardless of the legality of this particular, the trend is still true. Mech lists were already powerful because they guaranteed a couple of rounds of shooting against assault.

Now they still have that exactly the same as before, except now they also get a couple of overwatches thrown in for free.

2 shots out the hatch aren't going to make or break your assault when you have 50 guys.

Commissar-based blob guard is dead, sure. Commissars are just too fleshy, and sargents die too fast in CC.
I envisage 30-man blobs to act as buffers/roadblocks, supported by SWS/PCSs with special weapons

at 1500pts something like:

CCS - lascannon, plasma *2, MOTF - 130

PCS - melta*4 - 70
Infantry+lascannon*3 - 210
SWS melta*3 - 65
Platoon total - 345

PCS - melta*4 - 70
Infantry+lascannon*3 - 210
SWS melta*3 - 65
SWS melta*3 - 65
Platoon total - 345

PCS - melta*4 - 70
Infantry+lascannon*3 - 210
SWS melta*3 - 65
Platoon total - 345

Ogryns*6 - 270

10 lascannons, 24 melta guns, 2 lascannons and 144 wounds
The blobs hold the line and wreck stuff with lascannons, while the SWSs do some damage.
And the ogryns run up to the first thing that's stupid enough to charge you and bash them on the head until they die

pretre wrote:2 shots out the hatch aren't going to make or break your assault when you have 50 guys.

No, but the point here is that they're not substantially worse than they were before, and they're not worse than foot lists here.

Though I'd note that a battlewagon full of burnas might make a bit of a dent against a mob.

Ailaros wrote:

pretre wrote:2 shots out the hatch aren't going to make or break your assault when you have 50 guys.

No, but the point here is that they're not substantially worse than they were before, and they're not worse than foot lists here.

Though I'd note that a battlewagon full of burnas might make a bit of a dent against a mob.

If you're seriously thinking of charging a BW full of burnas, you have bigger problems than the overwatch fire.

Ailaros wrote:

labmouse42 wrote:I think your not giving enough credit to the effect 50 man units have on a situation. 10 marines shooting bolters at 24" at a IG blob will kill ~4.5 guard a turn. That means, without any return fire, they will kill that blob off in 1.5 games.

A 50-man guard blob, with no upgrades whatsoever, costs just shy of 300 points. It's not exactly fair to compare to a tac squad. More importantly, assuming that all 10 of them have boltguns for some reason, they're killing 9 guardsmen a turn, not 4.5.

How does that maths work? 10 shots, hitting on 3s, wounding on 3s, no save = 4.444 casualties, not 9.

Mech can do anything foot lists can do but faster and with whatever protection and firepower a low point transport gets you, Eldar excluded (their transports are too expensive and flimsy now). Even at their most expensive, transports don't really take away much in terms of points for the mobility and protection they impart. Whatever frailty you imagine transports have, troops generally still suffer more. Do you honestly believe your tacs or guardsmen would do better walking up the table taking full fire rather than having a AV11-12 vehicle to hide in or even behind? Cover saves are no easier to get for infantry but much easier for vehicles in 5th. And they are mobile cover!

As to HP making AV 11+ more fragile, you need to seriously look at some math. What it did was make dedicated AT shooting more reliable. It also eliminated stunlocking vehicles. AP3, for example, got much worse at eliminating AV13+.

For assaulting, transports may die easy in CC, but the round of firing you get is priceless- they died pretty easy before in CC before and you got no shooting (and got trapped inside easier).

And as to Necrons, their fliers/shooting will demolish foot just as easy, if not easier, than vehicles. At least for armies like IG the vehicles add 3 more S6 shots a piece to bring them down with.

Ailaros wrote:

Ricter wrote:The entire point of the transports was that my scoring troops could not be shot or assaulted until the transport was destroyed.

The point of transports has always been to focus your killing power better than foot lists. That it gave some durability was largely canceled by the fragility of the transports themselves, and the fact that you had to take fewer infantry models to bring them.

Perhaps this was true for other mech armies, but as a mech SM player, referring to what damage tactical squads caused as 'killing power' seems like a pretty good joke. That's what the tanks, skimmers and their ilk were for. Admittedly, I did run termies in land raiders as well, but I ran far more transports for simply moving tactical marines around.

Ailaros wrote:

Ricter wrote:Every single objective I ever claimed was claimed by a squad either inside a transport, or a squad whose transport was destroyed. Now, I have to weather 2 turns (on average) of shooting and assaults if I want to claim an objective.

In this case, mech lists are brought down to the level that foot lists were and still are operating at. Even if things were worse than before in this regard, they're not now worse than foot lists.

Gloomfang wrote:
Uhmmm 1 and 2 are both against the rules. You can only charge at the unit you shoot. So he made 2 illicit shooting/charge attempts. Also if he wanted to pop chimeras then he should have been doing that and not messing around with the troops inside. And if he was doing it RAW then he would have oppened up with the guns before charging and probably taken out a lot of the unit before he charged. Would have lived too.

3) My mistake. I read meltavets as meltabombs.

And finally your point about how mech is much better includes at least 3 transports getting blown up in 2 turns?

Do what now?

I don't have the rule book with me, but I was under the impression that if you destroyed the target that you were shooting at you were free to assault another target. Am I wrong?

I may have missed something when I read over the rules for 6th.

Thatguyoverthere wrote:
Do what now?

I don't have the rule book with me, but I was under the impression that if you destroyed the target that you were shooting at you were free to assault another target. Am I wrong?

I may have missed something when I read over the rules for 6th.

I am assuming that the Chimara was a dedicated transport. The Transport and the unit inside of it are considered one unit if I am not mistaken. I don't have the rule book in front of me either. I will have to check.

Gloomfang wrote:

Thatguyoverthere wrote:
Do what now?

I don't have the rule book with me, but I was under the impression that if you destroyed the target that you were shooting at you were free to assault another target. Am I wrong?

I may have missed something when I read over the rules for 6th.

I am assuming that the Chimara was a dedicated transport. The Transport and the unit inside of it are considered one unit if I am not mistaken. I don't have the rule book in front of me either. I will have to check.

Yeah, you have to charge the occupants of a transport if you blew it up from shooting.

Exergy wrote:The new assault rules on vehilces make a lot of difference though.

Hitting Dreadnaughts on WS with grenades has made walkers all but unuseable.

Hitting Skimmers on 3+ is going to kill them.

Rhinos and Razorbacks are not much worse off though.

Not really true for all walkers. Dreadnaughts have av12 13 is iron clad, with Granada you get 1 attack per model equipped with them, so for 10 marines that's 5 hits, you need a 6 to glance with a Krack grenade against av12 and you can't touch ave 13 so to will likely not do any damage or at the least will go a couple of rounds. Haywire are obviously different but I expect will be nerfed either in a later FAQ or new codex.

Pony_law wrote:

Exergy wrote:The new assault rules on vehilces make a lot of difference though.

Hitting Dreadnaughts on WS with grenades has made walkers all but unuseable.

Hitting Skimmers on 3+ is going to kill them.

Rhinos and Razorbacks are not much worse off though.

Not really true for all walkers. Dreadnaughts have av12 13 is iron clad, with Granada you get 1 attack per model equipped with them, so for 10 marines that's 5 hits, you need a 6 to glance with a Krack grenade against av12 and you can't touch ave 13 so to will likely not do any damage or at the least will go a couple of rounds. Haywire are obviously different but I expect will be nerfed either in a later FAQ or new codex.

Most likely not, as they have been listed in the BRB.
And yeah, haywire grenades are nasty. I lost a monolith to 10 wyches with haywires. It wasn't pretty.

Ricter wrote:Sure, except mech lists are paying points for it.

True, but you also get other stuff for what you're spending the points for.

Ricter wrote:Overwatch out of firing points? You realize if they were on foot, they'd all get to fire, right?

You missed the point, though.

With a foot list, you get a chance to shoot, then you get a chance to overwatch, and then you're stuck in close combat.

With a mech list, you get the chance to shoot, then you get a chance to overwatch, then you get the chance to shoot AGAIN, and then get to overwatch AGAIN. Literally twice as much shooting.

And that's overlooking the fact that in that second turn of shooting, the other stuff in your army can also target that close combat baddie, whereas in the foot list, they wouldn't be able to as they can't shoot into close combat.

Ricter wrote:The CC change is drastic.

Drastic but insignificant. Vehicles were always killed by shooting much more than by assaulting, and that is only going to be more true as the few people who had proper assaulty armies shed them in favor of ones that shoot better.

I mean, the difference between what sniper rifles could do to rhinos in 5th and what they can do in 6th is also drastic, but that doesn't mean that you're going to suddenly start losing droves of rhinos to sniper fire.

It's a classic case of "better" still not actually being "good".

jmurph wrote:Mech can do anything foot lists can do but faster and with whatever protection and firepower a low point transport gets you, Eldar excluded (their transports are too expensive and flimsy now). Even at their most expensive, transports don't really take away much in terms of points for the mobility and protection they impart. Whatever frailty you imagine transports have, troops generally still suffer more. Do you honestly believe your tacs or guardsmen would do better walking up the table taking full fire rather than having a AV11-12 vehicle to hide in or even behind? Cover saves are no easier to get for infantry but much easier for vehicles in 5th. And they are mobile cover!

As to HP making AV 11+ more fragile, you need to seriously look at some math. What it did was make dedicated AT shooting more reliable. It also eliminated stunlocking vehicles. AP3, for example, got much worse at eliminating AV13+.

For assaulting, transports may die easy in CC, but the round of firing you get is priceless- they died pretty easy before in CC before and you got no shooting (and got trapped inside easier).

And as to Necrons, their fliers/shooting will demolish foot just as easy, if not easier, than vehicles. At least for armies like IG the vehicles add 3 more S6 shots a piece to bring them down with.

AV13+ did not get better vs your typical ap3 str8 shooting. It got much worse.

Everyone seems to be forgetting the one most common form of cover that vehicles used, smoke, got extremely nerfed.

I think transport vehicles might work out evenly, if all you are transporting are shooty infantry. And then that can be up yo the dice gods.

Passengers are HEAVILY penalized in 6th.

I think some shooty platforms are going to be ok, namely russes and in particular demolishers.

I'm fairly certain that mech is going to take a step back or two in 6th...

imweasel wrote:AV13+ did not get better vs your typical ap3 str8 shooting. It got much worse.

What? I think this is another hair split, here.

Missile launchers were terrible against heavy vehicles, fishing for 6's against the rare 13's, and only glancing the heavy stuff. Missile launchers are still only doing anything to AV14 on 6's, just like before, except now you don't get the gratitude of being able to knock weapons off or stun or immobilize them. Against AV13, you're now half as likely to cause a vehicle wrecked result with a penetrating hit.

I don't see where the "much worse" comes from.

imweasel wrote:I'm fairly certain that mech is going to take a step back or two in 6th...

... in favor of what?

Ailaros wrote:

imweasel wrote:I'm fairly certain that mech is going to take a step back or two in 6th...

... in favor of what?

Probably more balanced hybrid lists, as is what a lot of people thought to begin with...

But why include inferior foot units? How does diluting a mech list with worse stuff make the list better as a whole?

It doesn't make sense to knee-jerk away from the best option just because it got slightly worse, absolutely speaking, than it was before.

Ailaros wrote:But why include inferior foot units? How does diluting a mech list with worse stuff make the list better as a whole?

Because on foot my Tau Fire Warriors can pump out 12 S5 shots up to an effective range of 36", or 24 shots up to an effective range of 21". In a Devilfish they can fire zero S5 shots.

Does this mean I take zero Devilfish? No, because they provide extra mobility and mobile cover for other units in my army. Does it mean I don't bother loading all of my Fire Warrior teams in them? Yes because that means I can actually use some of that firepower I'm paying the points for whilst also saving 80 points per team which is not riding them to spend on more damaging firepower.

Moving and shooting rapid fire weapons improves the damage of infantry in this ed. A marines effective range is 18" to rapid fire and 30" single shot, instead of 18" rapid OR 24" single 12" rapid. So marines and fire warriors and guard can be alot more mobile and still dish out firepower, but also dish out more firepower as a whole- before, if you deployed 24.000000000001" away from my marines, i would 1) move up 2) you shoot me 3) i get to fire a single shot. Now i get to move up and shoot, cop the return volley and move up and shoot again. I think the humble plasmagun is the best recipient of this buff, with its +1 on the damage chart, new range and high strength low AP to handle the new terminator craze and F/MC's.

Vehicles are... different, its true. I see the shift going away from "i need weapons to break transports" to "i need weapons to break tanks". Transports are softer, but tanks are more deadly, because you can't silence the guns with a glance, and you can't choose which weapon you take off with a destroyed result. So now that Leman russ has a 25% chance of losing its main cannon if it has full sponsons, for example, instead of a 100% chance. Shooty vehicles are more shooty, but on the other hand slightly easier to kill. But they generally come with some of the best weapons a codex can take, so they are still highly valuable.

Ailaros wrote:
What? I think this is another hair split, here.

No need to split hairs. AV13 is much more reliably wrecked without getting lucky with missiles. It's not as easy to prevent it from shooting, but it's much more reliably [i]wrecked[/].

Ailaros wrote:Missile launchers were terrible against heavy vehicles, fishing for 6's against the rare 13's, and only glancing the heavy stuff. Missile launchers are still only doing anything to AV14 on 6's, just like before, except now you don't get the gratitude of being able to knock weapons off or stun or immobilize them. Against AV13, you're now half as likely to cause a vehicle wrecked result with a penetrating hit.

You cannot get a wrecked result, which is what you want, from a penetrating hit. You get explosions which will still allow units to assault. Missiles are astronomically better vs av14 in 6th ed. I no longer need to keep shooting at it in hopes of getting a lucky damage result on top of getting lucky to simply get a glance. Now I just need to get the glances. Assault vehicles won't even save you from this. DE might as well just go all shooty.

Ailaros wrote:I don't see where the "much worse" comes from.

I get results that prevent you from assaulting and hopefully even shooting.

Ailaros wrote:... in favor of what?

More than likely, drop pods mixed with foot slogging gun lines.

Jihallah wrote:Moving and shooting rapid fire weapons improves the damage of infantry in this ed.

But it also improves the damage of guys in transports as well. Not being able to disembark with the transport moving so fast, it certainly is a real relative advantage here, I suppose.

Jihallah wrote:I see the shift going away from "i need weapons to break transports" to "i need weapons to break tanks".

Certainly this is true. Heavier tanks will be fielded more than before, but if the things most likely to back up tanks are transports, there will certainly still be a lot of long-range anti-tank. There might be a shift to things more like lascannons, but those are still good against transports as well. They may cost more, but now you don't need to spend as many points on things to handle the transports.

imweasel wrote:No need to split hairs. AV13 is much more reliably wrecked without getting lucky with missiles. It's not as easy to prevent it from shooting, but it's much more reliably [i]wrecked[/].

Yes, it is easier to wreck heavy tanks, but much harder to do anything else. Stunned results suck to deal with. Now you really rather don't.

imweasel wrote:Missiles are astronomically better vs av14 in 6th ed.

Better, but still not good. Missile launchers are still terrible against AV14, regardless of how much better they may have become.

Ailaros wrote:You missed the point, though.

With a foot list, you get a chance to shoot, then you get a chance to overwatch, and then you're stuck in close combat.

With a mech list, you get the chance to shoot, then you get a chance to overwatch, then you get the chance to shoot AGAIN, and then get to overwatch AGAIN. Literally twice as much shooting.

No I didn't. I brought that up in the very same paragraph, you just cut out the relevant text. See here. Not as verbose as yours, sure, but the same point.

Ricter wrote: I mean, I guess you're technically right, as you can't purchase the ability, but your implication that it's good or important is overblown. The advantage of transports in assault is that it gives the squad an extra shooting phase. Overwatch is overhyped for most units.

Ailaros wrote:Drastic but insignificant. Vehicles were always killed by shooting much more than by assaulting, and that is only going to be more true as the few people who had proper assaulty armies shed them in favor of ones that shoot better.

Insignificant is probably underestimating the potency of this, but you seem to be a fan of extreme categorization so I'll just agree to disagree on this.

How much are you seriously afraid that you're going to get mobbed by tac squads?

Plus, multi-assaulting transport walls just got a lot harder as well, given that you now have to assault primary targets as much as is possible before only then moving on.

Plus, assault-based armies are going to seriously wane, given how much worse assault got.

This really seems a phantom menace here.

Ailaros wrote:
Plus, multi-assaulting transport walls just got a lot harder as well, given that you now have to assault primary targets as much as is possible before only then moving on.

That was 5th edition. In 6th, multi-charging is easier because you DO NOT have to move as much as possible into the primary target.

On a different subject, my experience so far tells me you shoot-overwatch-shoot-overwatch isn't very worrisome. With such an increased charge range, I haven't seen any squads having trouble NOT surrounding a transport on their charge. Surrounded transport = no disembarking, just dead guys.

And lastly, Johnny BadPlayer is going to look at a thread like this and declare infantry impossible and stupid, just like they did in 5th.

On page 28 "a charging model is not permitted to move into base contact with a model in a secondary target, unless it cannot move into base contact with an unengaged model in the primary target". This restriction didn't exist in 5th ed. Back then there was only a restriction on the first model to move into each combat. Now there's a restriction on everybody.

Furthermore, if you are getting longer charge ranges than you were in 5th ed, it's because you're being really lucky. The average charge range is only slightly longer, with nearly a half chance of going shorter. Given that overwatch targets the closest models, you're even less likely to have this go off as planned.

For people who aren't lucky (like me), this is a serious problem.

I agree that people way overblew how bad foot lists were, and those who thought them inconceivable were strange to me. Certainly I'm not saying that it is impossible to win a game with a foot list at all ever, but I am saying that when foot and mech were roughly equal, now mech has a real, clear advantage over foot.

In the world of competitive play, this is going to make foot players, already a rare breed, virtually extinct.

Ailaros wrote:5th ed was a mech-meta rules edition, and I predict that 6th ed will be even moreso. This is because the new mech lists are roughly the same as the old ones, while foot lists got much worse. Because mech lists got relatively better compared to the alternatives, we'll be seeing more of them.

Foot lists have gone from being roughly equal to mech lists to being only borderline viable, for lots of reasons, but the main one is cover. Foot lists rely a lot on cover, which just got a lot worse:

- Cover now only applies to models, not to units. This means that you literally have to have something between whoever is getting shot and whoever is doing the shooting.

- Even if you mostly do this, your opponent can now use focus fire to pick out the models that don't have a cover save.

- Cover is now only 5+, not that it matters if you're not getting a save in the first place.

All this means that you're going to be taking a lot more casualties in those critical first couple of turns. This is doubly true given that Ap is actually going to matter somewhat now. Plus, in order to use cover properly, you're now going to have to bunch up more (now that some of the models can no longer give cover to the rest), which will make you much more vulnerable to blast and template weapons.

And then, of course, 6th ed crucified assault-based armies. Some units can still be good in assault (like certain HQ's and retinues), but assault based armies like power blobs and slugga tides are comprehensively finished. As basically everyone who wanted to play an assault army played a foot army, and assault armies are done, it necessarily will make foot lists in general much rarer.

Shooty foot lists obviously aren't so poorly off, but they're now going to be spending most of their time as a static gunline hiding in cover (especially since you can now buy them cover), which is bad given all the new objectives missions we got.

What about mech lists? Yes, transports got easier to kill, but it's still not bad relative to foot lists. The main reason for this is cover. While foot lists can now get dismantled piecemeal, if a transport is in cover 100% of the unit is in cover, defying the bane of foot lists. Moreover, you now only need 25% obstruction in order to gain a cover save, which means that while foot lists are now struggling to get cover, mech lists just got a boost here. Also, I'd note that because things like bolters and heavy bolters just got a fair bit better, the fact that transports makes the guys inside immune to small arms fire, actually matters. Even for marines, now that Ap will be sometimes used.

Moreover, you've got to look at mech killing power. While transports just got a little glassier, they also just got a little hammerier. Mech lists have always relied on delivering a strong alpha strike, and heavy weapons just got better across the board. Furthermore, while you can now be glanced to death, you no longer suffer ill effects from glances. You now no longer need to worry about shaken or stunned results stopping your firepower. This means that you're more likely to kill those things that threaten the vehicles, improving their survivability. While foot lists just lost, mech lists both lost and gained.

And then you have to take into consideration all that stuff that made mech lists popular in the first place. Mech lists are still cheaper to build, and faster to play, and still dovetail best with the way tournaments alter 40k. As go tournament lists, as go the masses. Also importantly, if you're a mech commander, you don't have to learn anything new, or play your list in any way different to the way you were playing it before. It's still the same army, it just got a little more extreme in its strengths and weaknesses.

Meanwhile, many foot commanders are going to have to seriously rework how they play, and adapt to being made weaker over all. Static foot gunlines haven't been all that particularly powerful since the eclipse of 3rd ed by 4th, but they're now what dedicated foot commanders are going to have to figure out how to work with. Likely, we're going to see a lot of foot commanders go back to the hybrid lists of 4th ed, wherein there was a foot component more from a desire to not have to spend points on transports than anything else.

As such, 6th ed is going to be mechier than 5th. All hail the new mech.

Just from what I've seen so far, must disagree. I've played 6 6th ed games....4 as a secondary attachement to buddies' armies, and 2 with my own allied set up. There has been no game where ANY transport has made it past turn 4, and only 1 where ANY transport or tank or anything mech made it past turn 3 (it was a land raider, vs. Necron Guass....we were all surprised...only 2 6's in like 35-40 shots).

If you have significant str7+ shooting in your army, tanks are made of paper. My rhinos....gone by early game even with popping smoke first turn. The two things that convinced me of this occured in my 2 solo victories

1) Vs. Orks....bottom of turn 2..with 8 ML's and 4 PCs I wrecked 3 killa kans and 1 Ork Truk....that NEVER happens. Killa Kans used to always make it to mid game and usually, late game

2) Vs. Eldar with Eldrad. Dude deployed transport with Eldrar in the skyshield landing pad.....same Long fang set up as above. TURN 1 Took 2 hull points off it first turn with MLs, split fired other ML set...wrecked that + did some other damage to different squad. Cleaned up almost entire squad inside with PC's. Only eldrad was left due to 2+ LOS's.

I think if anything, Meta is going to go deep strike/flyer/long range immobile shooting.

Most effective setups so far that I've seen have been long range hard hitting shooting in back, all troops come in via deep strike/outflank. Yes, you take one round of shooting before you can charge....but better then being stuck at 18" downfield at best outside of your wrecked rhino and maybe pinned.

As time goes on and people have more time/money to do the flier thing..it'll get popular, but honestly...ML with flakk are going to tear that up. JMHO

deggreg@yahoo.com wrote: I've played 6 6th ed games....There has been no game where ANY transport has made it past turn 4

Firstly, 6 isn't exactly a large sample size. In a dice game like 40k, there's a lot of margin for error here.

Secondly, how do you know you would have been better off by fielding a foot list instead? Perhaps that's just as much survivability as you're going to get in 6th ed. Less, but still the best.

Ailaros wrote:Perhaps that's just as much survivability as you're going to get in 6th ed. Less, but still the best.

I'm not 100% convinced that mech is going to dominate 6th, I'll wait for the first couple of 6th ed codexes to come out to really see how that goes. The rush to mech didn't really happen until Chaos got the Lash, there might be something equally game-changing in the next couple of books. Of course, it could be argued that Necrons already fill this role with gauss being what it is but it's possible that Chaos or DA will have something especially effective against lots of low-mid AV vehicles.

Ailsros,

I dont know where you are getting your assertion that foot and mech were equal in 5th and mech is better in 6th.

In 5th, you could score while in a vehicle. You could assault out of your non assault vehicle if you got out before it moved. You could assault after your vehicle was wrecked. You could shoot after you got out of your stunned/shaken vehicle. You could move farther than 6" and disembark. You got 4+ cover saves when popping smoke.

You get none of that now. Do you honestly believe that foot lists got that hosed by simply dropping cover saves from 4+ to 5+? Even when you can bring a substantial amount of 4+/2+ cover for 50pts?

I just dont see the logic in that assertion...

imweasel wrote:
Do you honestly believe that foot lists got that hosed by simply dropping cover saves from 4+ to 5+? Even when you can bring a substantial amount of 4+/2+ cover for 50pts?

I just dont see the logic in that assertion...

You have to open your eyes properly then. The cover saves are rebuild. It is not as simply as "4+ is 5+ now". Read the rules. For an assault blob (shooty with plasmas or power blob), which needs to move and can not sit behind Aegis, you now have hard time to get ANY cover (or armoure save) at all. Do you realize, that from those 30-man unit (casual blob size) every one of the MODELS needs to have cover for the unit to have cover like in 5th edition? Do you realize that without cover every marine will deny your armour save? It is not "from 4+ to 5+". It is more likely "from 4+ to nothing". Infantry on foot will die much more than before. Twice as fast on many (not all) occasions.

Yes, you can buy aegis. But you can not use aegis for non-static blob. And you can not use Aegis for blob based army (Aegis is very long, but with proper spacing, you will not get more then 2 blobs with command squads inside, which is basically nothing for 1850 points foot list). And you have to pay for something you had free back in 5th ed. And you can only take one aegis, which makes smaller, more elite, units better (devastators, long fangs...you can cover every one of them behind aegis without any problems with spacing an the like, even if you spam them).

Guard foot players are going to play hybrid lists, that is quite certain imho. That change can help a lot. I am not saying it is the end of the world. We have to addapt to new rules. But foot units (GEQ) will be weaker than in 5th edition, thats for sure. I am building my new Leman and will probably need more than one, even for 1000 game...

Competitve GEQ hardly ever took foot slogging lists in 5th. While that might not change foe geq, I strongly believe it will change for meq.

Now if you want to start a thread about how 6th is going to be the horus heresy edition, fine.

imweasel wrote:Competitve GEQ hardly ever took foot slogging lists in 5th. While that might not change foe geq, I strongly believe it will change for meq.

Now if you want to start a thread about how 6th is going to be the horus heresy edition, fine.

If you have read first post from Ailaros in this thread, you should have noticed, that he is in fact speaking about guard. He was a power blob player in 5th edition. And quite a competitive one.

imweasel wrote:Competitve GEQ hardly ever took foot slogging lists in 5th.

Which is, arguably, because you'd be unable to finish games within the time limits of tournaments.

Ailaros wrote:How much are you seriously afraid that you're going to get mobbed by tac squads?

Plus, multi-assaulting transport walls just got a lot harder as well, given that you now have to assault primary targets as much as is possible before only then moving on.

Plus, assault-based armies are going to seriously wane, given how much worse assault got.

This really seems a phantom menace here.

It's not just that some squads can now destroy vehicles in assault from the front where they couldn't before. How many units now have the capability to destroy vehicles in assault easier than they did before? Unless your ride is a land raider, you're going down significantly easier, especially in the case of the battle tanks (preds, russes, vinds, etc). Sure, it didn't happen in 5E as much, but that's the whole point - in 5E it was much harder to take down a vehicle in assault. Skimmers and walkers got hit hard by this especially. Now that vehicles don't get overwatch either, they're even more tempting assault targets.

And c'mon now, this coming from the guy preaching about doom for commisars in blobs because of the sniper changes? How many codices even field snipers on a regular basis in competitive play? Eldar, and maybe C:SM? Everyone running marines, orks, necrons and most nids got significantly better against vehicles in the assault phase, and you can see this popping up in games and battle reports. Phantom menance indeed.

It's hard to take you seriously when you make such sweeping generalizations and ignore everything negative as "insignificant" when it suits you but it hype it up when it doesn't.

Ailaros wrote:On page 28 "a charging model is not permitted to move into base contact with a model in a secondary target, unless it cannot move into base contact with an unengaged model in the primary target". This restriction didn't exist in 5th ed. Back then there was only a restriction on the first model to move into each combat. Now there's a restriction on everybody.

You're skipping over that word. Once one of your models had touched the only model in the target unit (since we're talking about multi-charging vehicles), the primary target has all of its models engaged. In 5th you had to keep piling on if you could reach it, now you only have to get one model on it, then you can go anywhere else.

Ailaros wrote:But why include inferior foot units? How does diluting a mech list with worse stuff make the list better as a whole?

It doesn't make sense to knee-jerk away from the best option just because it got slightly worse, absolutely speaking, than it was before.

As I have said a billion times....

Because not everyone wants to play Mech, for various reasons...My reason is and always has been because I don't think mechanised Imperial Guard is in spirit of the fluff and I enjoy playing with infantry platoons alongside tanks, chimeras etc. People have there reasons, and not everyone is WAAC.

As I said, what about those people who had foot lists but don't want to change to a pure mechanised list, so opt to go hyrbid?

Also, I don't think you can prove Mech lists are better than Hybrid lists without more playtesting of both in this edition. It comes across as slightly conceited.

Ailaros wrote:

deggreg@yahoo.com wrote: I've played 6 6th ed games....There has been no game where ANY transport has made it past turn 4

Firstly, 6 isn't exactly a large sample size. In a dice game like 40k, there's a lot of margin for error here.

Secondly, how do you know you would have been better off by fielding a foot list instead? Perhaps that's just as much survivability as you're going to get in 6th ed. Less, but still the best.

true. My point being, even after 6 games I can...with moderate confidence state...that this edition does not heavily favor mech to the point of justifying a thread about it being "king". that's all

Ailaros wrote:

deggreg@yahoo.com wrote: I've played 6 6th ed games....There has been no game where ANY transport has made it past turn 4

Firstly, 6 isn't exactly a large sample size. In a dice game like 40k, there's a lot of margin for error here.

Secondly, how do you know you would have been better off by fielding a foot list instead? Perhaps that's just as much survivability as you're going to get in 6th ed. Less, but still the best.

Ailaros,

How many games of 6th did YOU play before making this thread and proclaiming "mech the king of 6th ed..!" ?

Possibly more than 6 but i highly doubt it's over 20, which is still a pitifully small sample size as well.

FifteenHours wrote:
Because not everyone wants to play Mech, for various reasons...My reason is and always has been because I don't think mechanised Imperial Guard is in spirit of the fluff and I enjoy playing with infantry platoons alongside tanks, chimeras etc. People have there reasons, and not everyone is WAAC.

Not everyone who collects mech guard is WAAC. Some of us barely manage to win at all

tuebor wrote:The rush to mech didn't really happen until Chaos got the Lash, there might be something equally game-changing in the next couple of books.

Certainly. I won't pretend to have a crystal ball, of course, but am making projections based on current information.

I think that people found something strong with mech lists that, for whatever reason, they hadn't noticed before (probably because the current guard codex hadn't come out yet, and marine armies weren't able to razorspam yet). As it is, though, I think something extremely major will have to happen to push people back in the direction of foot lists, given how much the core rules made foot lists relatively worse.

I do agree, though, that if there's going to be a big swing away from mech, it will be because of what happens in the codices over the next few years.

imweasel wrote:I dont know where you are getting your assertion that foot and mech were equal in 5th and mech is better in 6th.

Ugh, I don't want to get in yet ANOTHER 10-page fight over why foot and mech were equal in 5th, given that it's now pointless now that we're in 6th.

5th was an era of mech madness, where people became literally incapable about thinking of the rules that would point to mech being anything but lordly overdominant. You'll just have to trust that they were roughly equal then, as I won't bother now that they are no longer.

Ricter wrote:How many units now have the capability to destroy vehicles in assault easier than they did before?

Fewer, now that frag grenades can't hurt them anymore.

Plus, keep it real here. How often did your opponents mob your transports to destroy them? How often are they now?

Ricter wrote:And c'mon now, this coming from the guy preaching about doom for commisars in blobs because of the sniper changes? How many codices even field snipers on a regular basis in competitive play?

Snipers (and plasma and bolt pistols, etc.) are only ONE of the many reasons that blobs are dead. If you don't think it's the biggest reason, then fine (I don't either). Having one relatively insignificant reason amongst another dozen is still doom. One insignificant reason amongst no other reasons seems like a fabricated problem.

FifteenHours wrote:Because not everyone wants to play Mech, for various reasons...My reason is and always has been because I don't think mechanised Imperial Guard is in spirit of the fluff and I enjoy playing with infantry platoons alongside tanks, chimeras etc.

Sure, and I probably won't start playing mech either, but that's for reasons that have nothing to do with a discussion on a tactics board.

FifteenHours wrote:Also, I don't think you can prove Mech lists are better than Hybrid lists without more playtesting of both in this edition. It comes across as slightly conceited.

tetrisphreak wrote:How many games of 6th did YOU play before making this thread and proclaiming "mech the king of 6th ed..!" ?

Possibly more than 6 but i highly doubt it's over 20, which is still a pitifully small sample size as well.

Relying on tiny data sets to inductively attempt to divine truths when things are already spelled out for you plain as day is foolish. You have a brain. Use it.

Look, its all theory hammer at this point regardless of table time.

So in brief summary, let me see if I got this straight.

For geq, regardless if mech is king or not, they are going to HAVE to mech up, because they simply cannot survive in the 6th ed 'environs'. Those 'environs' being the outrageous amount of heavy weapons that people WILL be taking and the huge downgrade of cover. Plus its harder to disable a vehicle than it is to reliably wreck it, so they can maintain a higher volume of fire easier/longer.

For meq, same regards, may not mech up as before because the downgrade to cover does not mean as much AND they can take pods, etc when combined with the harsh penalties imposed on transport passengers along with the silly amount of teq they can and will take. MEQ foot slogging gun lines with aegis cover and podded/deep strike 'close in' units will probably be the 'norm'.

That an accurate brief summary?

Sure.

A more succinct one is: "Mech lists only got a little worse, while most foot lists got much more worse, so the already very popular mech list will become even more popular".

If mech was king of 5th ed, it will continue (if not moreso) to be the kind of 6th.

Barring, of course, some major, systematic reworking of 6th edition codices, of the magnitude which made mech lists popular in the first place.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Ailaros wrote:On page 28 "a charging model is not permitted to move into base contact with a model in a secondary target, unless it cannot move into base contact with an unengaged model in the primary target". This restriction didn't exist in 5th ed. Back then there was only a restriction on the first model to move into each combat. Now there's a restriction on everybody.

You're skipping over that word. Once one of your models had touched the only model in the target unit (since we're talking about multi-charging vehicles), the primary target has all of its models engaged. In 5th you had to keep piling on if you could reach it, now you only have to get one model on it, then you can go anywhere else.

I guess its' pointless to have a rules debate about 5e, but I never played "you had to keep piling on if you could reach"

The rules just required each model to base if it could, be coherent, et cetera..

Testify wrote:

FifteenHours wrote:
Because not everyone wants to play Mech, for various reasons...My reason is and always has been because I don't think mechanised Imperial Guard is in spirit of the fluff and I enjoy playing with infantry platoons alongside tanks, chimeras etc. People have there reasons, and not everyone is WAAC.

Not everyone who collects mech guard is WAAC. Some of us barely manage to win at all

Which is why I said "for various reasons..." But thanks for pointing that out nonetheless.

Basically, there is little point in discussing it with Ailaros because he seems to be infinitely smarter than all of us and seems to have so much free time he can write endless amounts of blogs on the subject (which I enjoy btw so that WASN'T an insult or anything...I wish I had that much free time to dedicate to the hobby sometimes tbh). It's just a shame it just ends up in comments such as "You have a brain. Use it." . Bit harsh. But I guess at the end of the day I don't take 40k quite as seriously to take the time to write a serious refute.
All the theory and mathhammer may be fun for some (for those who are just far far more intelligent than us mere mortals and/or for those of us who simply don't have the time) but in reality games don't really pan out like a long list of equations. Maybe it's just the alcohol. I dunno.

I've found it quite easy to get my guardsmen in cover, since only 25% of the model needs to be in cover to get cover. Can't see my arm,leg, half torso, ect, I get cover. I've stopped using power blobs and switched to MSU, essentually just dropping the commissars.

Side note, was I the only one to run 21man blobs standard?

FifteenHours wrote:Basically, there is little point in discussing it with Ailaros because he seems to be infinitely smarter than all of us

Induction is useful for when you have to figure out the rules when there are none given (Isaac Newton working out how physics works, for example). In this case, though, it's not very useful, because we have rules given to us... in the rulebook.

I refuse to be goaded into making an argument form authority fallacy. Were I to be arguing that I've played certain games which gives me special knowledge and you're wrong because you've not played as many games as me, then you could chastise me for making myself look superior and using that as the basis of my arguments.

In this case, though, I'm just reasoning things through with the information that we all have in common, which is something anybody can do. It doesn't make sense to take an insulting tone when I'm being more egalitarian.

ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:Side note, was I the only one to run 21man blobs standard?

I did as well.

I love ailaros threads.

As much as there is a sense of bruised egos because the Internet man didn't agree with you, he makes some really good points. These threads I find much more informative and useful than 90% of the threads in tactics, because it really gets a debate going instead of the usual circle jerk and pedestal construction for Internet popular units. I see many tears of rage/frustration at ailaros' arguments... Because he argues back If you disagree! But there's some dumb stuff that gets posted.... And no one cares, some even agree. Sometimes a bunch of scrubs who play via the holy book of the Internet circlejerk in the silly ideas until someone comes along (like ailaros ) and goes "you know it's not like that because of x/y/z?"

I see lots of talking but little thinking. So it's good to see it every now and then on the form of a ailaros thread with lots of pages full of big posts

Ailaros wrote:

Ricter wrote:How many units now have the capability to destroy vehicles in assault easier than they did before?

Fewer, now that frag grenades can't hurt them anymore.

Plus, keep it real here. How often did your opponents mob your transports to destroy them? How often are they now?

"Keep it real" and you're talking about frag grenades, killing vehicles? And you think that's more significant than getting to attack rear armor?

Ailaros wrote:

Ricter wrote:And c'mon now, this coming from the guy preaching about doom for commisars in blobs because of the sniper changes? How many codices even field snipers on a regular basis in competitive play?

Snipers (and plasma and bolt pistols, etc.) are only ONE of the many reasons that blobs are dead. If you don't think it's the biggest reason, then fine (I don't either). Having one relatively insignificant reason amongst another dozen is still doom. One insignificant reason amongst no other reasons seems like a fabricated problem.

Relying on tiny data sets to inductively attempt to divine truths when things are already spelled out for you plain as day is foolish. You have a brain. Use it.

Of course, you're the only one that's allowed to bring up "insignificant" points and they only matter when they support you. And no data is obviously better than some data, and everyone who doesn't agree with you isn't using their brain.

Ailaros wrote:In this case, though, I'm just reasoning things through with the information that we all have in common, which is something anybody can do. It doesn't make sense to take an insulting tone when I'm being more egalitarian.

Except so far you've gotten several rules wrong, and judging from your dodging of the questions you've not actually played any 6E. So, you're theory-hammering from a top of your high horse in a conceited manner with no experience and a flawed perspective of the rules. You consistently dismiss every counterpoint to yours as insignificant, but everything you bring up is somehow a big deal. You may want to look up the word egalitarian, because you are coming across as someone who came here to preach, not discuss.

Anyways, this seems more like ego-stroking than anything else at this point. Enjoy it, if that's what you're into - if that aspect changes, some useful discourse may actually occur.

R-r-rage!

Cursed insomnia. If I wasn't in bed on my phone I'd write more

Ailaros wrote:Sure.

A more succinct one is: "Mech lists only got a little worse, while most foot lists got much more worse, so the already very popular mech list will become even more popular".

If mech was king of 5th ed, it will continue (if not moreso) to be the kind of 6th.

Barring, of course, some major, systematic reworking of 6th edition codices, of the magnitude which made mech lists popular in the first place.

But mech isnt the king that it was in 5th ed due to all of the penalties that are imposed on passengers. Those penalties are quite severe...

::sigh::

So many incorrect conclusions drawn from incorrect or limited information. Play some games, the blob is not dead by a long shot and infantry heavy armies are going to be even nastier in 6th than they were in 5th (where they were plenty nasty).

Everyone take a deep breath, step back, and go play some actual games.

I get the point about deduction, certain truths can be reasoned out as long as the rules are know. The thing is, the more complicated the truth, the less likely one is taking into account and correctly weighting all factors involved. This is why a lot of people, myself included, value in game experience when evaluating units and builds. We miss stuff in our theoryhammer, and while a few games can't prove us absolutely right or wrong, a few games can show if ideas are extremely off-base.

Transports were certainly nerfed, as discussed above, but it seems vehicles as a whole are certainly better off.

Cover saves everywhere (albeit 5+), harder to stunlock, et cetera.

Randomized weapon destroyed is a boon to vindicators for sure.

I think the heavy slot as a whole got better.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hulksmash wrote:::sigh::

So many incorrect conclusions drawn from incorrect or limited information. Play some games, the blob is not dead by a long shot and infantry heavy armies are going to be even nastier in 6th than they were in 5th (where they were plenty nasty).

Everyone take a deep breath, step back, and go play some actual games.

Pretty much this.

Biophysical wrote:I get the point about deduction, certain truths can be reasoned out as long as the rules are know. The thing is, the more complicated the truth, the less likely one is taking into account and correctly weighting all factors involved. This is why a lot of people, myself included, value in game experience when evaluating units and builds. We miss stuff in our theoryhammer, and while a few games can't prove us absolutely right or wrong, a few games can show if ideas are extremely off-base.

Certainly. I myself have gained minor corrections and increased nuance over time playing games.

To say, though, that the only way to know anything is to go out and play is as silly as it is wrong. Reading the rules and deducing their meaning is much better than playing a few games and hoping that your subjective experiences will give you objective truth.

... which is strange. It feels like every time I make a big thread like this, it eventually devolves to the point where I have to defend objectivity itself. Perhaps that's the point where I should just stop bothering. If you try and discuss things abstractly with someone who doesn't believe in obejctivity, the end result is always incommensurability. Why say something if it's not going to be heard?

Ailaros wrote:

Biophysical wrote:I get the point about deduction, certain truths can be reasoned out as long as the rules are know. The thing is, the more complicated the truth, the less likely one is taking into account and correctly weighting all factors involved. This is why a lot of people, myself included, value in game experience when evaluating units and builds. We miss stuff in our theoryhammer, and while a few games can't prove us absolutely right or wrong, a few games can show if ideas are extremely off-base.

Certainly. I myself have gained minor corrections and increased nuance over time playing games.

To say, though, that the only way to know anything is to go out and play is as silly as it is wrong. Reading the rules and deducing their meaning is much better than playing a few games and hoping that your subjective experiences will give you objective truth.

... which is strange. It feels like every time I make a big thread like this, it eventually devolves to the point where I have to defend objectivity itself. Perhaps that's the point where I should just stop bothering. If you try and discuss things abstractly with someone who doesn't believe in obejctivity, the end result is always incommensurability. Why say something if it's not going to be heard?

I've always wondered why someone who doesn't like discussing "theory hammer" would bother posting on a thread like this at all.

Seem super off topic to complain about epistemology on a thread about tactics.


Anyway, the parts of the thread that are on topic have been great. Thanks.

It's best to just ignore people who make posts like "well it's all luck what's the point in doing maths lol".
Having said that, I posted a MSU guard infantry list that seems to have been ignored. Ailaros is focussing on the loss of his blobs, but a)the guard can fit in as many special weapons as they could before, b)victory points now only matter 1/6th of the time and c)these MSU squads are much easier to get 4+ cover for thanks to aegis defence lines (pretty much a must take anyway if you want to avoid being flyered to death).

Assault blob may be dead (actually I never rated it in 5th either, but you seemed to have success), but foot guard definitely isn't. Frankly I never really liked the "hidden models" approach of a lot of foot guard...nor did I like the idea of a load of guys in uniform going toe to toe with orks/super human space marines in melee...and winning.

Jihallah wrote:I love ailaros threads.

As much as there is a sense of bruised egos because the Internet man didn't agree with you, he makes some really good points....I see many tears of rage/frustration at ailaros' arguments... Because he argues back If you disagree!

I see lots of talking but little thinking. So it's good to see it every now and then on the form of a ailaros thread with lots of pages full of big posts

I can't speak for anyone else, but as I said earlier I also enjoy Ailaros's threads and his far superior intellect and 40k knowledge. I personally do not have any - as you amusingly put - "tears of rage/frustration." or "bruised egos because the internet man didn't agree with you." and am somewhat confused to who you are referring too in these cases.
All I see are objections to Ailaros's theoryhammer and Mr. Intellectual approach (not that there is anything wrong with that, as I keep saying) in place of actual practical experience. I think people - whether it is justified or not - have issues with that approach and the constant linking to personal blogs as if they were holy gospel (especially when rules have been misunderstood). And thus it has little to do with the fact "he argues back if you disagree".

As people have quite reasonably attempted to point out, you inevitably miss things in theoryhammer no matter how smart you are. And you know if one cannot at least accept that I would say that's probably more a case of bruised ego than any other I have seen in this thread so far.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

jcress410 wrote:

I've always wondered why someone who doesn't like discussing "theory hammer" would bother posting on a thread like this at all.

Seem super off topic to complain about epistemology on a thread about tactics.

No see because there is actually a middle-ground where you accept the limitations of both theoryhammer and the practical playingtesting of the game. It isn't helpful to have such a "black and white" viewpoint where it's either one or the other.

My experience has been limited to 3 games in 6th, but so far it has been in agreement with Ailaros's general point that vehicles are the better way to go than foot sloggers.

I play guard so pretty much any weapon wounds on a 3 or lower and most weapons go through our armor.

I used to be able to jam 50% of a blob in cover and everyone would get cover. Now, the biggest problem is not that the average cover got raised from a 4+ to a 5+ since ruins still give you a 4+. The biggest problem now is focused fire. Everyone who is not behind a wall or hidden can be blasted off the board with no save. If I hide behind the wall, then I can't shoot and my ability to move the unit has been compromised to some extent.

I could mitigate the problem by bringing defense lines, but if I'm cowering behind those, I am certainly not moving up the board and trying to get into assault like blobs used. If I did manage to tromp over across the board, made the charge after overwatch and kept my commissar alive, it's hard to keep them alive in assault. The enemy can challenge either my sergeants or the commissar and probably pulp them even before they swing. After that if I have to get my sergeants and commissar up to the front if I want to use their power weapons. That will result in those guys getting slaughtered in the next round of fighting if they manage to stick around after the invariable loss in combat. So if I played my cards right, I got one round of power weapon swings out of my power blob.

You can certainly blob up for shooting purposes. But, I prefer to offer my enemy a bunch of targets to shoot instead of a limited number of blobs.

Tanks got better though. You can glance them to death, but until they are dead, those glances aren't stopping them from being able to fire or move. My Space Marine opponent can bring a tactical squad for 150-160 (without upgrade), I can bring an AV 14 Russ that is hard to interrupt from dropping pie plates on said marines.

For me the biggest pro for taking transports is that outside of them, guardsmen have become even easier to kill. Not only do they die faster, but it's harder to keep upgrades alive and place them where you need them.
I do need to get out of the transport to score, but I will gladly do so after I shot your troops off the board. If I didn't, I can still get out and contest the objective.

The overall calculus for me boils down to what Ailaros has been saying. Vehicles became a little more fragile, but troops became super fragile.

I certainly wasn't denigrating theoryhammer, but a previous poster had brought up an understanding based on experience, which was dismissed by Ailaros for being inductive instead of deductive. I was trying to make the point that it's not safe to dismiss, because there are things that we collectively haven't figured out yet, and it's worth listening to someone who has had some experience with all the variables in play.

I've had about a half dozen games so far in 6th.

So far, I've found the following:

Focus fire/changed cover is a nerf to survivability of infantry. The less in built resiliency an infantry unit had, the more it felt the nerf.

Hull points/changed cover is a nerf to survivability of vehicles. The less in built resiliency a vehicle unit had, the more it felt the nerf.

Essentially terrain offers less protection to everything, and hull points decreases variance (and slightly the average) in firepower required to take out vehicles.

So far both Mech and infantry seem like viable options. I personally feel like its a bit more even now. I've been playing foot SM for the last few games and it seems pretty good.

I run two lists; one is Elysian Aircav, and the second is one constructed almost entirely from observing Ailaros' Ultrablob setup of PW, Melta, Lascannons. Here are my observations, with nine games played against SM, BA, Eldar, Tau, Mech-guard, and assorted alliances of the such.

My primary observation is that Elysian lists got grossly good. What was previously a brutally unforgiving list with essentially overpriced chimeras with a skimmer save and no access to the best AT in the edition has become innappropriately good. Vendettas are still excellent tank hunters, our sniper SWS are finally viable, and plasma (our best infantry weapon) got a handsome buff. The ability to flat out off the board after grav chuting squads onto an objective is incredible as well. Overall success with this list as long as I can put down any gun emplacements with a Venator alphastrike. Undefeated in the skies thus far.

On to the main topic, my foot list took extensive modification with the coming of 6th. What was previously a TAC (mech, transports, PA, even tanks) blob got its Melta swapped for flamers, and it's power weapons stripped altogether. My asskicking T3, 5+ deathstsr got demoted to sitting behind an Aegis taking orders from an immobile CCS. With LCs being less effective at silencing big guns (thanks to glance changes) I've taken to running two dettas and a pasquisher, and now leave linebreaking and forward objective grabbing to plasmavets.

Quarterbacking with a CCS and a defensive blob allows for the delicious advantage of effectively protecting both the Linebreaker and Kill the Warlord VP's. It also allows me to sit pretty with Lascannons rolling shots at transports as they come to me. BiD and FoMT do big things for transport hunting. Eldrad+Fire Dragons or Broadsides slap around my Mech elements, making turtling sometimes a necessity against especially shooty armies. With leman russes as our to top HS and Dettas as (arguably) our best FA; the scouring and big guns are both missions tilted a bit in our favour. Overall, I think blobs still have a place in our armies; just not as the centerpiece and not as the mass of choppy power weapon goodness they were before.

-captain

Dracos wrote:I've had about a half dozen games so far in 6th.

So far, I've found the following:

Focus fire/changed cover is a nerf to survivability of infantry. The less in built resiliency an infantry unit had, the more it felt the nerf.

Hull points/changed cover is a nerf to survivability of vehicles. The less in built resiliency a vehicle unit had, the more it felt the nerf.

Essentially terrain offers less protection to everything, and hull points decreases variance (and slightly the average) in firepower required to take out vehicles.

So far both Mech and infantry seem like viable options. I personally feel like its a bit more even now. I've been playing foot SM for the last few games and it seems pretty good.

Right, the only thing that the vehicle nerf did is more or less standardize how many shots it takes to knock out a vehicle. This also had the effect of widening the gap between av 12 and av 13 and av 14.

For infantry the new rules had a similar effect. The wide gap between meq and geq armor has only widened. If you're not packing your own good save, you're in trouble.

With my guard I will seek to avoid committing points to the wide gap between meq and geq armor and invest those in the wide gap between av 14 and av 12.

bogalubov wrote:This also had the effect of widening the gap between av 12 and av 13 and av 14.

For infantry the new rules had a similar effect. The wide gap between meq and geq armor has only widened. If you're not packing your own good save, you're in trouble.

With my guard I will seek to avoid committing points to the wide gap between meq and geq armor and invest those in the wide gap between av 14 and av 12.

Wow, this is a really smart way to put it. I had gotten the feeling that termies and russes were better (references to "elitehammer" on page 1), but this is a good way to think about it.

I suppose, to use this way of describing it, my point would be that the gap opened up between guardsmen or boyz, etc. and terminators became larger than the gap between AV11/12 and AV14.


Oh, and I remembered another thing on this topic. Mech lists were hurt in 5th edition by kill points, and did their best in environments that didn't seriously threaten mech players with kill points (like tournaments). In 6th ed, kill points went form 1 in 3 missions to 1 in 6. Some foot armies (like guard) could already do MSU spam if they wanted, but mech lists still do MSU spam better, in general.

Good conversation. I think I am done with that last summary. I guess I have been biased because all I have ever played is meq, via necrons, vanilla and now space wolves. I went from msu razor spam to missile spam foot slogging logan wing with pods.

Good to get some perspective. I guess I will be good until folks dust off their nob biker lists.

I don't think 5th ed style blobs or mechanized vets are the way to go in 6th. The blob is too vulnerable to losing it's commissar, and the all mech vet army is too light on troops. Let's look at what's still good in 6th ed.

Aegis defense line
Quad gun
Quad flamer PCS is an excellent unit inside a Chimera
MSU foot infantry squads 60 points each with an AC, and very durable behind a defense line.
Tri Flamer or Tri melta SWS inside a Chimera (they can gta one from an infantry squad)
Plasma vets behind an aegis or in a chimera
Melta vets inside a chimera
Mechanized CCS

I'm thinking about half my army will be mechanized with swarms of pis running around, and the rest will be diversified units inside Chimera. It's not 5th ed as the foot slogging infantry now plays an even more vital role.

Ok, I'm new here so my opinion may not count for much but I feel that at least for imperial guard foot lists as a whole have not become bad. That isn't to say I think power blobs are good, I don't. They have had their time and in all honesty I'm glad they're gone they seemed ridiculous to me.

I do feel the Imperial guard Gunline or Gunline/Hybrid List has improved greatly.

First there are the changes to rapid fire, Now you have greatly downplayed this but being able to move 6 inches and still shoot is a big deal, meaning in a 10 man Guard squad with FRFSRF i could put out 20 lasgun shots.

Next we have the changes to movement. I can now put a heavy weapon in my standard infantry squad and even if my guardsmen move it can shoot as long as I don't move it. This means if I'm careful in placement i can set up the heavy weapon in a spot with good cover from most angles and give the sub prime spots which are workable for a turn or two to my infantry that can move or shoot, and when the enemy changes to an angle which can negate my basic troops' cover i can move them while hopefully leaving my heavy weapon as is allowing cover and everyone to still shoot.

Third there are Aegis Defense Lines or Fortifications, and man are they good. These give my units back their 4+ from 5th edition, but that isn't the biggest thing for Aegis lines,it's the +2 to Go to groud rolls, and while i know this is an expensive trick It is possible to reliably allow 4 or more squads to have a 2+ cover save from go to ground and then use get back in the fight to fire the next round. If you think that is weaker than fifth edition there is no point in arguing with you, because a 5pt guardsman with a 2+ or TDA equivalent save (actually better since AP doesn't negate it). If you would prefer to not have to use Get back in the fight you can instead use the Imperial Bastion or GI Joe Playset... wait sorry Fortress of redemption, you can then get a dependable 3+ save. Now the counterpoint you can make is that this can help vehicles as well, which is true. For example a vehicle now only needs 25% coverage and if i were to say put a Leman Russ behind a Bastion or FoR with camo netting it would also get a 2+ save (Anyone else excited about this?!?!).

I'd like to clarify the difference between the tank buffs and how this does not actually help the current Mech spam list. Right now IG mech spam means mass vets in Chimeras or Rhino/Razorback spam, none of which can gain from the few benefits to vehicles. As a whole vehicles are weaker with hull points, yet even that is not the reason for mechs weakness. The problems are many The inability to assault out of transports is a major nerf, supposed I assault and kill your transport directly in front of my Gunline (which you claim is weak) problem is though you still cannot charge them because of changes to charging and transport rules. Next is the issue of holding objectives, not being able to hold in a transport means veteran squads in chimeras who generally use them as protection will die quickly if they are forced out and must stand on an objective for an unknown number of turns. Also it will now be tougher to get you transports to their destinations as they are now far easier to kill. Finally while not huge the new damage table is also a nerf to mech spam, as a transport being destroyed is a bigger issue as you are more likely to be damaged by the explosion.

Fourth Allies. There are some great combos that benefit Foot armies far more than mech. For example guard can get SW allies, if i were to put a Wolf Guard Battle Leader (NOT wolf guard) or Wolf Lord in an IG blob I would end up with both counter attack (how does 50 bonus guardsman attacks sound) and ATSKNF, and ATSKNF is the real kicker here, because Guardsmen will almost certainly lose combat, but this allows them to lose it them immediately regroup and shoot again, then wait for the next charge where they can Overwatch then fight back with counter attack again. Or if you'd prefer A hardier guard Blog you could grab Uriah Jacobus FNP and +1A, Yes please. There may be others that I'm not seeing but these are the two that stood out to me.

Fifth is new codexes. The popular armies are what determine power, for example it was the new marine codex's ability to cheaply spam rhinos and razorbacks which led to this mech meta. But guess what, the new hot army (Necrons) would just love to see a mech spam list, with new buffs to Scarabs against vehicle (3+ rather than 6+ to hit) stronger Warscythes and now stronger doom scythes Gauss and tesla i think you may find that some of your more common opponents will be able to slaughter nearly any amount of tanks you bring.

Next is you are only listing part of the picture of mech, Tau and Dark Eldar (Maybe Eldar as well I'm unsure) have both taken relative hits to their mech ability, as the things which made their vehicles "good" have now been given to everyone giving them a comparative disadvantage as a 4+ cover save is no longer a big deal when you can get a similar one for free. And because of this I cannot image seeing as many Devilfises when the they comparitively became far worse for cost whereas Fire Warriors became comparatively far stronger.

I know this message focuses on IG I apologize but I thought it showed the points i needed to make the best and I don't find myself well enough informed of other armies to use them as my backbone (I have heard Eldar footlists are hurting now).

If I had to predict i would expect IG airport lists could be strong for a bit, but one AA is viable i think gunline or hybrid lists will be the way of the future.

Any advice or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated, as well on any correction on anything I got wrong or missed.

Jakobokaj

One last thing, I keep hearing about people worrying about losing Commisars and such, but here is the thing. First I cant come up with any units with long range allocation abilites that are commonly used apart from paladins. And even then you need a 6 to hit a 4+ to wound and either pass a cover save or Look Out sir save. In all honesty I'm not especially worried about snipers or characters being a major theat.

Counter-attack is not transfered to the whole unit, Jakobokaj...but yes, allies are very good for foot guard.

For some reason, Primaris Psyker can not take Divination powers. Therefore you need some Libby to do the job and help the guys with plasmas not to burn themselves - giving the blob ATSKNF rule and very good morale for orders. Jacobus is not really great because his bonus is primary for CC, in which the guard is not good now.

About vehicles. Does anyone try to take two Lemans and hide 25% of them behind that 75 point fortress? 3+ save and 14 AV and 3 hull point for glanc hits....mean. Camo for 2+ cover is not needed here I think.

Lothar wrote:Counter-attack is not transfered to the whole unit, Jakobokaj...but yes, allies are very good for foot guard.

For some reason, Primaris Psyker can not take Divination powers. Therefore you need some Libby to do the job and help the guys with plasmas not to burn themselves - giving the blob ATSKNF rule and very good morale for orders. Jacobus is not really great because his bonus is primary for CC, in which the guard is not good now.

About vehicles. Does anyone try to take two Lemans and hide 25% of them behind that 75 point fortress? 3+ save and 14 AV and 3 hull point for glanc hits....mean. Camo for 2+ cover is not needed here I think.

While Camo netting may not be necessary it is most certainly worth its points in my mind, a 3+ is good but a 2+ is twice as good meaning that rather than an average of 3 Penning hits to make one stick you now need to get 6. Imagine that, only 1 in every 6 hits that has already Penetrated/Glanced will stay on a leman russ, in my mind that's the toughest tank in the game as no one else can get camo netting. Take for example lascannons hoping to strip hull points for a kill on a BS4 Model, 2/3 hit 1/3 Glance/Pen and 1/6 Stick and you need three of those, for a total of ~81 lascannon hits needed to down a leman on front armor with camo netting, pretty much unkillable of course that just means they get into close melta range or assault it, but that at least keeps you safe for a few turns especially with new assault from transport and no outflank assault rules.

The thing is, there's very few things in the game putting 9 glancing hits on a Russ (needed to kill with 3+ cover). Your calculations show it requires 81 BS4 lascannon shots for 2+ cover. Cut that in half at it's still 40 shots. Still absurdly tough. The bigger thing is, though, that you can't move and still take advantage of Camo Netting. It only works when stationary. Therefore, you can't shift even a little for better shots. I know I'd rather spend the points elsewhere.

Well, LRBTs probably won't need to move for the first few turns anyway. And thats when cover is going to matter the most.

After that, the enemy is probably close enough to skirt the Aegis lines or is just going to assault you.

Yeah, what russes really need to watch is essentially the same as 5th- stuff that wants to get close *but* lucky glances don't stunlock it anymore and weapons destroyed no longer autonuke the main gun.

GEQ foot lists are really vulnerable to the new cover and rapidfire rules. A common bolter becomes devastating when it can reposition and still shoot you from 24 inches with no save (because the marines maneuvered to an angle where the guys shot don't get cover, for example). Remember, there is no more "majority" cover. So advancing without a metal box can be highly hazardous to your health! To reiterate, the chimeras still provide speed, small arms fire, and substantial firepower.

I agree that all vets in chims took a hit, but that has more to do with the increased fragility of the vets and the easier removal of weapons.

The comment about save/AV tiers becoming more distinct is an invaluable observation- GEQ types will die like flies. MEQs do better since they carry around a 3+ save, but now have to really watch out for AP3 shooting. This indicates, I think, the underlying problem with foot guard now and why foot MEQ don't suffer as much. To that end, rhino still offer cheap speed and some protection, but no significant firepower. Which is just fine for dumping tacs/ghs/etc. where you want them. RBs definitely came down a notch, but still offer significant firepower and an RB sporting TL-Lascannons can still stand off against other vehicles to a degree.

Ricter- Previously, the most common (albeit not most dangerous) weapon faced by AV13+ was the krak missile. Though you may discount it as serious, it was common thanks to LongFangs if nothing else. Their chance to kill AV 13+ is now about half of what it was. So a mediocre but common tool is now a terrible tool. That means that AV 13+ now enjoys a better relative position to one of the most common HS choices in the game and/or will encourage a change up to fewer missiles, which probably help lighter vehicles. By extension, armor lists benefit either way.

Additionally, if there is alot of swapping of melta to plasma )to deal with increased TEQ presence), this again benefits armor as S7 AP2 is worse against armor than S8 AP1 Melta. Especially for AV12. But it is a bigger threat to foot MEQ. So, relatively speaking, mech benefits and foot loses.

Just looking at the toys I like to field, longfangs certainly would like to see fewer transports as kraks work just as well on MEQs, and frags are fine against GEQ. They don't like the TEQs and AV13+ though and relied on the razors there. Problem is now plasmas overheat on vehicles and switching to TL lascannon means fewer options against TEQ. Preds and vindis look more attractive thanks to AV13 and weapon Destroyed being mitigated.

For guard, manticores are absolutely murderous now. S10 eats vehicles and infantry alike and multiple big templates with the new casualty rules is amazing. If people are demeching, these will have a field day. Actually, scratch that. It doesn't really matter either way.... Hydras look far less attractive as I will likely be fielding 2+ vendettas and S7 needing a 6 against ground targets is very meh. Russes definitely look better and griffons look like an awesome substitute. TEQs are dealt with as before- plasma vets and concentrated fire- force 6+ saves and a TEQ goes down.

The more I think about it, the more Grenadier Vets, probably in a Chimera, are looking more worth the points. It's one of the few Guard units that doesn't just have to be in cover to survive, and the only Troop choice (scoring unit) that can venture beyond the Aegis and withstand a modest amount of shots against it.

Is it just me or would Yarrik be amazing in a blob? Fearless is actually VERY good now, he's EW and will beat anyone in a duel bar combat-oritentated special charectors.

Testify wrote:Is it just me or would Yarrik be amazing in a blob? Fearless is actually VERY good now, he's EW and will beat anyone in a duel bar combat-oritentated special charectors.

And they shall know no Fear is actually better in lots of cases now - Join an allied Techmarine to the unit instead.

Havent played guard since early fifth but I think the lists on the extremes are not the best overall. A good hybrid approach sounds like it would be best. I have been playing my crons and vehicles just dont survive, none. Outside of rolling only 2's on the heavy destroyers a vehicle I want to die has not survived.

Bad example, but with 2-3 sets of troops with support or transport I could drop 2-3 vehicles a turn and that is on the low end. Now factor in heavy support and the number just goes up.

Now I believe that the meta is going to shift from melta to more mid strength multishot weapons. Now that will benefit the upper end of the AV values but will be really bad for the transports.

Every point spent on vehicles is now a point which cannot be used to control or contest an objective at game end (unless it happens to be a FA or HS vehicle, and then only 1 mission in 6).

I have thirteen painted (and two more basecoated) vehicles for my BA army, but the lists I've been working on this month, as I've gotten a half-dozen games in and kept thinking, have fewer and fewer vehicles in them. In 5th every living vehicle at the end of the game could be used to contest an enemy objective; especially since most of mine were Fast, this was key. In most games my opponent would be fortunate to be holding even one objective uncontested at the end. Now, most of the time no vehicles can do that.

Stormravens may still be worth it because they're flyers. It's still a lot of points for something which can only directly impact objectives 1/6 of the time.
My Landraiders are highly questionable; they're much more subject to being Glanced to death by missiles and gauss now, which before they largely laughed at.
Preds and Speeders may be worth it sometimes; hiding far from the enemy where they hopefully won't be assaulted, and hoping for those missions where they can score.
Dreads are probably now shelf-lurkers. Pity.
Rhinos and Razorbacks may go entirely as well.

With rapid fire improvements bolter armed MEQ are going to be spending a lot more time outside their transports. Since most armies are MEQ overall use of transports is going to drop. Players pay points for 7 tac/grey hunters/csm, and now that their bolters are more effective the main body of the squad is going to be hard at work rather than just ablative wounds for the heavy/special weapons/pfist.

The only reason for SM armies to keep taking Rhinos may be to give their squads a turn or two of flat out 18" movement up table, in Hammer & Anvil deployments, or against shooty armies castling back. Given that in the other two deployments, your opponent can place objectives 6" further from you, and knows they're on his side of the table, on average you're going to have to travel farther to get to them.

Which is rather important, actually. In 5th ed, transports were not substantially faster than foot lists, what with both of them being able to move 12" per turn. Now that vehicles can move up to 18", that makes them ACTUALLY faster than foot lists.

Yes, spending points on vehicles reduces your ability to contest, but it comes at the benefit of increasing your ability to reduce your opponent's ability to score or contest through added firepower or added security (which in turn adds firepower).

I would certainly entertain that the purpose of transports now, more than in 5th, is to transport. In the case of armies that have shootier transports and squishier troops (like guard and eldar), their primary purpose will still likely be shooting, at least so long as they survive (like before).

Not being able to contest is a nerf, certainly, but it's not like transports were guaranteed to survive all the way to the end of the game in 5th ed anyways. At the end of many games I saw, the transports were killed and the guys inside scored on foot anyways. I can't imagine that it will be much different now than it was before.

Really, the no-contest rule hurts proper vehicles more than it does transports, which are usually closely associated with scoring units anyways.

Not every transport holds a scoring unit, of course. Every transport or other vehicle in my armies has contested objectives. It was very important.

I'm honestly beginning to think that Ailaros intentionally selects the most contrarian opinions possible.

I'd put my money on Necrons being the supreme standard in power playing. Gauss got redonk and they have no shortage of bodies to field it. Coupled with their fliers and the sweeping revisions to rapid fire nd I'd say until something more powerful comes out they are top dogs.

While things like terminators got buffed, Crons will still have the weight of fire to bring them down with relative ease. So I'd toss my vote on cron hybrid lists being the new "it" thing until Matt ward goes batcrap nuts and makes tau rail guns rapid fire fire warrr 5 point upgrades.

I'd say there's a difference to Imperial Guard foot lists (allegedly) becoming worse and mech being king of the edition again. Other Codices may be more successful at running foot lists.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:I'd say there's a difference to Imperial Guard foot lists (allegedly) becoming worse and mech being king of the edition again. Other Codices may be more successful at running foot lists.

Yes. The name of this Thread is not really correct. Ailaros talks mainly about GEQ units and armies. That is absolutely fine, but some people may think he is talking also about MEQ armies and call him craaaaazy
Mech will be king of the Guard, not the whole 6th edition. There are some viable foot choices for other codices. Nekron foot spam seems cool, SW drop pods with mass GH, bikes,...It is too early to say what is going to be the best, but I already saw a few good ideas about hybrid or non-mech lists.

I've got 5 games under my belt with traitor guard and have noticed some observations.

jmurph wrote:Yeah, what russes really need to watch is essentially the same as 5th- stuff that wants to get close. Russes definitely look better and griffons look like an awesome substitute.

In every game I played with the LRBT it was vastly underwhelming. In every case they did not kill much, and they were either ignored or melta'ed. The Russ' took a few hard hits
* PC sponsons cannot snap fire
* PC sponsons can cause overheating
* If you shoot ordanance, all other shots save 1 are snap fired. This makes sponsons useless
* As before, ordanance is a gamble. 2/3 of the time you scatter. If your opponent has night fight/ruins/aegis lines, then even hits can be underwhelming.
I still love the russ' as a tank, but right now I think that punisher with HB sponsons may be the best for its 29 STR 5 shots a turn.

jmurph wrote:I agree that all vets in chims took a hit, but that has more to do with the increased fragility of the vets and the easier removal of weapons.

I modeled up 4 squads of plasma vets and 1 melta vet for my chimera vets. They have been amazing in every game I have played them in for the following reasons.
* Since there is less mech in the meta right now, PGs are gunning down MEQ.
* Glancing hits no longer keep the vets from shooting
* Chimeras can move forward 18" a turn when going flat out -- great for turn 4+ objective grabbing

jmurph wrote:For guard, manticores are absolutely murderous now. S10 eats vehicles and infantry alike and multiple big templates with the new casualty rules is amazing

I think your right on that.

Labmouse- I was more referring to naked Russes. The PCs (as well as Razor plas) took a HUGE hit. The plasma turret is fine- no overheat rule. Have you tried HB sponsons w/battle cannon or Demolisher cannon? Cheap and 6 snap fires plus hull and turret and 2 more weapon destroyed soaks.

I agree on plasma vets. They will work a number on foot MEQ (which I do see becoming more prevalent, especially for BA). My point was that chim vets took a hit, but not because mech is now "bad". Vets are still very good, just slightly easier to kill. (Not that they were very tough to begin with).

jmurph wrote:Labmouse- I was more referring to naked Russes. The PCs (as well as Razor plas) took a HUGE hit. The plasma turret is fine- no overheat rule. Have you tried HB sponsons w/battle cannon or Demolisher cannon? Cheap and 6 snap fires plus hull and turret and 2 more weapon destroyed soaks.

That was my first loadout at 170 points. The HBs were unwhelming, as only 1.5 HBs hit per turn. While the extra 'weapon' are nice in case you suffer a weapon destroyed hit, the fact is my 'russ was not targeted save by stormravens or BA jump troops. In both cases, the melta was enough to do the job.

A naked 'Russ looks good on paper. You have a good chance of getting a penetrating hit on vehicles since you don't need the circle on it any more. You can do a number on infantry, as you can expect to get 5-6 models per 'hit'.
Alas though this expression comes to mind "In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is.". What I encountered were people bringing lots of flyers and land raiders, with very few people bringing regular transports. When I was shooting at ground troops, only 2 hits per game were 'on target' and often they were in cover (in a runs, behind a aegis, or in one case scarabs behind wraiths still getting a 4+ cover save due to stealth)

As such, for 150 points, its just not a lot of firepower. I think that I would do better alling with SW or Daemons and using those points to get either GHs or LFs, or buy some flying monsteous creatures.

jmurph wrote:I agree on plasma vets. They will work a number on foot MEQ (which I do see becoming more prevalent, especially for BA). My point was that chim vets took a hit, but not because mech is now "bad". Vets are still very good, just slightly easier to kill. (Not that they were very tough to begin with).

Let me tell you sir, these plasma vets were 'money' this weekend. One BA player was forced to re-enact WW1 as he rushed my chimera line. Each chimera was shooting 3 PGs, 2 LGs, 1 scatter laser, and 1 HB (snap shot) while I kept him at bay. Finally I moved up and then shot the piss out of him and left nothing but smoldering boots on the ground.
He dropped in 2 full squads and took out 2 chimeras, then I made those turn into piles of boots. It was not pretty. (that was one game where the LRBTs were useful, hitting the clumped BA)

I played a deathwing army as well, and had similar results. He dropped in one squad of terminators -- shot up a chimera. I would then pile out, move 6" to the side, and shoot all the termies without SS's until there were only 2 models left per unit. I tabled him on turn 4. The LRBTs were useless that game.

Now, in a 1500 point list I brought 2 LRBTs. What if instead i spent those 300 points on GHs in drop pods or rhinos? I could have used them to engage MEQ or other targets, helping to preserve the vets. I also could have bought a bloodthister and 2 nurgling squads and used the bloodthirster to engage enemy models as counter-assault. (Just for the record, I would think a bloodthirster would be more of a counter-clobber unit and less of a counter-assault unit)

labmouse42 wrote:I've got 5 games under my belt with traitor guard and have noticed some observations.

jmurph wrote:Yeah, what russes really need to watch is essentially the same as 5th- stuff that wants to get close. Russes definitely look better and griffons look like an awesome substitute.

In every game I played with the LRBT it was vastly underwhelming. In every case they did not kill much, and they were either ignored or melta'ed. The Russ' took a few hard hits
* PC sponsons cannot snap fire
* PC sponsons can cause overheating
* If you shoot ordanance, all other shots save 1 are snap fired. This makes sponsons useless
* As before, ordanance is a gamble. 2/3 of the time you scatter. If your opponent has night fight/ruins/aegis lines, then even hits can be underwhelming.
I still love the russ' as a tank, but right now I think that punisher with HB sponsons may be the best for its 29 STR 5 shots a turn.

I think you're right that PC sponsons are useless but there's a place for heavy bolter sponsons as weapons destroyed results are randomly allocated now.

As ordnance I think it got more reliable this edition due to Focus Fire, my opponents rarely have all of their unit in cover so I can just Focus Fire on the part that's outside of cover. Yes, some things give a 4+ cover save but more often than not (depending on your local club's terrain selection) cover saves are 5+. Mech Guard is probably the best equipped to deal with Night Fight, having Searchlights on every single Chimera. Last week I actually took a pair of Chimeras with my otherwise foot + Russ list just to scoot up and searchlight things I wanted to wreck with my Russes and Manticore.

You have a good idea with focus fire. Ill try that this weekend when I play.

You know, your right on chimeras being a decent gun platform for 55 points. Slap a HB and ML on that puppy and watch it move 6" and toss out 6 shots a turn. Since its also an AV 12 tank, its not a bad deal at all to act as mobile cover.

I've been quite pleased with my triple HB LRBTs so far. Having disposable searchlights does help, but even without it, they force enough saves to get their kills.

Yes, cover got slightly worse, but there tends to be a lot more of it in the new game.

As far as the vehicles...too easy to destroy. On average, a Dread will probably be either wrecked or destroyed if shot by ap 1.

2+ armor and psykers are huge... Played a game with 3 dreadknights that just killed. Just those 3 smacked down nearly 1850 points of Blood Angels

TechMarine1 wrote:Yes, cover got slightly worse, but there tends to be a lot more of it in the new game.

As far as the vehicles...too easy to destroy. On average, a Dread will probably be either wrecked or destroyed if shot by ap 1.

It was the same in 5th. Dreadnaughts got smashed by meltas all the time, due to a)being AV12 (or very occasionally AV13) and b)usually being up in the front lines, and therefore in melta range.
Support dreads are just as durable as before though.

Mech may still be awesome, and better than foot lists (though I will continue to play footguard nonetheless), but I don't know if Mech will still be the central meta of the game- it may be replaced with 2+ spam or flying circus.

DOOMBREAD wrote:Mech may still be awesome, and better than foot lists (though I will continue to play footguard nonetheless), but I don't know if Mech will still be the central meta of the game- it may be replaced with 2+ spam or flying circus.

Honestly that's nonsense. Only GK and DA can 2+ spam, and only Chaos Deamons can do flying circus (though that may change with the new tyranid codex).
Mech is here to stay, it's just not ubiquitous.

Eldar are going to be scary with that many psykers and a new codex on its way...

Testify wrote:

DOOMBREAD wrote:Mech may still be awesome, and better than foot lists (though I will continue to play footguard nonetheless), but I don't know if Mech will still be the central meta of the game- it may be replaced with 2+ spam or flying circus.

Honestly that's nonsense. Only GK and DA can 2+ spam, and only Chaos Deamons can do flying circus (though that may change with the new tyranid codex).
Mech is here to stay, it's just not ubiquitous.

Ummm...not so on the 2+ spam.

Chaos marines, wolf guard, vanilla marines can all spam 2+ armor spam.

Squat Kid wrote:Eldar are going to be scary with that many psykers and a new codex on its way...

All 2 psykers and 2 disciplines? Yes, that's a whole lot compared to Tyranids 17.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Squat Kid wrote:Eldar are going to be scary with that many psykers and a new codex on its way...

All 2 psykers and 2 disciplines? Yes, that's a whole lot compared to Tyranids 17.

You think they won't get more? and you can take squads of warlocks...

IG are all 2+ when they go to ground behind a defense line, one could argue that IG can field the most 2+ in the game.

Squat Kid wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:

Squat Kid wrote:Eldar are going to be scary with that many psykers and a new codex on its way...

All 2 psykers and 2 disciplines? Yes, that's a whole lot compared to Tyranids 17.

You think they won't get more? and you can take squads of warlocks...

I'm confident they won't. They've given me shuriken catapults after all. Eldar are dead and will stay that way.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Squat Kid wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:

Squat Kid wrote:Eldar are going to be scary with that many psykers and a new codex on its way...

All 2 psykers and 2 disciplines? Yes, that's a whole lot compared to Tyranids 17.

You think they won't get more? and you can take squads of warlocks...

I'm confident they won't. They've given me shuriken catapults after all. Eldar are dead and will stay that way.

Eldar have the best 2 disciplines and can rock 5 powers a turn with runes of witnessing, warding, and a ghost helm. Eldar players have many legitimate complaints, the new psychic rules are not one of them.

schadenfreude wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:

Squat Kid wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:

Squat Kid wrote:Eldar are going to be scary with that many psykers and a new codex on its way...

All 2 psykers and 2 disciplines? Yes, that's a whole lot compared to Tyranids 17.

You think they won't get more? and you can take squads of warlocks...

I'm confident they won't. They've given me shuriken catapults after all. Eldar are dead and will stay that way.

Eldar have the best 2 disciplines and can rock 5 powers a turn with runes of witnessing, warding, and a ghost helm. Eldar players have many legitimate complaints, the new psychic rules are not one of them.

Bingo

I think we might need to get a little more specific if I'm going to make any points in this conversation.

My 1500 list in 5th edition was mech. I won a lot of highly competitive games with it. It was something along the lines of this.

CCS 4x melta chimera
vets 3x melta chimera
vets 3x melta chimera
vets 3x melta chimera
vendetta
vendetta
vendetta
2x hydra
2x hydra
2x hydra


We have an instant problem, before we talk about matchups, before we talk about close combat affecting vehicles, before we talk about hull points.

Now, if I had the top of 1, which I did want if I won the roll, then my 30 veterans will be debarking on the top of 5. Oh by the way, I won't be contesting a SINGLE point, unless it is with a 5 or 10 man unit consisting of T3 5+ armor models. There is now an entire player turn and a 67% chance of additional turns, where my guys are on foot.

Using the Crusade mission as an example, even if I got lucky and we rolled an odd number of objectives, and I got to place the first one, I'm not contesting any of the objecitves my opponent placed. I could threaten to score the three that I placed, but what is the reality of me keeping one model alive from each of my three units. And even more devastating, is that if my opponent walked over and had just a single troop model within 3" of one of my objectives at game-end, then it would be irrelevant whether or not I had two or three vehicles hovering over that point.

Does this mean that foot guard are a better option for me? I'm not sure. It doesn't really look like it. What playable aggressive denial units do IG have? Stormtroopers? Ogryn? Rough riders? All of our "objective contesting" in 5th edition came from late game tank shocks or 24" vendetta moves.

One might say that for around every 55 points of chimera, you get an infantry squad with an autocannon. Ok, thats interesting. But would an autocannon unit like that be able to brave table-center on foot in order to contest an objective? No way. It isn't any better at denying objectives than the chimera really, because as it approaches a more robust and superior unit, it will just get effortlessly erased. Is a unit in a chimera better than two units in 6th? Not really. You charge the chimera, get overwatched, kill it easily, get shot by the unit inside, then charge it, get ovrwatched and kill it. If there are two units, you charge one unit, get overwatched, kill it, get shot at by the other unit, then charge the other unit, get overwatched, then kill it. It is really just splitting hairs on how you want your bunker to look.

"So Shep..." you ask, "What does all of this mean?" Well I'll tell you what I think it means. IG aren't good at winning missions like crusade, scouring, big guns never tire, and relic. Mech isn't good at it, and foot isn't better at it than mech. Pure IG is going to dominate purge the alien and emperors will. In purge the alien it will just sit back and table you with shooting, picking up extra points for first blood and slay the warlord. And in emperors will they will easily score their own objective, deny linebreaker and warlord slay, and win on first blood and warlord slay.

If we are talking about book missions, the winners in this edition are the armies that have good aggressive denial units, and outstanding shooting. It is, in my opinion, pretty irrelevant whether or not my IG troop is shooting out of a chimera, or twice as many guys just going to ground all day and not dying either. Because nothing IG can field can even threaten to stop my opponent from claiming his objective with troop models that are either out of LOS or in ruins laying on their stomachs with 2+ cover. You'll want somewhere around 60% of your army to be gunline, and the rest to be incredibly fast, incredibly resilient, non-vehicular aggressive units. A book like space wolves is just gorgeous for 6th. Run your 15 fangs, have some razorbacks holding tiny grey hunter units or full sized grey hunters for the objectives you placed, and run a massive, resilient and fast thunderwolf rush to contest your opponents objectives. The awesomeness of allies really fixes the metagme though, as now, everyone gets to be as ridiculously stacked as space wolves. Lots of people will be taking IG or tau as their firebase/home objective controller, and lots of people will be taking space wolves, demons, and orks to threaten the denial.

If I were playing book missions for high stakes right now, and I went with IG as my primary detachment, I would take rune priest/grey hunter/thunderwolf cavalry, bloodthirster/plaguebearers/bloodcrushers or biker warboss/nob bikers. If I had to take pure IG, honestly, I think I might reach for Yarrick and 10 ogryn. Or multiple units of 3 or 5 ogryn in chimeras. You need to move forward and contest in the late turns of both 5th edition and 6th edition 40k. In 5th edition we could do it because chimeras that moved 12" were essentially melee immune, and they contested. We'd just kill off their anti-tank early, and then they wouldn't really have an answer to that. Now, 5 tac marines or 5 wyches are anti-tank, not to mention they can just ignore tanks in terms of win conditions.

This is starting to get pretty rambley... Let me bring it back. Foot guard isn't better than mech guard now. But I think they both do equally well at scoring home objectives and I think they both suck equally at scoring or contesting objectives that you didn't place. Our heavy support still rules, we have the best flyers, but our HQ/elite/troop section isn't good enough to get it done on its own without allies.

I think I'm going to start running around with some ogryn/rough riders. Rough riders seem interesting for a 10 point model that has krak grenades and can contest and move as cavalry. Ogryns are just the only thing we have that can survive the new and improved bolter fire that we are going to be seeing.

One thing that I feel the need to point out is that getting First Blood is not going to be reliable at all. It tends to go to whoever goes first-- this is intentional and balances the normal natural advantages of going second. Also, winning based on secondary objectives will likely not be what you want to do in a tournament setting...

Fetterkey wrote:One thing that I feel the need to point out is that getting First Blood is not going to be reliable at all. It tends to go to whoever goes first-- this is intentional and balances the normal natural advantages of going second. Also, winning based on secondary objectives will likely not be what you want to do in a tournament setting...

We usually don't get first blood until turn 2, sometimes turn 3.

I have 2 points!

1) Necron are the flavour of 6th ed, not mech. They have the best guns, as reasonable assault units as anything else out
There, the best fliers, best anti troop and best anti mech. They also have s9 ap2 guns on jump packs with preferred enemy for everything and Can make carnifexes beat themselves over the head with their own wrecking claws of death. They can make a land raider av5 in a turn before shooting it and then whatever is left from the meltdown of whatever the hell powers them. They can deep strike in av14 tanks with an
Option to maybe ignore shaken and stunned ( admittedly that's been nerfed) and then teleport 20warriors to them to finish off the job if anything is left. They can pop your vindicator with its own shot, and then pop another thank while they are At it. They have to be killed on average 1.5 times a model if there is a res orb around to die and can kill a charging wraithlord. There is nothing that you can do that a crib can't. Whatever happens, mech or not, you are screwed. (yeah in a crib fanboy)

2) that article that ailaros keeps referring to is written by none other than... Dun dun dun dah dah... Ailaros! Isn't that funny. 2 pages of why footsloggers are dead as evidence when it's actually the exact same stuff written By the exact same guy. Wow... Classy Ailaros!

Nemesor: So what? Instead of quoting an article he wrote, he just linked to it. What's the problem? Anyone who follows the link finds that out readily, it's not hidden. The article stands or falls on its arguments, not its author.

I think Necrons are strong, no doubt, but in the chances I've had to play against them (there's a lot of Necrons at my FLGS), I'm struck by just how easy the are to kill with Guard, at least compared to MEQs. Guard has the tools to kill squads wholesale, and actually aren't afraid of the Necrons in close combat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, thanks to Shep for the mission breakdown, we've talked a lot about the rules, and less about winning missions. In that vein, is objective contesting a new role for Marbo? He can show up anywhere and has Stealth. He's not tough enough to last too long in combat against most full strength squads, but if you just couldn't finish off an objective camping squad, Marbo might be a non-terrible option if you could weaken it with indirect fire first. I think it would be more of a secondary role for him, but it could come in pretty useful.

Testify wrote:

Fetterkey wrote:One thing that I feel the need to point out is that getting First Blood is not going to be reliable at all. It tends to go to whoever goes first-- this is intentional and balances the normal natural advantages of going second. Also, winning based on secondary objectives will likely not be what you want to do in a tournament setting...

We usually don't get first blood until turn 2, sometimes turn 3.

Do people in your area use vehicles?

imweasel wrote:

Testify wrote:

DOOMBREAD wrote:Mech may still be awesome, and better than foot lists (though I will continue to play footguard nonetheless), but I don't know if Mech will still be the central meta of the game- it may be replaced with 2+ spam or flying circus.

Honestly that's nonsense. Only GK and DA can 2+ spam, and only Chaos Deamons can do flying circus (though that may change with the new tyranid codex).
Mech is here to stay, it's just not ubiquitous.

Ummm...not so on the 2+ spam.

Chaos marines, wolf guard, vanilla marines can all spam 2+ armor spam.

And I am very capable of fielding plasmacannons, guns, and other AP1/2 weaponry.

Honestly, from all the "2+ saves are the shiznit yo!" i hear, it makes me wonder where everyones plasmaguns have been. I could go toe to toe with elite troops who are armed as a bare minimum with a powersword in melee, and lots more scary option... or I could use my plasma cannon. Nice 5++ save on your 40p model there

Jihallah wrote:

imweasel wrote:

Testify wrote:

DOOMBREAD wrote:Mech may still be awesome, and better than foot lists (though I will continue to play footguard nonetheless), but I don't know if Mech will still be the central meta of the game- it may be replaced with 2+ spam or flying circus.

Honestly that's nonsense. Only GK and DA can 2+ spam, and only Chaos Deamons can do flying circus (though that may change with the new tyranid codex).
Mech is here to stay, it's just not ubiquitous.

Ummm...not so on the 2+ spam.

Chaos marines, wolf guard, vanilla marines can all spam 2+ armor spam.

And I am very capable of fielding plasmacannons, guns, and other AP1/2 weaponry.

Honestly, from all the "2+ saves are the shiznit yo!" i hear, it makes me wonder where everyones plasmaguns have been. I could go toe to toe with elite troops who are armed as a bare minimum with a powersword in melee, and lots more scary option... or I could use my plasma cannon. Nice 5++ save on your 40p model there

I know it! at any given time, I have 15 plasma guns in my army... and plenty more AP 1 and 2 in addition... Blood Angel assault termies were nasty, 2+ armor, 3+ inv and feel no pain? ouch

I had that problem with BS assault termies but last game i got enfeeble on with my psyker, and it was nice getting rid of that FNP and causing ID with a str 7 gun. Hopefully when i go against a draigo wing I'll get enfeeble and his pals will get ID'ed by all my plasma.

I rock Draigo wing, 15 rapid firing plasma guns plus the rest of a gunline... Their only option is outshoot me