So, I was just going back over my 6th ed guard reports, and I noticed that two thirds of them were against gunlines, almost all of them mech gunlines. Furthermore, if you take out the games from one particular opponent, it jumps to nearly 3/4 of the games I play. I've been noticing of late in my FLGS as it starts getting started back up for the fall. There's a henchmen mech gunline, and a guard russ gunline, and a waveserpent spam gunline, and so on and so forth.

And, of course, I'm hardly alone in this, I know. Greycrons is a mech gunline, and there's wave serpent spam elsewhere. Tau and tautau and taudar are all gunlines, in various states of being meched. It's pretty clear from a mere surface reading that however much people might have qued about hull points, mech lists still very much are the way to go. The only thing all that different is the addition of fliers, which do, to be fair, behave SORT of like a mech gunline, and, well, regular gunlines.

I've been trying to think about how to handle this of late, and I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the only answer to mech gunlines is... well... mech gunlines. Or regular gunlines. Of course, I'm not interested in playing 40k if I have to play a gunline to avoid getting tabled, so I've been crunching my brain over the past couple of months to try and figure out what exactly is going on.

The first thing I'm noticing about facing against mech gunlines is the problem with time. Because you can't kill the guys inside a transport until you've blown up the transport, you've got to break open the transports - more or less all of them - by about the end of turn 2, and really all of them by the end of turn 3. Because if it gets to turn 4 before you break open the transport, you may have exactly one turn to even attempt to hurt the guys inside. If you can't manage it until turn 5, there might not be the chance you can even engage them at all.

This is made all the worse by the fact that once you blow up the transport, the guys inside get a free 3+ cover save if they want it, or still a cover save if they don't. This means that the fact that they were in a transport will make it take longer to kill the guys inside than if they hadn't had a transport. Whatever casualties they may or may not take from a vehicle explosion are more than mitigated by this durability advantage.

So, if you need to kill those transports, and very quickly, that means shooting them with heavy weapons in a gunline. Or, of course, you can try something that's short ranged, but also very fast. The problem with this, of course, is one of force concentration. The real mobility advantage that 6th ed gives to transports means that anything that attacks a transport is very likely going to be attacking the entire army. There's no way you're going to win a force concentration game with fast units that way. The defensive advantage is just too great.

And this is made worse by the excellent defensive firepower that transports put out nowadays. Plasma mechvets can shoot 8 BS4 plasma shots and a BS4 lascannon when you get close to them. Wave serpent shooting is pretty good, and when you get close you have to deal with a bunch of rending guys getting out. Likewise for henchmen, and trueborn, and, to a lesser extent necron ark lists. And razorbacks. And a bunch of stuff.

Which brings the time issue back in. If your fast unit is going to be able to handle a unit in a transport, they're going to get shot at by the transport and the guys inside, likely a few times, and really not survive. This means, once again, that you've got to blow up the transport BEFORE your fast units get there. Which once again brings us to gunlines. Of course, it could mean things like fliers or deepstrikers, but once again, they show up late.

And to make this all just that much more difficult transports are pretty cheap (or they're expensive, but you get a LOT from them). There's pretty much no points-efficient way of blowing up transports, which means that the harder your opponent spams transports, the WORSE you are as you spam more anti-transport weapons. This leaves you even less able to spend points to handle the guys inside with, who are usually still a potent threat in their own.

The idea of "take something to kill the transport and another thing to kill the guys inside", therefore, doesn't really work. You're assuming that the transport killer kills its transport in time, thus not leaving the unit designated to kill the guys inside to twist. You're assuming that spending hundreds of points on killing a transport and the guys inside is going to work out when your opponent has to spend dozens of points to just take more mech spam. Leaving your opponent more resources, over all, to, say, kill those things you'll use to open up his transports.

So what you need is something that can kill transports quickly enough, AND be decent against the guys inside WITHOUT serious risk of counterattack by better force concentration of your opponents' defensive units.

As best I can tell, the only thing that has anything serious to say about this - the only things that can handle the timing issue and the force concentration issue, and the efficiency issue simultaneously - is guns that you can really only find in a gunline. Because anything that can't handle the concentration issue will see you getting dismantled as your opponent forms up in a C-shape and blows you off the table, while anything that can't handle the timing issue will see elite units being wasted peeling wrappers and getting annihilated by the stuff inside, and anything that can't handle the efficiency issue will get bludgeoned in by their opponent's offensive units while they're spending all their time and points just trying to handle the transports to the exclusion of everything else.

I mean, this is a problem I've been trying to deal with (in various, less-articulated forms) since 5th edition, and 6th ed has clearly seemed to make this problem worse. It doesn't seem to be a game of rock paper scissors, and more of rock scissors scissors. I've seen enough fast armies focused down, and enough horde armies ground down by weight of fire, and enough assault armies just never really getting to do much of anything in assault against mech gunlines. Is really the only way to beat them to join them?


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Or, to put this into a more TLDR version:

In short, mech armies give a big boost to force concentration. You always have to face their whole army at once. They also create a problem with time. You have to blow up the transports before you can hurt anyone inside, which means those transports need to die very quickly. It also has an efficiency problem. It's usually cheaper to spam more stuff in transports than it is to spend points on dedicated anti-transport and dedicated anti-stuff-in-transports.

As best I can tell, the only way of handling this problem is with gunlines. Heavy support slots have a good efficiency of killing power, and with range they start attacking right away to handle the time issue. The range also means you can concentrate your firepower to match your opponent's bunching up. Meanwhile, if you can't handle the efficiency problem, you get killed by whatever else your opponent brought that isn't a transport, if you can't handle the time problem, then you might not kill the guys inside at all, and if you can't handle the concentration problem, you just get focused down.

The question, then, is there a way to handle these three problems without also bringing a gunline? They can do it, but can anything else?

Maybe changing the list building culture? A meeting about how the game could be more interesting and diverse if everyone tried to test new things and abandon the "you shall not pass" doctrine could be arranged. When people get too tuned to one thing, it blends quite hard, turning it basically natural.

Of course, it'll depend on how friendly and 'listenful' (sp?) are the players of your FLGS. If they like to win more than anything, this change would be quite hard to apply.

What in the world is your definition of a gunline? You have listed both static lists and highly mobile lists as gunlines. You even went and threw in flyers which are required to move 18" min a turn... So if you consider all of these lists and then top it with "gunlines" on foot you have asked how to table 3/4 of all armies by turn 4?

If we contain this "gunline" to the traditional definition of a line of gunman and therefore something that will not close on you from all sides. Then your overall answer is positional dominance and containment of your opponent. Jy2 shows this really well in his battle reports. This allows you to apply the real answers to transports and their contents; positioning and special/melee/heavy weapons. Notice the transports have rear armour 10 and they are all doomed if they are hit with a meltagun (even waveserpents will die if they shot their shield). A more complete answer requires specifics like what codex you want to talk about.

A few big pieces of LOS blocking terrain on the center of the field?

From the battle reports I see on the internet most people hasn't resized their terrain to fit the new Riptide/Flyer/Dreadknight/Wraithknight meta. Without terrain that actually blocks LOS this game will quickly be reduced to the question "Who has the biggest guns?"...

I'm currently looking for a new project (taking a break from guard until there is a new codex, so I am a gunline player myself) and I think I may slowly be arriving at MSU SM or CSM (bikes + rhino rush + infiltrate + deep strike) for a change of pace. I'm thinking MSU will make it more likely that most of the army is intact and near/in the enemy deployment zone by turn 2. There is after all a limit to how many rhinos you can pop per turn. MSU also theoretically gives you more "actions" per turn making it more likely you can pop the transport and mop up the contents in a single turn.

I definitely agree the every table needs plenty of LOS-blocking terrain - one side (or both) sitting behind barricades and shooting all game is just boring.

I think I'm a little confused on what you mean by 'gunline' Ailaros. I always thought of gunline to mean units entrenched in static positions, blasting away across the board, hoping to do enough damage before their opponent gets to them to not get obliterated in assault. But you seem to be talking about highly mobile armies as well, including flyer-heavy armies, which makes me think we're defining 'gunline' differently.

You play Chaos, yes? (And guard, too?)

I'll be honest, I run a Salamanders drop pod army, and I'm pretty much always hoping for a mechanized list. Especially ones without Jink. Combat squadded Space Marines, properly done, make a royal mess of enemy transport vehicles (and the units inside, if need be).

I think assault heavy armies can do well here, if tactically sound strategies are used. You can still prevent an enemy unit from even emergency disembarking if you can get enough people around the tank, can't you? That tactic isn't one I've tried to use in this edition.

Another quick question, you mention units in destroyed transports getting a 3+ cover save. How is that happening? Am I wrong in thinking that craters give a 5+? And going to ground makes it a 4+? Am I missing something? Either way, I find the best way to deal with people in a crater is with flamers and hand to hand combat.

Units that are multipurpose (melta-heavy bike squads, sternguard) can really help out, too.

In any event, I hope this helps, at least a little bit.

So, the idea I'm trying to get across with mech gunlines is different from regular gunlines. Regular gunlines just sit there and, unless you're against tau, all you've got to do is get to them, at which point you can push the win button and be done with it. Fast units can get there quickly, as can deepstrikers, etc.

What I'm talking about here isn't that, though. On the one hand, it is a gunline in that it focuses heavily on long-range shooting, or, rather, longer range shooting than most stuff. Also, like a gunline, it could be content without really doing much by means of movement, and it generally doesn't care at all about getting into assault either.

What's different about a mech gunline, though, is that there is that little bit of mobility in there. The ability to back up to delay, and the ability to concentrate killing power better. Meanwhile, the transports give the you-can't-even-attack-the-guys durability, and when they wreck, they give cover, and when they explode, they create area terrain (which you get +2 to your cover save for going to ground in). And it comes at a very points-efficient cost.

Put another way, it's an army that plays like a gunline, where they have long range guns, pick the range to engage you at, and then do nothing but roll dice, but they're unlike gunlines in that customary anti-gunline stuff doesn't work right. Deepstrikers, for example, are up against a time problem that is caused by the troops being embarked, and, due to the strength of them, creates really asymmetric piece trades (drop pod sternguard, for example, has a terrible return rate against mechvets, for example, as sternguard killed by plasma vets are going to cost a LOT more than that chimera they destroyed).

I mean, everything I'm talking about is what made leafblower guard so good back in the day. The torch has passed to other armies, but the same principles are still there. An army that behaves like a gunline, but the transports do a good job of mitigating the weaknesses of gunlines.

Especially when we're talking about strong transports like chimeras and wave serpents that are good on offense with a bunch of ranged dakka AND very strong defensive capabilities of the guys inside. Getting close to longfangs likely means dead longfangs. Getting close to a leafblower means getting killed by plasma mechvets or getting close to those psyflemen means getting prescienced henchmen into oblivion.

And yeah, putting up big terrain pieces can help against gunlines... but they help less against mech gunlines, that can use real mobility to both make use of those same LOS blocking goodness while also being able to keep fire lanes open. It's especially so if we're talking about an army with MSM or skimmers. Without penalty of moving over terrain, they can use the durability advantages of terrain while at the same time being able to mobile gunline. Also, of course, you have units like artillery, which really want LOS blocking terrain for them to shoot over, thus making them a more invincible gunline.


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So to give an example of what I'm talking about. This is a contemporary example from the current eldar thread:


Autarch w/ jetbike

2x 5 Dire Avengers
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

2x 5 Fire Dragons
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

3 Warwalkers w/ dual scatterlasers.


... and people of course have seen like this before. Guard have the artillery+mechvet leafblower, or, to a slightly lesser extent, mechvets and russ spam. DE have whatever version of "the DE list". It may not be as popular, but razorspam was this way, and you can do GK henchmen this way, of course. I've also seen it done with BA fast preds/vindis with some razors or land raiders, and with necron ark/barge spam. Most armies can do some version of this

I don't know, I've faced eldar lists similar to the one you mention, but haven't had a problem.

Well, Ailaros, what sort of lists have you been running lately? Because I'm pretty sure saying 'Deepstrike an entire army of Hammernators' by his stuff' doesn't help you here. I know you play some form of footguard and then CSM (and I have no idea how you run them, other than that you have the Khorne symbol in your signature).

Are vehicles blasphemy to include in your IG list? If not then you could have some Hellhounds bolt from terrain feature to terrain feature lying in wait until it's time to charge forward and melt guys hiding in craters. Going to ground, while giving the blokes a bonus to their cover save, also nerfs their shooting with snap-shots until the end of their following turn--are plasma vets really hitting that much with only 6s? And my BRB says that vehicle wrecks/craters are only 5+ cover...how are they getting 3+?

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:
Well, Ailaros, what sort of lists have you been running lately? Because I'm pretty sure saying 'Deepstrike an entire army of Hammernators' by his stuff' doesn't help you here. I know you play some form of footguard and then CSM (and I have no idea how you run them, other than that you have the Khorne symbol in your signature).

Are vehicles blasphemy to include in your IG list? If not then you could have some Hellhounds bolt from terrain feature to terrain feature lying in wait until it's time to charge forward and melt guys hiding in craters. Going to ground, while giving the blokes a bonus to their cover save, also nerfs their shooting with snap-shots until the end of their following turn--are plasma vets really hitting that much with only 6s? And my BRB says that vehicle wrecks/craters are only 5+ cover...how are they getting 3+?

As the crater is area terrain, going to ground in it will grant you +2 to your cover save, rather than +1. This is under area terrain in the rulebook.

My standard answer is to push the opponent out of position with board control units and then DS something melta like next to the transport's rear. If the opponent stays to the back of the board you will win on objectives if they go forward you pop his tanks (usually with explosions to kill and pin people). The big thing is to occupy and control the board though so that if he shoots at the DS units he can not kill your real threat.

Can I assume that this discussion is related to your other discussion about popping transports? Are you making your opponent take those pinning tests for disembarking from a destroyed transport? Did you realize that a single waveserpent is 120 pts+? This means it is nearly the same price as 2 obliterators or a DS suicide storm troopers. It is true that they can be spammed more than these two options but with good positioning and additional threates on the board this should get you far.

 somerandomidiot wrote:

As the crater is area terrain, going to ground in it will grant you +2 to your cover save, rather than +1. This is under area terrain in the rulebook.

I stand corrected on that matter, then. Having to snap-shot after going to the ground still seems to be a major disadvantage to the unit in most cases. With them stuck in the same place and only hitting on 6's for a turn it seems like you'd be free to dismantled other parts of the gunline--more transports, fire support units, non-pinned squads, etc.--for that round of shooting. Their next turn the guys are stuck cowering in craters snap-shotting at stuff, and then on your next turn you can bring the hammer down on them.

I've found if you can get anything CC oriented into the mech gunline it will wreak havok, the hardest part is getting there.

I play frequently against a DA player and he loves dropping some terminators with thunderhammer/stormshield right next to my basilisk/behind my russes/next to my chimeras. Understandably, not every army can do that, especially the IG who lack the survivability of TEQ's.

As for a specifically IG solution, I definitely do not have a good one. My only semi-feasible idea is mass chimera/vendetta melta vets, although their survivability might not be great, it might be fun to start the game with 6 melta vet squads on the table!

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:Well, Ailaros, what sort of lists have you been running lately?

Well, I'm looking for something more general than specific army advice. It's an abstract problem that crosses most armies, so I'd hate for "play this army in this way" as being the answer.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:Are vehicles blasphemy to include in your IG list?

No. The problem here is a mech gunline, not merely a mech list. I mean, none of what I'm saying would be true about a trukk rush ork army, or a chimera/hellhound highland charge (I actually ran this for awhile), or a land raider rush.

Meanwhile, all of those things I just listed will get ruined by mech gunlines, so while they're not a problem, they're not a solution either.

ansacs wrote:My standard answer is to push the opponent out of position with board control units and then DS something melta like next to the transport's rear.

But how does board control answer the three problems? How does board control open up transports early enough to kill the guys inside? How does this fix the force concentration problem? Deepstrikers are hardly obliged to show up on time or on target, and meanwhile you're getting gunlined. How does this fix the efficiency problem?

ansacs wrote:Did you realize that a single waveserpent is 120 pts+? This means it is nearly the same price as 2 obliterators or a DS suicide storm troopers. It is true that they can be spammed more than these two options but with good positioning and additional threates on the board this should get you far.

Right, there's the spamming issue, but there's also the efficiency problem. A pair of melta stormies are NOT guaranteed to blow up a wave serpent, especially if it's stuck against glance-only shielding. The same is true for obliterators as well. And skimmers basically just have a 5+ (or 4+) cover save all the time. Counting on a pair of obliterators to wreck a wave serpent is risky, to put it best. Relying on deepstrikers, which don't fix the timing, concentrating, or efficiency issues is more likely than not a recipe for disaster.

eclipseoto wrote:I've found if you can get anything CC oriented into the mech gunline it will wreak havok, the hardest part is getting there.

Yeah, I've only rarely seen CC units survive the long-range gunfire and the short-range uber-defensive shooting that follows. Then they manage to blow up a transport or two, and are horribly butchered the next turn by more shooting.

CC doesn't answer the time problem (especially), or the force concentration problem (usually), and while the efficiency issue isn't SO bad, it has serious problems in the effectiveness camp. Spending 117 points on nine CSM to krak grenade a wave serpent doesn't seem that bad, except you're probably never getting 9 CSM into close combat with those wave serpents.

ansacs wrote:Can I assume that this discussion is related to your other discussion about popping transports? Are you making your opponent take those pinning tests for disembarking from a destroyed transport?

Yes, but pinning tests don't always work in my favor (especially if there's an IC in there), and pinning a single squad doesn't pin the entire rest of their army.

As for the other part, yes, it's all part of a long, rolling theory that's been slowly mulling over time. Killing being what's important, gunlines (especially mech gunlines) offering you more killing, gunlines offering you killing for little player skill, low player skill making the game more about luck than skill as skill (and copied netlist strength) becomes so similar it becomes a control variable, tournament players playing a dice game on easy mode, trying to give myself a challenge and a rewarding gaming experience to others. It's all sort of rolling around into a slowly developing systemic theory of 40k.

Last night, I played a game of 40k wherein if you looked at the two lists, you'd know exactly what would happen. It did go exactly as you would have guessed, it was just playing through the motions. It was, flatly, boring, like a lot of the 6th ed games I've played. After all of my thinking about it, I think this is the core of it. Has 40k become a game that's so heavily favored shooting, and long-range shooting at that, and mechanized armies relative to non-mech that you pretty much have the option of helplessly trying to do anything with your minis and play a real game, or adopting a (mech) gunline yourself?

Because if two players playing mech gunlines against each other is really nothing more than a really complicated game of candyland (the players put down their pieces, and do nothing much more than just roll dice and determine the winner), then there's really no point to 40k when I could play any other luck-based game that's more interesting and far less laborious to set up and actually play (like, say, Dominion). If any of the myriad ways I could make things more interesting just get comprehensively shut down by the most boring play style, then I don't know if it's worth it to spend hours setting things up and playing just for the chance of something more than two-player yahtzee with miniatures to happen.

This happens to be happening with my CSM at the moment, but the real tragedy of this for me has been with guard. After a year of playing in this edition, I basically had the option of getting tabled by mech gunlines, or playing a mech gunline myself, in which case I was perpetrating, not merely enabling such inanity.

Moreover if what I'm describing is just how 40k works - it really is just who brought the best mech gunline and rolled luckiest: the game - that it's how the game is supposed to work, then it's a game I don't actually like. It sounds a lot like Axis and Allies to me (hours of drudgery decided by a few dice rolls), which is another game I don't really play. At least that game doesn't have the pretense of meaningful choice.

The more I've been talking about things on dakka, the more I've been slowly driven to this as the problem. Is 40k a ultra-shallow luck game where either you bring one, no-player-skill-required kind of list and are lucky and win, or bring that list and are unlucky, or bring any other kind of list (regardless of player skill), and just lose in a tortured and boring way? Or is that just 6th (well, and 5th) edition? Or is that just what's going on right now? Or is that not what's going on at all?

It's all a rather existential question for a tactics forum, but here's where I think it will be solved.

Have you tried changing it up? Playing something off-the-wall? 40k isn't chess. The problem with formulaic when it comes to 40k is that it leaves you unable to deal with the truly unanticipated. If your local scene is as rote as you say, then a truly unusual list should throw a real monkey wrench into your opponents' plans. Surprise can certainly be a potent weapon, and if your consistent opponents are used to the same thing over and over again, it may be the advantage you need.

I play nurgle.....I enjoy playing against gunlines since most cant hurt me enough by the time im in their face.

Its army dependent.....space wolves and ba players are having issues because they arent adjusting well in sixth.

I know you play guard....al the outflanker? Send a platoon in from the side and split fire?

Its definantly different. Only csm, daemons, and sm seem to have any units that can pull it off.

Jimsolo wrote:Have you tried changing it up? Playing something off-the-wall?

Sure, but what? Playing something different for nothing but the novelty factor is just silly. Different isn't going to solve anything unless it actually solves the problem.

sfshilo wrote:I play nurgle.....I enjoy playing against gunlines since most cant hurt me enough by the time im in their face.

Our local nurgle player actually just stopped playing a month or two ago. The last game I saw him play, tau wiped his most dangerous units off the table right away, and the plague marines struggled to really do anything, only making into range in mid-game with a fraction of his points left, after it was way too late.

Plus, looking at things abstractly, which of the concentration, time, or efficiency problems do they solve? Not really any of them.

sfshilo wrote:I know you play guard....al the outflanker? Send a platoon in from the side and split fire?

Al'Rahem is actually a great example of how this doesn't work.

The guard player splits off a huge chunk of his points into a serious al'rahem threat. The gunliner wipes out half of what the guard player had on the table before al'rahem shows up. Then al'rahem shows up. The mech player (who likely was deploying towards the center of the board anyways), just backs up away from al'rahem and guns him down.

The guard player has squandered time with something in reserve. They have squandered concentration by splitting their army up. They haven't done anything with efficiency because they weren't very effective against such obvious countermeasures in the movement phase.

To give a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, here are two pictures taken a turn apart from one of my games in 5th ed.

Here the bad guys move forward:


And then Al'Rahem shows up and the mech list beads up and pulls away.


And now the BA player is able to focus their firepower on one part of my guard army, leaving al'rahem to do nothing useful this game, and because the BA's guns are longer range, and with better concentration, they're just going to roll up my entire army while I desperately hope to get any weapons in range.

Of course, this game went a little differently because it was BA and it was 5th ed, where you could actually assault stuff. Nowadays, this exact same thing would have happened, except I'd be tabled by shooting.

 Ailaros wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:Have you tried changing it up? Playing something off-the-wall?

Sure, but what? Playing something different for nothing but the novelty factor is just silly. Different isn't going to solve anything unless it actually solves the problem.

Why not try it for the random discovery factor? I'm just spitballing, but you could always stumble across something you hadn't thought would be viable before.

Certainly I've tried different things, but now that I'm slowly getting a clearer picture, I think it can be a bit less up to guess and check.

Plus, better is always different, but different is not always better. Doing random things for the purpose of being random, and thus confusing your opponent into making mistakes just isn't... real.

I mean, ctrl alt del said it best":

A "mech gunline" ...isn't a gunline. It seems like your actual problem is that you think foot armies without transports, Drop Pods, jump packs, or any other form of mobility enhancer should be able to outmaneuver armies that actually spent points on mobility. Why should that be the case?

If your plan is to get in close and come to grips with your opponent, and you don't have any special means of actually doing so, I wouldn't be surprised that you lose to a mobile opponent. In fact, that seems to be basically working as intended to me.

 Clang wrote:
I definitely agree the every table needs plenty of LOS-blocking terrain - one side (or both) sitting behind barricades and shooting all game is just boring.

I disagree, my patented House of Pain was great fun to play.

Kingsley wrote:A "mech gunline" ...isn't a gunline. It seems like your actual problem is that you think foot armies without transports, Drop Pods, jump packs, or any other form of mobility enhancer should be able to outmaneuver armies that actually spent points on mobility. Why should that be the case?

It isn't.

It's the marriage of gunline to the ability to not get completely pinned down thanks to a little bit of mobility that's the problem. Plus, the efficiency problems, timing problems, and concentration problems that this kind of list creates. It's the gunline without gunline drawbacks that's the problem, to put it another way.

Maneuvering so that your short ranged guns can strike hard somewhere is interesting. Maneuvering so that your opponent doesn't get to play the game unless they've got long-ranged guns just more or less sitting there isn't.

The fact that mech gunlines can so easily dismantle other armies with speed, for reasons already stated makes speed itself not a solution to this problem. I've seen plenty of asymmetric piece trades involving deepstrikers against transports and enough bike armies just thrown off the table due to efficiency problems to put much faith in them. Meanwhile, attempting to play a deepstriker or bike army but not really being able to because you just got tabled doesn't really sound like a game to me, much less all that fun of a one.

 Ailaros wrote:
The more I've been talking about things on dakka, the more I've been slowly driven to this as the problem. Is 40k a ultra-shallow luck game where either you bring one, no-player-skill-required kind of list and are lucky and win, or bring that list and are unlucky, or bring any other kind of list (regardless of player skill), and just lose in a tortured and boring way? Or is that just 6th (well, and 5th) edition? Or is that just what's going on right now? Or is that not what's going on at all?

Serious question here: why do you keep playing this game? You've been complaining for months about how 40k is "just a dice game" with no depth, how everyone but you is "playing on easy mode", etc. So why don't you just give up and move on to something else?

I'm not really sure how to respond to this tbh. "Mech gunlines' (aka good mech lists) as you call them have been the strongest armies in the game for multiple editions, the combination of force concentration, firepower (to kill stuff), durability and mobility (to actually win games) has always made them the strongest armies around. Running an infantry based assault list against a decent opponent with a mech list I would have expected to lose almost every game in 5th, 6th has just reinforced this with both changes to the core rules (casualties from the front hurts) and a string of powerful codices.

The classic answer to gunline has always been some sort of disruption. The edition has swung away from that and hth and moved back towards basic units that are shooty.

A large part of that is units can no longer assault after coming in from outflank, limitations to what you can put in reserve (no more all drop armies), and units can no longer assault on the first turn.

No more space wolf scouts charging devastator squads when they come in, no more scout bikes swooping in and busting stationary tanks on the first turn, etc etc.

I think that there are still viable disruption strategies in the game that can be gamebreaking, but I feel like it's easier to just go with the flow and do what everybody else is doing. Why not when there are so many units that are ap2/3 and bypass cover? Why work so hard?

Edit: Yngarl Genestealers...Take 2/3 units. When they show up they can charge out of the terrain piece they showed up in. Add in some hth support and watch how effective it is.

"Mech Gunlines" as you describe them seem like a perfectly logical extension of the rules to me, and personally, I like this idea.

It's not because I'm a fun-sucking TFG but because I prefer to do random things just to see how they work. That being said you can base your army around a tactically sound concept (like these "Mech Gunlines" which are basically how tanks and infantry are used on the modern battlefield) and from there have some extra space for a joker unit. Something different that will throw off your opponent while your own units roll over them.

There are some things you are misinterpreting about these lists.

1) You do not have to break all of them open turn 1. You need to break ~2 of them open each turn so your anti infantry can work on them each turn. If you could do as you suggest that is called tabling by turn 2.

2) Models have to get out of transports to claim or contest objectives. This means if you can swoop in turn 5 with effective melee or anti infantry units you can kill the troops without killing transports. This is the great benefit of bike and flyer armies.

3) Transports are weak to melee. If you can occupy the board properly you can still contain a mechanized army and remove their maneuverability. This is important in a 1-2 punch where your positional dominance units are capable of killing a transport if it gets within 12" of them but are really either durable enough to take the beating (plague marines w/midline ADL, Azzy/tiggy power blobbs) or fast enough to push them into a corner (flesh hounds, spawn, Chaos Daemons Daemon Princes, wraithknight). The second part of the punch is the hard hitters in the form of long range fire support or DS bombs. The long range option is relatively obvious and you said your not interested. The important part of a DS option is that the DSers have to be plentiful enough to cause a major blow, tough enough to not be immediately wiped out, and your positional dominance units need to be something the opponent will loose the game if they do not deal with it.

Some of the ways I do this is to drop 3x3 oblits into the opponent rear or sides after occupying the midboard with ~30 plague marines behind and ADL or terrain. My plague marines have double melta and grenades so getting within 12" of them is death for vehicles meaning the effective area for a mech gunline becomes basically a quarter of the board. I have thus robbed the opponent of maneuverability and I get the first punch. My other list is a Great Unclean One and CSM flying Daemon Prince with those plague marines. Suffice to say when I DS a GUO into a relatively bunched up opponent it is hilarious. I could probably give you better examples with my eldar, SM, or IG lists but I use FW stuff in those or end up trapped in the same gunline or mechanized trap you were complaining about. I also have an idea for a really cool white scars list but I need a bunch of lance and grav gun bits to do it.

The only games I've ever had which involved a truly mechanised gunline were ones where I was the gunline player (72nd Cadian Armoured)--and that was back when the IG codex came out in 5th and I decided it was finally time to follow in my friends' footsteps and give 40k a try. my first floundering steps involved getting tabled constantly by a Thunderwolf Lord (I swear this guy is just unkillable on some days, regardless of how many meltaguns, multilasers, demo-cannons, or lascannons hit him). After that I found that sitting back and blowing crap off the table for most games work extremely well and thus was born the dreaded '72nd Tank Wall'. Nobody liked fighting it and I stopped enjoying running it after a few games.

I've neither played it or against a similar list in 6th, but I remember that deathstar-style units had an ability to consistently krump the army. I still greatly fear Thunderwolves and Thunderwolf-Lords. Units with high strength, good invuln saves, and a good way of getting close were always the hardest things to deal with. Granted, the mobility of a mech gunline allows it to save itself far more times than it should, but it can still be caught.

Unfortunately I'm doubting that most books have a solid counter to mech gunlines other than another mech gunline. IG's disruption units are pretty lacklustre for their points in my opinion, making out-shooting the mech gunline the best choice...and this just encourages the build in the local meta.

As Scuddman said the best answer to a gunline is a disruption--mass drop pod assault, DS'ing Hammernators into the enemy lines, etc.. Infantry-based gunlines tend to experience a domino effect where the enemy then spreads out from the disrupted portion and eats the force away. Mech gunlines can run away from most threats *and* fight at the same time. One way to do this is with very fast (so no Hammernators or pod-borne squads), strong disrupting units (Thunderwolves come to mind here...and little else I've encountered, I'm afraid). Unfortunately these units have to first collide with the gunline (getting shot on the way) then have to chase it down (getting shot on the way)...and I can see where this might end awfully, despite my past history of getting krump'd by Space Wolves doing exactly this.

Assuming one doesn't have the deathstar(s) required to run down a mech gunline like this then the gunline will need to be boxed in--and very early on. Unfortunately this can be hard to do if just moving normally out of the deployment zone as it'll take a few turns of being shot up to get to the enemy, who will likely be moving in response to the advance. I think (12" scouts, infiltrators, and first-turn deep strikers can be used to this effect and be quickly mobilised to form a perimeter around the most important/dangerous part of the gunline. Once that's done one's forces can close in and end it.

I'm currently building an SM army using the Raven Guard Chapter Tactics in which pretty much the whole army scouts 12". I've not tested it much at all, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to use the extra 12" at the start of the game to close in on gunline-style armies (mech or otherwise) without getting half my army shot off the board in the process. Sadly, I don't think most armies have a similar ability to do first-turn close-ins/disruptions like this...

I also fear I may be rambling at this hour. Forgive me if this just comes across as useless drivel. >.<

Easy, do the MONSTER MASH!

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
HQ- 640pts
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon

Troops - 1260
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon

Fast Attack - 100
5x Spore Mines
5x Spore Mines

Made that a while ago. Now, you can be evil and turn those spore mines into 10 sets of Toxin Sacs for all your gaunts or leave them in. Then, deploy those spore mines on your opponents side of the field with say a 3-4 inch gap between mines. You will force them to deploy outside of productive areas like fortifications, and just screw with them more. You won't make many friends, but its a annoying tactic. Also, I fully agree with the helper idea, except you do NOT bring 2. Bring 4. Seriously. 2 Tervigons and spawn per person, because remember; your pulling out 100+ a turn. 2-3 turns with proper amounts of Termigants means that you will have insane amounts of bases to move, and you'll need more than 2 people to move all that quickly.

Add more stuff as needed at higher points games.

Be sure to laugh maniacally as the board rapidly gets flooded in termagants.

Just get into smash range and break stuff while sending a rolling wave of nids to fleshborer everything with less than T8 to death.

If you have cheap enough units, I've found that they can out swarm my mech.

I have been beaten down by massed Krak Grenades.
180 guardsmen with krak grenades.
90 guardsmen ran up each flank to prevent escape and the heavy guns pounded the middle.

It was clear that I didn't have enough firepower to kill 20 squads while in the transports, and to get out was to give up my speed advantage and my protection from the big guns. My shooting was average, but I was over-killing one squad while under killing another. Even a handful of guys with krak grenades take out transports.

In the end, I didn't have enough time to get to his back field, let alone the mid field objectives.


If you opponent backs up for 2 turns, then you pop the transport, it's going to take him ~2 turns to get his infantry back where he started, and that doesn't leave him much time.

-Matt

 Vector Strike wrote:
Maybe changing the list building culture? A meeting about how the game could be more interesting and diverse if everyone tried to test new things and abandon the "you shall not pass" doctrine could be arranged. When people get too tuned to one thing, it blends quite hard, turning it basically natural.

Of course, it'll depend on how friendly and 'listenful' (sp?) are the players of your FLGS. If they like to win more than anything, this change would be quite hard to apply.

First response, and the best answer. No need to go further, every edition of 40k has lacked a composition element unfortunately. IMHO the game should have been built upon a :

1 HQ
2 Troops
1 Elite
1 FA
1 HS
Compulsory, and from their on been +2 troops each time you want to add +1 HQ,EL, FA or HS and all slots would require +1 before getting a 3rd. This is why it's best to talk with your gaming group as Vector Strike suggested in order to come up with your own remedy such as this.

Internet culture is more so to blame. Heck I went on the list building forum the other day and saw a new user asking for suggestions between playing Marines or Eldar. First the thread told him he had to play eldar because they were way better, then they proceeded to tell him to take pretty much 4 DA wave serpent squads all with SL's, then WW's or WK's with a couple bike HQ's and warp spyders... Seriously?

Not to call anyone out on their hobby either but this http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/552797.page probably isn't helping with the culture issue either. The emphasis on games like this is purely who wins and neither of these list require any real level of skill to play despite what the players will tell you. I call it point and click 40k and I agree that its not very fun, but that's just me. If the game is a luck based game and gaining an edge is best done by shaping the bell curve with your list, Lists like the ones from the game I posted are perfect examples, but while they help you predetermine what your odds will be, they literally only utilize 4-5 choices which are then spammed over and over.

Some gamers will insist that this is what makes a gamer "great." Basically they follow codex creep and spam the most efficient under priced units and then insist that it's all player skill involved, Ha. I have more respect for the guy from Montreal that played in my local second round Ard Boys with a rounded out non drop pod salamanders list in a meta of 75% 5th edition grey knights and won the whole tourney! HE was a good player, and it showed.

Unfortunately games like this http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/552797.page get WAY more attention then games like this http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/548443.page despite requiring more thought and care to set up. Not to mention the MUCH higher level of hobby skill and time put into the armies (which ironically makes for better pics).

TLDR:
Make the hobby fun for you and your gaming club, I am sure you could run an league that required a composition element and had missions designed to remedy the inequities that 40K at present is wrought with.

 sfshilo wrote:
I play nurgle.....I enjoy playing against gunlines since most cant hurt me enough by the time im in their face.

Its army dependent.....space wolves and ba players are having issues because they arent adjusting well in sixth.

I know you play guard....al the outflanker? Send a platoon in from the side and split fire?

Its definantly different. Only csm, daemons, and sm seem to have any units that can pull it off.

SW suffer from lack of AA. BA suffer from horrid overcostedness everywhere in the book. There is no "adjusting" to that.

BA are SOL but I actually have a flawless streak with my SW despite lacking AA. Of course I played them for 6 years straight so I generally have had a tactical edge over my opponents I'll admit.

As far as competitive play goes, I also find it not as interesting, but my local playgroup doesn't have many issues with diversity of lists. And yes, fielding a hyper-competitive list will allow you to win more, and is ''easy-mode" against someone who doesn't have a competitive list.

However, pretending that the game is just based on luck once you've got two hyper-competitive lists? That just isn't reflected in reality. The better player is going to win far more often than the inferior player. If this weren't the case, we wouldn't see successful players in tournament play be consistently successful. Anyone can bring tau/tau or taudar to the table, but only the best players are going to be consistently successful. It does not devolve into yahtzee just because you've got two top-tier lists.

I dont think your problem Ailaros is with mech gunlines or mech VS whatever, or taudar or Eldar, or meta shifts or listbuilding.
I think its simply to do with the overall game mechanics.

I've read a lot of your posts and you seem to have a good grounding in things like synergies, redundancy, positional dominance, basic tactical manouvering and all the other good stuff that goes with Wargaming in general.
However Im not convinced 40k as a game overall caters to these.

I havent played many other tabletop wargames but perhaps things like FoW, DSC, Warmachine etc might suit your needs better.

Thats not trying to come across as dismissive, I just dont think you will find that much of what you're after in 40k currently.
Yes different area metas are different, yes good players usually rise to the top, yes we cant sweep 40k as whole into the "uber army crushes all" bracket but as a ruleset I think its lacking in places, significantly in others.

A few spot picked recent threads

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/550739.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/550170.page

have varying opinions but the fact that people are posing the question perhaps gives an insight into things. I acknowledge these threads were around in 3-5th too however.
Did anything change in 6th? Not really imho, hence perhaps, the 40k ruleset both current, past and most likely future wont satiate your needs.

 Talore wrote:
As far as competitive play goes, I also find it not as interesting, but my local playgroup doesn't have many issues with diversity of lists. And yes, fielding a hyper-competitive list will allow you to win more, and is ''easy-mode" against someone who doesn't have a competitive list.

However, pretending that the game is just based on luck once you've got two hyper-competitive lists? That just isn't reflected in reality. The better player is going to win far more often than the inferior player. If this weren't the case, we wouldn't see successful players in tournament play be consistently successful. Anyone can bring tau/tau or taudar to the table, but only the best players are going to be consistently successful. It does not devolve into yahtzee just because you've got two top-tier lists.

Oh yea? Try checking tourney attendance then looking at lists. The same players attend all the same tournaments and are usually thew ones with the easy mode lists. Thats more reason why they are always winning then not. It doesn't help that by far more often then not the gamers who try out a tournament like adepticon for the first time with a "fun list" usually never repeat attend because of the idiotic builds that arrive. Furthermore most taented painters like to hobby a variety of models, so a lot of these "competitive" format tournies have rubbish looking armies in attendance. I'd say 90% or more from my own experience. Next add horrid terrain more often then not, and yea, the same types of individuals generally all attend the same tournies.

Here's an example, Da boys GT is a NY based GT that has composition and sportmanship oh and heaven forbid painting scores, yet none of the big names bother attend.... I wonder why that is? That argument is seriously tired man.Is there strategy? yes to a small degree, the main issue is that when these net lists that are spam hammy and fallow codex creep arrise, the game very much does just become a matter of who has the better bell curve in their list.

Seriously people? I am dumbfounded by all the people on this site who come into a strategy thread and get out their soap box to preach their same position all the time. The question wasn't should I stop 40K or random rant against power gaming. It was how to play against mechanized gunlines without resorting to a gunline.

Honestly, pods work very well against mech lists IMO
Drop combi sternguard, with one target, (we'll use mechvet guard)
x5 Meltas, x5 flamers

They land, combat squad, making sure each seperates for a clean line of fire. Fire 4/5 meltas, chimera is gone, likely blown up, they take casualties from the explosion, then hose them down in promethium 3/5 flamers which ignores their armor AND cover

plasma guns never fire, 70 points to kill off the chimera, squad, and their special weapons, a good trade.

Repeat this 3 times first turn, 3 dead chimeras, along with 30 dead guardsmen, barring something really bizzare.

Thats a lot less firepower to deal with, esp if you focused on a single flank, which with pods is wise.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
If you have cheap enough units, I've found that they can out swarm my mech.

I have been beaten down by massed Krak Grenades.
180 guardsmen with krak grenades.
90 guardsmen ran up each flank to prevent escape and the heavy guns pounded the middle.

It was clear that I didn't have enough firepower to kill 20 squads while in the transports, and to get out was to give up my speed advantage and my protection from the big guns. My shooting was average, but I was over-killing one squad while under killing another. Even a handful of guys with krak grenades take out transports.

In the end, I didn't have enough time to get to his back field, let alone the mid field objectives.


If you opponent backs up for 2 turns, then you pop the transport, it's going to take him ~2 turns to get his infantry back where he started, and that doesn't leave him much time.

-Matt

I think this is very true. I don't run my guard with any chimeras but they've all got krak grenades and they all charge across the table while my big guns take on stuff they cant hurt.

Also how does flying circus fit into the "only mech gunlines work" narrative. Or the inevitable increase in bike armies, who can, after all, get close to the transport, shoot it to death and charge the squad inside in a single turn.

I hope you don't quit playing 40k because I've admired your posts and approach to the game for a long time Ailaros.

cheers

So to give an example of what I'm talking about. This is a contemporary example from the current eldar thread:


Autarch w/ jetbike

2x 5 Dire Avengers
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

2x 5 Fire Dragons
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

3 Warwalkers w/ dual scatterlasers.

 Xerics wrote:
So to give an example of what I'm talking about. This is a contemporary example from the current eldar thread:


Autarch w/ jetbike

2x 5 Dire Avengers
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

2x 5 Fire Dragons
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

3 Warwalkers w/ dual scatterlasers.

Whre are the troops in this list? This isnt a legal list without troops.

Wow I totally read them as fire dragons...

 Xerics wrote:
Wow I totally read them as fire dragons...

Did you not notice the 2x5 in the listings? There are two 5-man squads of DA and 2 5-man squads of FD

Back on topic:

So Ailaros pointed out that close range shooty units have to commit to destroying transports, so are then retaliated on against the rest of the army.

He's absolutely right. Because that's so, you want to design your short ranged stuff with 3 principles in mind:

1. Target saturation. This means your army cannot be designed to just send one unit at a time. Your whole army needs to be designed to show up in the same place at the same time and most importantly present a credible threat the turns after they show up. Your whole army facing theirs works a lot better than one unit that does very little, then gets wiped off the board. Because of killpoints, pawn sacrifice isn't a very effective tactic in some missions...

2. Damage mitigation. The obvious one is cover, the 2nd obvious one is to place your units so that return firepower is limited, but against units with range/move and shoot that can be difficult. There are also things like techmarines, providing cover with transports, dark shrouds, 4+i relic, azrael, feel no pain mechanics, etc etc.

3. Disruption. In shooty gunlines, there's usually a specific unit or two that is the MOST dangerous because they can wipe out entire units by themselves. The most obvious thing is to kill those units, but sometimes that's easier said than done. The 2nd thing is disruption: blinding them, getting them locked into hth, blocking their LOS, limiting their movement...these are all things that many players don't really incorporate into their lists or strategies. Of course, proper counter play can limit the damage that disruption units can do, but when you combine all 3 strategies together, you can give gunlines a run for their money.

Is it failproof? Of course not, but I watch a lot of games where I feel the person that lost to the gunline lost because he didn't do those things I mentioned above. And you knkow what? I usually hear sour grapes about losing to a gunline instead of self reflection on what they could do better.

Ironically flying circus armies can do all of the above, but some might argue that's just a different form of lame mech strategy. Your mileage will vary.

 scuddman wrote:
Back on topic:

So Ailaros pointed out that close range shooty units have to commit to destroying transports, so are then retaliated on against the rest of the army.

He's absolutely right. Because that's so, you want to design your short ranged stuff with 3 principles in mind:

1. Target saturation. This means your army cannot be designed to just send one unit at a time. Your whole army needs to be designed to show up in the same place at the same time and most importantly present a credible threat the turns after they show up. Your whole army facing theirs works a lot better than one unit that does very little, then gets wiped off the board. Because of killpoints, pawn sacrifice isn't a very effective tactic in some missions...

2. Damage mitigation. The obvious one is cover, the 2nd obvious one is to place your units so that return firepower is limited, but against units with range/move and shoot that can be difficult. There are also things like techmarines, providing cover with transports, dark shrouds, 4+i relic, azrael, feel no pain mechanics, etc etc.

3. Disruption. In shooty gunlines, there's usually a specific unit or two that is the MOST dangerous because they can wipe out entire units by themselves. The most obvious thing is to kill those units, but sometimes that's easier said than done. The 2nd thing is disruption: blinding them, getting them locked into hth, blocking their LOS, limiting their movement...these are all things that many players don't really incorporate into their lists or strategies. Of course, proper counter play can limit the damage that disruption units can do, but when you combine all 3 strategies together, you can give gunlines a run for their money.

Is it failproof? Of course not, but I watch a lot of games where I feel the person that lost to the gunline lost because he didn't do those things I mentioned above. And you knkow what? I usually hear sour grapes about losing to a gunline instead of self reflection on what they could do better.

Ironically flying circus armies can do all of the above, but some might argue that's just a different form of lame mech strategy. Your mileage will vary.

Flying Daemon Princes are not mechanised, by definition

I can see hard-assault armies doing quite well against mech spam- Screamerstar, Flying Circus, my own patent Black Knight Spam list. Other than this, no. 40k is game about extremes.

 scuddman wrote:
Back on topic:

So Ailaros pointed out that close range shooty units have to commit to destroying transports, so are then retaliated on against the rest of the army.

He's absolutely right. Because that's so, you want to design your short ranged stuff with 3 principles in mind:

1. Target saturation. This means your army cannot be designed to just send one unit at a time. Your whole army needs to be designed to show up in the same place at the same time and most importantly present a credible threat the turns after they show up. Your whole army facing theirs works a lot better than one unit that does very little, then gets wiped off the board. Because of killpoints, pawn sacrifice isn't a very effective tactic in some missions...

2. Damage mitigation. The obvious one is cover, the 2nd obvious one is to place your units so that return firepower is limited, but against units with range/move and shoot that can be difficult. There are also things like techmarines, providing cover with transports, dark shrouds, 4+i relic, azrael, feel no pain mechanics, etc etc.

3. Disruption. In shooty gunlines, there's usually a specific unit or two that is the MOST dangerous because they can wipe out entire units by themselves. The most obvious thing is to kill those units, but sometimes that's easier said than done. The 2nd thing is disruption: blinding them, getting them locked into hth, blocking their LOS, limiting their movement...these are all things that many players don't really incorporate into their lists or strategies. Of course, proper counter play can limit the damage that disruption units can do, but when you combine all 3 strategies together, you can give gunlines a run for their money.

Is it failproof? Of course not, but I watch a lot of games where I feel the person that lost to the gunline lost because he didn't do those things I mentioned above. And you knkow what? I usually hear sour grapes about losing to a gunline instead of self reflection on what they could do better.

Ironically flying circus armies can do all of the above, but some might argue that's just a different form of lame mech strategy. Your mileage will vary.

I think scuddman is on the right track, here.

What I'm getting as the definition of a gunline is something that uses almost exclusively long-ranged firepower and actively avoids close-range engagement. I think the real lament here is that gunlines have in particular gotten better at avoiding engagement, usually by being mechanized, and that even when they have to get close they still have effective weapons (rending Avengers, Plasma Vets, Henchmen, etc) as fairly cheap throw-ins.

Again, I think scuddman is on the right track, especially with saturation. When you get in close to a gunline, they have two options: run or shoot. Since they generally have great range, they can shoot an awful lot. If you only provide a single viable target, they'll just focus it down and wait for the next. If you present three or four viable targets, the odds are not in their favour for taking out everything before they're forced to play the short game. On the flip side, if they run, they usually have severely reduced firepower. You end up gaining ground with fewer losses and can hopefully threaten again the next turn if appropriate.

Damage mitigation is good but maybe not directly necessary. Mass numbers is basically a form of mitigation. Of course, having a portable 4++ never hurts. . .

Disruption. It would be great if pinning were something you could do consistently, wouldn't it? If a sniper squad could actually *pin down* a unit for a turn or two, they might be worth taking. As is, not too many options for this come to mind unless your opponent left an opportunity to strike at a valuable unit. Taking out Tau markerlights is good, taking out Farseers (or any support psyker) would be great but they're likely to be well-protected, IG command squads, etc. . .

Part of the problem is that you probably want some sort of long-ranged option, yourself, which will help you disrupt. Thankfully, this can count as saturation, if it's of similar type to the attacking group of units. Advancing with Dreadknights? Having Psyflemen makes them wonder where to aim the Lascannons.

I think the key is mobility and timing. It will help you with the timing issue, it'll help mitigate damage if you can hide behind terrain, and it can let you suddenly concentrate your forces on one point for saturation. The real trouble comes in when your gunline *also* has mobility, like Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Tau. Fast skimmers, man, they can bolt right out of your close-range weaponry and pick up a 4+ (or better) on the way. Sure that means they don't fire for a turn, but what are the odds you'll be able to threaten them like that two turns in a row? With bikes, maybe? Then there's a danger of losing your concentration and saturation as your force gets dragged around the board.

I think where my rambling has lead me is that most gunlines can be handled with a flexible and varied list and proper saturation (which should be an element in any list). Fighting the two armies that apparently dominate tournaments, though, is another beast. To take out Eldar Serpentspam, you need to be able to threaten or harm them consistently, which practically necessitates long-range weaponry. Of course, that'll be targeted right away, so you need a defense or "even more dakka". Going down that road sure seems to lead to a gunline, wave serpents, or marker lights.

Well, when the next Ork codex comes out and Snikrot gets to come on any board edge, with Move Through Cover, fleet, and the special ability to assault the turn he arrives with 2 BikerBosses in tow, then we'll see less gunlines, mech or otherwise.

For now the way the boyz do it are:

Lootas, Shootas, NobBikerz, and Lobbas (for character sniping)

Bikes speed forward up to 24" per turn while covering boyz walking/running forward while the Lootas hammer vehicles and key troops such as Pathfinders. I've lost one game in the last 15 months using a variation o these units.

CSM have this thing called Screamer Star.

IG still have the LRBT, not perfect but enough of them will kill most no fliers.

TWC with Wolf lords don't seem to be doing as well so charge 8 pt wolfs at them and go for rear armor assaults.

Hide Necrons scarabs in terrain. Advance through cover. Wraiths!!!

DS some DC in a Redeemer or Crusade into Terrain. Don't get out first turn. Or use that Thunderhawk wannabe and DS with some DOA and a Dread in the claw.

TFC Tremor shots!

Swamp them with the cheapest demon units. 5+ inv FTW.

10 Terigons! 90 gargoyles jumping all around the board. 9 DakkaFexes, something will get through.

Actually I should have mentioned this first since its probably the best counter (yes my BikerNobz are jealous): Whitescars!!!

Oh only if I didn't swear off SM's for life. Whitescars are so juicy!

That's off the top of my head, I could come up with more given time.

Play on a Cities of Death-like board. Ruined downtown is no place for Gunline!

So, a lot here. I've been reading everything, but I'll reply to only the stuff that's strictly on-topic for now.

The first is the idea of saturation, but that's what I was already talking about with the force concentration problem. For hordes, for example, it's a problem of space. You're not packing 150 guardsmen into the same footprint as an eldar army of 4 wave serpents and two wraithknights. Long range shooting means your opponent gets to concentrate his killing power, while you'll have units that you're going to be desperate just to get in range to be able to attack at all. There just isn't enough space without getting into suicidal coherency against blast and template weapons. This is all exacerbated by the fact that the mech gunline is more moble, so they can always make sure a big part of your army isn't doing anything while every part of their army always is.

Meanwhile, mobile units have a problem with force concentration on the axis of time as well as space. For example, if you're bringing in deepstrikers, there is no guarantee that they arrive on turn 2, much less by the time that anything else that starts on the table manages to make it up to them to meet up. Plus, you are far from guaranteed that deepstrikers won't scatter out of position, or that they won't mishap, or get killed by interceptor fire.

And even if we ignore the time issue (though more than once I've had flamer stormtroopers land somewhere next to a transport ready to flame the guys inside only to have the transport remained in tact), we still have the efficiency problem. Bikes are a great example of this exact problem, actually. At least in the CSM codex, you have to spend 220 points for a pair of meltaguns, some krak grenades, and a bit of bludgeoning power. That's no small chunk of points, and you don't get a LOT of killing power for it (compared to what the defenders in transports are going to have, much less at all). You get some help with the time issue, but that's about it.

Meanwhile, per point, the bikes aren't as survivable as their opponents are killy for the same number of points. You can't just shove a bunch of stuff at a mech gunline and expect it to survive to be able to do very much. I've seen 80 guardsmen disappear in two turns more than once, and I've seen a bike army all but tabled in two turns. Whatever you're paying those extra points for, it's just not nearly as good as having more killing power. The gains you make by more speed or more durability don't outweigh the gains you would have had if you had killed your opponent's stuff before they had a chance to kill you.

Maybe it's new wound allocation and new cover save rules from 6th ed, or maybe it's the new codices, or what, I don't know, but you can't outlast a gunline anymore, especially one that has the ability to keep you out of reach, thanks to extra mobility, has the ability to concentrate their force better (thanks to the mobility, but it's also the nature of defense in a non-fog-of-war environment).

There are a lot of solutions that fix one of the three problems of time, concentration, and efficiency, but you kind of need to, at an army-wide level at least, fix all three.

If you fix the concentration issue, but it takes awhile for everything to get concentrated, then your opponent can just work towards tabling you while you wait, and you might not have enough time to break everyone out of their rides, especially if your opponent knows how to fall back appropriately. He can also take advantage of your efficiency problem because you had to spend hundreds of points on stuff just to get them to the battle - just to be able to attack - while your opponent has already been attacking with weapons, turn one, for free, because he doesn't have to pay extra for that mobility (or whatever).

Meanwhile, you can't exactly straight up reverse these problems either. If you pin your mech gunline opponent into his deployment zone for the first few turns, that's great, until he tables you and wins by TKO. Or he has a couple small units of jetbikes (or whatever) that zoom onto objectives at the end of the game. Or it's not even a many-objectives game, and he still has enough mobility for chimeras to spend a turn or two getting somewhere to score, or worse, skimmers. Or, because he's already beaten up your army, he can now kind of just do whatever he wants, especially if he's not that damaged himself. He could always just choose to go for a tie and win on secondaries, for example. Against good opponents with decent mobility, you need to have appreciable stuff left on the table to win. Once you start taking horrific, unsustainable casualties by the end of turn 2 or 3, your ability to DO anything, and influence the game has already been curtailed relative to your opponent.

And that's really a part of the timing problem. I've played against gunlines many a time so far in 6th ed (as mentioned, a big majority of my games), and many, dare I say most, were already a foregone conclusion who would win by the end of turn 3. Sometimes you could tell who won by the end of turn 1 - the rest was just mopping up...

And that's part of the nature of gunlines. They kill so much so fast that they shut down your ability to do stuff because you just don't have the necessary pieces left on the table anymore. Add to this the one-two nature of transports, where you have to peel open the wrappers and THEN kill the guys inside, when combined with the time pressure against gunlines at all, it can be a struggle just to break open just the transports (much less handle everything else in your opponent's army) in the seriously truncated time constraints you have.

I don't see how maybe-they'll-turn-up-on-time deepstrikers or a suicide bike charge is going to fix the time problem, much less the efficiency one, and unless you're playing one of the few, proper, low-model-count, can-get-everything-in-now armies, like ravenwing or drop pods, I don't see how you fix the concentration problem as well.

The more I think about this the more the idea of *general* solutions to this sort of min-maxed vehicle gunline seems to be a myth. I do think there are some solid ways to beat it, granted, but each way is specific to a codex/build which is problematic for TAC lists. Also, the specific type of mech gunline one is fighting also considerably changes how it needs to be fought, I think. There is a huge difference between a Wave Serpent and a Chimera--one is the child of cheap AV 12-10-10 transport and a bunker, while the other is pretty much an skimmer Main Battle Tank that can hold more people inside it than a Land Raider. They also tend to have very different payloads.

The Chimera tends to hold a 10-man veteran squad with 3 special weapons and *maybe* a heavy weapon, whom utilise the whopping 6 fire ports on the vehicle to really give the Chimera its teeth--without them the Multilaser is fairly meh at BS3 and the hull weapon either even more meh (HB) or avoidable (Heavy Flamer). The vehicle itself is not particularly durable, with AV 10 sides--and it is not very difficult to get side shots on Chimeras once your army starts moving, nor are multilasers (even when massed) particularly frightening--most vehicles will shrug it off and most infantry will either be too numerous to care or have good enough armour to avert crippling casualties. The scary weapons inside the Chimera are either meltaguns (12") or plasma guns (24" for one shot, 12" for double-tap), neither of which is optimised for blowing away enemy armies from clear across the board, so it's the other units in the enemy army doing most the killing on the first 1-2 turns. Knocking out the big guns early on, then, really helps when having to march/drive up to the Chimeras. Some armies (like IG) have to do this by repaying in kind; hunkering down and blasting the enemy until it's safer to advance--and unfortunately I'm fairly certain that IG's best bet is to have at least a 'half-gunline'. Other armies can play different tricks. Deepstriking 10 Hammernators with no-scatter Belial right in the midst of the enemy's castle is going to krump some Russes or Basilisks and keep things busy there for a good while, for instance. Once it's time to pop the Chimeras things get pretty dicey. Most of the time I think one just has to rely on being able to pop the tank with their AT shooting and then having a nearby unit nuke (preferably with teardrop templates) the vets that come out. Sure, sometimes things don't always work out and the Chimera will stubbornly refuse to yield...but that's a dice game for you. Sometimes the plasmavets will melt themselves, too. It should also be noted that a Chimera has no ability whatsoever to fly over any terrain save for water features, of all things. The vets inside a Chimera will inflict casualties once you advance too close, but they can be boxed into a bad situation and be unable effectively utilise vehicle movement for self-preservation if you do some canny manoeuvering.

Wave Serpents, on the other hand, tend to be configured in a way opposite that of Chimeras. Whereas the Chimera is a cheap transport filled with a killy core, the Wave Serpent is often a through-and-through tank with a small, squishy core (minimum DA squads, though Fire Dragons may be found in them, too, and these can be much more dangerous). A friend of mine runs a very annoying Eldar list and while he doesn't play gunline-style, he does have plenty of serpents with 5-man DA squads. In my experience pretty much anything can drop MSU DA teams like they're hot regardless of the cover the DA might end up hiding in. Thus, the headache of fighting a Wave Serpent is mostly the vehicle's fault and usually has little to do with what it might be carrying (until it's time to nab objectives, that is). Being fast and a skimmer the Wave Serpent can maintain a wonderful rate of fire while constantly putting more distance between it and an advancing enemy--and it can even fly over enemies trying to trap it. Unfortunately, the only passably general strategy for efficiently killing Wave Serpents without losing an ungodly amount of models by chasing it is something along the lines of 'bombard it until it stops working,' which seems to be exactly the type of playstyle we're suppose to be avoiding here. I've always killed them with a mass, entire-army Deathwing Assault and juicy rear hits...and, well, that's just not something most armies can do. Even drop pod armies have to put half their stuff into reserve...which usually means more serpents still around after turn 1.

I think you might be underestimating the durability of a chimera a bit. Chimeras are mobile, so they always have the option to not point AV12 at stuff, and if you're that spread out that you can go fishing for side hits anyways, that means you've got terrible force concentration, which is bad against both gunlines and mech lists. Assuming AV12 partially obscured by a ruins, you need 9 lascannon hits to reliably knock one out. That's not exactly flimsy. Nor are 9 lascannon hits cheap. And that's just one chimera knocked out.

Of course, that's before the you-can't-pen-me, cover-always-on wave serpents that have units of meltagunners or mass fortune rending...

Anyways, what's really damaging is how they interlock. As El Cheesus notes, the worst of these ultra-defensive units are pretty cheap, so you don't have to skimp much on long-range killing power to take them. Melta mechvets are only 155 points apiece, and blasterborne in a venom or henchmen in chimera are even cheaper. Wave serpents are more expensive, but the wave serpents themselves ARE a long-range gun platform.

So, what really kills, then, is the way cheap defensive units interlock with those long range units. At range, that medusa spam is going to hurt, but if you drop 10 hammernators nearby, well, medusas still shoot at short range. Except now you've also got to deal with those cheap plasma mechvets. The chimeras drive up and form a wall, blocking you from assaulting the artillery (which scoots away), and then those two 3x plasma gun+PPs mechvet squad and their chimeras kill half the squad in a volley. Rather, the other half, because those mechvets were only 330 points. It probably took only a part of the rest of his army to finish the termies, and even if they didn't, so what? You're going to kill a chimera or two, tops in the next turn.

Of course, this shouldn't be surprising, as it falls into all three problems.

TImewise, even if the terminators survived, maybe they don't arrive until turn 3 (or 4), and maybe they scatter away so they'll need a turn of running just to get anywhere near their target, or are delayed by a mishap. Then they don't do anything the turn they land. Then they only manage to break open the transport. The game could be over before they swing their first hammer against a guardsman.

Concentration, of course, is terrible. 500 points of terminators right there against your opponent's entire army? Of course they're going to get gunned down. You just don't have the same number of points in the same place as he does. Then you watch as you get shot at at BS4, then they overwatch, then they shoot you again, then they overwatch again. You're getting phase after phase of beating before you kill your first real target. Odds are the termies will be wiped by then anyways.

Efficiency is also terrible. 500 points just for the CHANCE to kill maybe a 55 point chimera. Maybe two if you're lucky. This is a VERY asymmetric piece trade. Even if you're talking about units that are better at this, and are attacking juicier tark, you're still generally not doing better than breaking even, and that's even if your opponent leaves things exposed. And it still doesn't solve the time or concentration problems.

And you also note the concentration problem with drop pods. Half the pods show up and wipe out some vehicles. The troops in the transport/other stuff (say, 3/4 of his army), wipes out the 1/2 of your army that landed. Then the other half of your army shows up on an uncertain time table and is gunned down by a still-superior force. It sort of, but not completely solves the concentration issue, and sort of, but not completely solves the time issue, and it's a bum on efficiency. Yes, drop pods are cheap, but sternguard aren't.

 Ailaros wrote:
I think you might be underestimating the durability of a chimera a bit. Chimeras are mobile, so they always have the option to not point AV12 at stuff, and if you're that spread out that you can go fishing for side hits anyways, that means you've got terrible force concentration, which is bad against both gunlines and mech lists.

I disagree. Spreading out and "dual-firebase" tactics can be extremely effective in the right circumstances. Further, outflanking units and Flyers can often hit side armor on the turn they come in. In practice I consider Chimeras to be AV10 rather than AV12 because of how easy it is to get side armor shots on them in this edition.

 Ailaros wrote:
Assuming AV12 partially obscured by a ruins, you need 9 lascannon hits to reliably knock one out. That's not exactly flimsy. Nor are 9 lascannon hits cheap. And that's just one chimera knocked out.

You need 9 lascannon hits to kill a Chimera by Hull Point damage if it's in 4+ cover and you're shooting its front armor. But lascannons aren't for killing by Hull Point damage, and both AV12 and 4+ cover are dubious assumptions.

Further, there are other weapons that are more effective if you do have to dig Chimeras out of cover with their front armor facing you. Barrages, for instance, will hit them on AV10 rather than 12 and likely ignore cover. The Thunderfire Cannon, for instance (not a strong anti-tank choice), is a serious threat to any Chimera chassis vehicle. If your initial round is a hit, you've basically scored 4 strength 6 hits on side armor (or 4 strength 5 hits on side armor if you really need to ignore cover thanks to Night Fighting and smoke or something). In the era of Hull Points, that is quite dangerous!

 Ailaros wrote:
Of course, that's before the you-can't-pen-me, cover-always-on wave serpents that have units of meltagunners or mass fortune rending...

There are many ways to deal with Wave Serpents. If you're forcing them to keep their shields up, you're probably already winning.

 Ailaros wrote:
Anyways, what's really damaging is how they interlock. As El Cheesus notes, the worst of these ultra-defensive units are pretty cheap, so you don't have to skimp much on long-range killing power to take them. Melta mechvets are only 155 points apiece, and blasterborne in a venom or henchmen in chimera are even cheaper. Wave serpents are more expensive, but the wave serpents themselves ARE a long-range gun platform.

So, what really kills, then, is the way cheap defensive units interlock with those long range units. At range, that medusa spam is going to hurt, but if you drop 10 hammernators nearby, well, medusas still shoot at short range. Except now you've also got to deal with those cheap plasma mechvets. The chimeras drive up and form a wall, blocking you from assaulting the artillery (which scoots away), and then those two 3x plasma gun+PPs mechvet squad and their chimeras kill half the squad in a volley. Rather, the other half, because those mechvets were only 330 points. It probably took only a part of the rest of his army to finish the termies, and even if they didn't, so what? You're going to kill a chimera or two, tops in the next turn.

Why would you assume deep striking Terminators were a good choice for breaking a wall of plasma guns?

 Ailaros wrote:
And you also note the concentration problem with drop pods. Half the pods show up and wipe out some vehicles. The troops in the transport/other stuff (say, 3/4 of his army), wipes out the 1/2 of your army that landed. Then the other half of your army shows up on an uncertain time table and is gunned down by a still-superior force. It sort of, but not completely solves the concentration issue, and sort of, but not completely solves the time issue, and it's a bum on efficiency. Yes, drop pods are cheap, but sternguard aren't.

If only transports were so protective! I've found that usually much the reverse occurs-- when you shoot transports with optimal weapons for the job, Shaken and Stunned results on the transports neutralize their passengers for the next turn, allowing you to kill the transport in one turn and then the passengers in the next.

This is actually critical to the puzzle of breaking the "mech gunlines" that you talk about. When dealing with transports, you ideally want a large number of penetrations from high-AP weapons, thus maximizing your chance of getting Shaken or Stunned results and negating the transported unit for a turn. Low-AP weapons may kill vehicles more reliably, but torrents of high-AP fire are much better when dealing with transport vehicles and Wave Serpents in particular.

Kingsley wrote:Spreading out and "dual-firebase" tactics can be extremely effective in the right circumstances. Further, outflanking units and Flyers

Dual firebase? You mean gunline.

And how do fliers fix the concentration, efficiency or time issues any better than deepstrikers?

Kingsley wrote:This is actually critical to the puzzle of breaking the "mech gunlines" that you talk about. When dealing with transports, you ideally want a large number of penetrations from high-AP weapons

Well, sure, in a perfect world you'd have an army of only great weapons that were always in range and facing against your opponent's weakest spots. But this isn't a perfect world.

How do you get lots of penetrations with both high-S AND bad AP weapons? At what cost? With what means of concentration? Quickly enough?

Isn't the solution to this rather simple? All the transports you are having problems with are AV 12, just bring more autocannons (or your army's equivalent). Focus on glancing out rather than going for pens. With wave serpents this is especially effective. Also, autocannons tend to have good range, so the mobility problem you are mentioning is less of an issue. Isn't that how people did it in 5th?

NinjaStars wrote:Isn't the solution to this rather simple? just bring more autocannons

... which would be defeating a mech gunline... with a gunline.

That's the opposite of the entire point of this thread. If all I wanted to do was shoot down wave serpents or raiders, I'd just play guard and bring a hydra line. Or whatever. But what if you don't want to play a gunline whether because you think it's a loathsome playstyle that ensures boring, non-tactical games, or because you want to play an army that really uses the movement phase, or close combat, or because you're playing an army that doesn't gunline well? How do you beat the mech gunline WITHOUT a gunline?

Then what style do you want to play? I know you want general solutions, what general type of army is being denied by the resurgence of mech?

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:Spreading out and "dual-firebase" tactics can be extremely effective in the right circumstances. Further, outflanking units and Flyers

Dual firebase? You mean gunline.

No, I mean dual firebase. This can be as simple as a las Predator or Broadside team in either board corner and is separate from your maneuver elements. I don't really understand why you insist on calling many non-gunline things "gunlines."

 Ailaros wrote:
And how do fliers fix the concentration, efficiency or time issues any better than deepstrikers?

Flyers greatly add to force concentration because in practice they come in wherever you want and attack whatever you want-- unlike Deep Strikers, who are very constrained by smart deployment and play.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:This is actually critical to the puzzle of breaking the "mech gunlines" that you talk about. When dealing with transports, you ideally want a large number of penetrations from high-AP weapons

Well, sure, in a perfect world you'd have an army of only great weapons that were always in range and facing against your opponent's weakest spots. But this isn't a perfect world.

How do you get lots of penetrations with both high-S AND bad AP weapons? At what cost? With what means of concentration? Quickly enough?

By taking the right weapons and firing them at the right units? Tesla destructors, autocannons, assault cannons, and both Tau and Imperial missiles generally produce good results in my experience, with meltas, lascannons, grav weapons, heavy rail rifles, etc. to pinch hit. These are readily available on mobile units. Further, given the ample access to Tank Hunters and Ignores Cover in this edition, I find that dealing with vehicles is generally easier than ever.

You can add more autocannons without doing a gunline. Drop pod termies or dreads with autocannons, Tau crisis suits with missile pods. Just load your army with as many str 7 weapons as possible.

If you're complaining about the ineffectiveness of assault in 6th, I feel your pain, I started this game with orks and shelved them due to assault now sucking, but thems the breaks. Hopefully when the tyranid and ork codexes drop we'll get good assault armies again.

Leman Russ Vanquisher or Medusa takes em out pretty easily. Leman Russ especially because it's invulnerable to the things you're mentioning.

And don't respond with "herpderp that's a gunline too". It isn't it's just a few units.

NinjaStars wrote:Then what style do you want to play? I know you want general solutions, what general type of army is being denied by the resurgence of mech?

Non-gunline. Mech or otherwise. I'm really trying to find anything, otherwise. Well, anything other than "play this one army in this one way", hopefully. I'm trying to keep things abstract so that those abstract principles could be applied to any army.

Kingsley wrote:No, I mean dual firebase. This can be as simple as a las Predator or Broadside team in either board corner and is separate from your maneuver elements. I don't really understand why you insist on calling many non-gunline things "gunlines."

Since when is broadsides parked in cover not a gunline unit?

More importantly, how is a pair of predators going to dismantle a serious gunline? Those couple of units will be neutralized right away, leaving your army in the same predicament it was in before, but now with fewer points spent on it.

Of course, you could go as far as was mentioned on the last page and say that you should do basically a gunline with a single unit or two that's not, but I don't see how a mostly-gunline is a solution to an all-gunline. And even then, it sort of defeats the point. Defeating a mech gunline with a 90% gunline instead of a 100% gunline is still 90% not what I'm looking for here.

Kingsley wrote:Flyers greatly add to force concentration because in practice they come in wherever you want and attack whatever you want-- unlike Deep Strikers, who are very constrained by smart deployment and play.

But fliers arrive late, and they'll concentrate your army for roughly 1 turn before they're forced to fly off the board, turn to face not where you want them, or drop into hover mode and get blown away. Depending on the situation, they're not even that great at efficiency either, especially as more AA comes into play.

Kingsley wrote:Tesla destructors, autocannons, assault cannons, and both Tau and Imperial missiles generally produce good results in my experience, with meltas, lascannons, grav weapons, heavy rail rifles, etc. to pinch hit. These are readily available on mobile units.

Most of them are available on gunline units, you mean. Plus, you're talking about one possible strategy that, in perfect situations might do the job against one part of the mech gunline.

Start talking more generally, and about the problems of efficiency, time, and concentration, which just saying "take meltaguns" or "take grav weapons" doesn't address, and we'll be getting somewhere.

NinjaStars wrote:You can add more autocannons without doing a gunline. Drop pod termies or dreads with autocannons, Tau crisis suits with missile pods. Just load your army with as many str 7 weapons as possible.

But drop pods have the timing and concentration issues. Autocannon dreads and assault cannon termies have terrible efficiency problems.

DarknessEternal wrote:Leman Russ Vanquisher or Medusa takes em out pretty easily. Leman Russ especially because it's invulnerable to the things you're mentioning.

And don't respond with "herpderp that's a gunline too". It isn't it's just a few units.

Will a single vanquisher fix all the problems of facing a wave serpent list? Will it solve a leafblower hiding out of LOS with artillery? How many russes will it take to actually accomplish this job.

Because once you start talking about lots of russes, then it's a mech gunline. If you're talking about a few russes, then how is it getting the job done?

Plus, russes are expensive to, so have efficiency problems, in addition to making the army "herpderp".

Local player runs an IG Chim gunline. With demolisher, vendettas and Basilisks. You sit back to shoot, he bombards you with ordnance. You drop in or advance and the plasma vets get you ( I play marines).

Terminators dropping in? Yeah did that. Mass plasma, demolisher and lasgun fire wipe them out.

enough units that he can bubble wrap the killy stuff on the flanks. He has lots of troop units to advance and secure objectives after blowing you off them.

Just not enough stuff to drop in and not get wiped out with the counter attack, and not enough long range stuff in a marine army at least to counter it.

You really ought to provide a comprehensive definition of what a gunline is, and what a gunline unit is. I mean, you say that you don't like playing gunlines but even in 5th edition you played a lot of units like heavy weapons teams and artillery units that seem like 'gunline units.' It is pretty confusing.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:No, I mean dual firebase. This can be as simple as a las Predator or Broadside team in either board corner and is separate from your maneuver elements. I don't really understand why you insist on calling many non-gunline things "gunlines."

Since when is broadsides parked in cover not a gunline unit?

"Gunline" generally refers to an army that just lines up and shoots. Having long range fire support doesn't make you a gunline-- gunlines are when the WHOLE army is long range fire support. If you don't take any long ranged units at all because they're "gunline," you're unnecessarily handicapping yourself. I believe that a balanced composition that includes both long range and short range fire support, numerous scoring bodies, disruptive elements, and assault threats is generally going to be most successful.

Further, to use your terminology, long range units often allow you to effectively concentrate your forces by exerting threat across large areas of the board regardless of their own position. For instance, a Thunderfire Cannon can basically shoot whatever it wants whenever it wants.

 Ailaros wrote:
More importantly, how is a pair of predators going to dismantle a serious gunline? Those couple of units will be neutralized right away, leaving your army in the same predicament it was in before, but now with fewer points spent on it.

You might be surprised at how resilient AV13 units that don't have to move up to get in range can be. I only really ever take side armor hits on Predators from barrage weapons, and with good terrain, other immediate threats to shift threats away from the Predators (advancing Rhinos and Marines threatening midfield), and adequate defensive elements, you can shield units by manipulating target priority.

Further, the Predators don't need to "dismantle" the enemy army-- just make advancing treacherous. They're there to take out enemy transports moving into midfield so I can dominant the center of the board with my Troops and control the game.

 Ailaros wrote:
Of course, you could go as far as was mentioned on the last page and say that you should do basically a gunline with a single unit or two that's not, but I don't see how a mostly-gunline is a solution to an all-gunline. And even then, it sort of defeats the point. Defeating a mech gunline with a 90% gunline instead of a 100% gunline is still 90% not what I'm looking for here.

I'd say much the reverse-- try an army that's mostly not gunline with some long range fire support to threaten enemy backfield units and constrain enemy midfield mobility. For example, I have a Tau army and a Space Marine army. Both are organized in roughly the same way in my head:

-Heavy Support selections provide long range fire support (Predators, Thunderfire Cannons, Broadsides, Skyrays)

-Line Troops focus on dominating midfield, threatening enemy Troops, and securing objectives (Tactical Squads in Rhinos, Fire Warriors).

-Support Troops disrupt the enemy and force them to dedicate unnecessary resources to protecting their backfield (outflanking Kroot/Scouts).

-Fast Attack units provide extra focus on areas of the battlefield that need more attention (Stormtalon Gunships, Pathfinders).

-Elites choices are the heavy hitters that constitute the main thrust of my attack (Ironclad Dreadnoughts, Riptides)

-HQs either synergize with other elements to make them more effective (Ethereals, buff Commanders) or are killing machines (combat Commanders, Chapter Masters, etc.).

Do my lists have "gunline" elements? Sure. However, my overall focus when building a list is not on taking as many guns as possible but rather taking guns that support the rest of the army in capturing midfield and winning the objective game. The only truly dedicated gunline elements I usually take are in Heavy Support; and while Fire Warriors or Tactical Squads (I always take a heavy weapon) can certainly sit back and shoot if they want, that's not their focus.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:Flyers greatly add to force concentration because in practice they come in wherever you want and attack whatever you want-- unlike Deep Strikers, who are very constrained by smart deployment and play.

But fliers arrive late, and they'll concentrate your army for roughly 1 turn before they're forced to fly off the board, turn to face not where you want them, or drop into hover mode and get blown away. Depending on the situation, they're not even that great at efficiency either, especially as more AA comes into play.

My experiences here differ dramatically from yours. Have you tried playing with flyers? If I recall correctly, you're somewhat averse to Vendettas-- but I think you may find them more effective than you think.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:Tesla destructors, autocannons, assault cannons, and both Tau and Imperial missiles generally produce good results in my experience, with meltas, lascannons, grav weapons, heavy rail rifles, etc. to pinch hit. These are readily available on mobile units.

Most of them are available on gunline units, you mean.

No, I mean "mobile" units. 24" range weapons like Tesla destructors and assault cannons generally aren't very effective in a gunline! Grav weapons are even shorter ranged and most commonly seen on bike squads-- if you think bikes are gunline units now, I don't know what to tell you!

 Ailaros wrote:
Plus, you're talking about one possible strategy that, in perfect situations might do the job against one part of the mech gunline.

Start talking more generally, and about the problems of efficiency, time, and concentration, which just saying "take meltaguns" or "take grav weapons" doesn't address, and we'll be getting somewhere.

I think this discussion is overly general as it is. I'd advise that you stop pointing to vague principles-- where anything can be conjured up as an excuse or potential counter-- and start addressing situations that you've actually encountered. We can maneuver around one another's points forever and accomplish little of merit-- in my experience, the more specific a tactical discussion, the more useful it is. That's why I've been trying to primarily discuss specific units and tactics rather than general principles.

ITT: Everything is a gunline. Khorne berzerkers have pistols? Gunline unit. Tanks can't assault? They're all, every last one, a gunline. Planes? Gunline. Motorcycles? Mobile gunline. Mono-Khorne daemons? Bloodthirster has shooting attack. Gunline.


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At least that's what it feels like reading this thread.

I actually have a similar desire to play a non static army. Right I've come up with two armies that rely on tough units with powerful midrange shooting. One is a farsight bomb with 3 riptides. Unlike most tau lists with riptides, they move up, providing cover to the farsight bomb, and the bomb is geared towards getting 12 inches from your opponent, shooting the gak out of him, and kiting back. Getting the range correct is fun and challenging.

The other list is a necron army with 2 monliths, 2 squads of wraiths, and 2 warrior blobs. The monoliths slowly creep forward, weathering thee other army's fire, and when they get 18 inches they gate in the warriors or the wraiths, who do close range rapid fire shooting and assaulting. Once again , getting the distances right for rapid fire and assaults is a lot of fun.

Sorry if i got too specific, but I just wanted to show you there are armies that can balance mobility, firepower, and resilience that are not pure mech. I know you want general army types, but those armies depend on skills that are specific to the armies themselves. But they are definitely too mobile to be considered a classic gunline. I think the marine equivalent would be bikes. I know you were criticizing bikes earlier, but the new marine codex just dropped, and a white scars bike army with grav guns to immobilize transports may be the right mix of speed and shooty for you. You could even put some spikes on them and pretend they're CSM !


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
ITT: Everything is a gunline. Khorne berzerkers have pistols? Gunline unit. Tanks can't assault? They're all, every last one, a gunline. Planes? Gunline. Motorcycles? Mobile gunline. Mono-Khorne daemons? Bloodthirster has shooting attack. Gunline.


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At least that's what it feels like reading this thread.

I agree, we need to define gunline. My definition: Any army in which over 80% of the army relies solely on shooting to do damage and moves no more than 6 inches a turn.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
ITT: Everything is a gunline. Khorne berzerkers have pistols? Gunline unit. Tanks can't assault? They're all, every last one, a gunline. Planes? Gunline. Motorcycles? Mobile gunline. Mono-Khorne daemons? Bloodthirster has shooting attack. Gunline.


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At least that's what it feels like reading this thread.

This seems to be an accurate assessment of Ailaros' argument so far. I can't understand what he thinks a non-gunline is anymore.

Armies that rely predominantly on long-range shooting. Not EXCLUSIVELY on long-range shooting, but that's their main modus operandi. I've already given several examples of what I'm talking about. It's not a bike army or a deepstriker army or a horde army or a transport rush army (among others), with a tiny bit of long-range support.

The issue here is what's the point of a little bit of long-range support? It's just going to get wiped away by your opponent's lots of long-range support, leaving the rest of your units to tackle the exact same problems they had to tackle before. Except now you don't have as many points to spend on them because you spent them on long-range units.

And I'd note it's particularly duplicitous to assume that you'll always hit chimeras on side armor of 10, but you'll only ever shoot at predators on front armor of 13...

 Ailaros wrote:
Armies that rely predominantly on long-range shooting. Not EXCLUSIVELY on long-range shooting, but that's their main modus operandi. I've already given several examples of what I'm talking about. It's not a bike army or a deepstriker army or a horde army or a transport rush army (among others), with a tiny bit of long-range support.

The issue here is what's the point of a little bit of long-range support? It's just going to get wiped away by your opponent's lots of long-range support, leaving the rest of your units to tackle the exact same problems they had to tackle before. Except now you don't have as many points to spend on them because you spent them on long-range units.

And I'd note it's particularly duplicitous to assume that you'll always hit chimeras on side armor of 10, but you'll only ever shoot at predators on front armor of 13...

That's still a little vague imo. What is long range shooting? Grav centurions at 24"?

And what is predominantly? 50%? 80%?


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And, if you ask me, the point in a little bit of ranged support is the same reason you'd take a lot of ranged support: it's better than not taking any ranged support at all. I'm actually quite confused by the question.

As for what you should do to beat the people that use ranged support, many qualifying answers have been introduced, including drop pods, bikes, and I've had success with Land Raider spam.

Hmmm. After some consideration, I think there might be a different problem.

You seem very discouraged about this, Ailaros. While several viable options have been presented, you seem about as optimistic as Eeyore on Chantix towards finding a solution. I'm not trying to be mean, but is there a possibility that the problem is less about the predominance of static-to-low-mobility armies with a concentration on long range firepower, and more a problem of hobby burnout? I'm not trying to drag your thread off topic (I know how frustrating that is) and if you think I'm off base I'll shut up about it, but at this point in time it seems like a valid question to be asking.

 Ailaros wrote:
The issue here is what's the point of a little bit of long-range support? It's just going to get wiped away by your opponent's lots of long-range support, leaving the rest of your units to tackle the exact same problems they had to tackle before. Except now you don't have as many points to spend on them because you spent them on long-range units.

That depends on what you take. There are many resilient long-range support options in the game.

 Ailaros wrote:
And I'd note it's particularly duplicitous to assume that you'll always hit chimeras on side armor of 10, but you'll only ever shoot at predators on front armor of 13...

No, it isn't. The battlefield role of a Chimera is completely different than that of a Predator. A Predator sits in the back and shoots. A Chimera carries units into small arms range. Basic geometry indicates that the more you move upfield, the more of your sides are relevantly exposed. A Predator can basically sit in a corner and not have any side arc visible at all-- if a Chimera does this, it's basically taking itself out of the battle (Company Command Squads aside). The Chimera model also has physically larger sides than the Predator.

These sorts of remarks are why I think general principles are often less helpful than specifics. Whether or not you can get side armor is not a general principle that can be applied to all vehicles equally, but rather one that is extremely dependent on situational factors. Without specifics, a lot of detail and nuance gets lost.

I don't think there are any gunlines that can stop the Ten Tervigon list. Within a few turns there is absolutely no room on the board for the enemy to move and everything is caught up in a sea of termagants until everything dies. Anything the Termagants can't kill can be handled by the Tervigons, and there just isn't enough firepower to stop everything from crashing into you.

At points values higher than 2k, just add more stuff as it suits you. Make them choke on monstrous creatures and a swarm of termagants until they start screaming in terror every time they see a Tervigon out of PTSD after how long it takes for you to complete a single turn.

 Kain wrote:
I don't think there are any gunlines that can stop the Ten Tervigon list. Within a few turns there is absolutely no room on the board for the enemy to move and everything is caught up in a sea of termagants until everything dies. Anything the Termagants can't kill can be handled by the Tervigons, and there just isn't enough firepower to stop everything from crashing into you.

At points values higher than 2k, just add more stuff as it suits you. Make them choke on monstrous creatures and a swarm of termagants until they start screaming in terror every time they see a Tervigon out of PTSD after how long it takes for you to complete a single turn.

Out of curiosity, how many points is this hypothetical list? (We've got a few real WAAC wastoids who play tyranids that occasionally troll our regional events, so I always like to stay prepared.)

Again, I really want to stress that (barring maybe the very-similar loyalist MEQ codices) there is no general solution for all/most to this problem. Tau tackles gunlines by out gunlining them, whereas Dark Eldar or Space Marines can't hope to challenge a gunline through weight of long-range fire alone. The armies are too different to rely on the same tactics beyond vague (and unhelpful) notions of 'disrupt them,' 'swarm them,' 'outscore them,' etc. (again, the loyalist chapters with their own army books may be an exception to this). Also, Ailaros, back when I kept my dakka'ing strictly to lurking you were one of the first people whose posts I started to follow and I've always loved your Foleran First writings/batreps (every time I read them I yearn to start writing up my own batreps...yet somehow I never get around to it). Bear in mind that I have the utmost respect for you when I say that I think you're stuck thinking about things in a vacuum in which circumstances always favour the gunline, and it's rather disheartening to see you so thoroughly convinced that a battle vs. a mech gunline is a hopeless feat (I will admit that they are very hard-to-beat lists, but I disagree as to the degree of just how uncounterable they are) .

Thinking back to the reports on your site, I remember that a lot of the pics seemed to show that massive portions of the board were devoid of terrain--infantry hate this much more than vehicles do in my experience, and if that's the usual board you play on then the huge chunks of terrain-less land could be one of the reasons your footguard gets slaughtered...and, granted, this could be why I don't share the same opinion about how beastly mechlines are as 9/10 of the games I've played have involved cramming as much terrain onto the board as possible (often we try to create city streets...which sort of funnels vehicles around the board). Another factor is you play a particularly aggressive-seeming footguard build (and I'm assuming that your CSM are very khornate in their approach to the game, too...purely based off your sig), which is playing the game on Dwarf Fortress difficulty against a defensive vehicle-based list.

I would also like to defend my assertion about DA termies being a good way to screw with a mechline. While I haven't fought a Wave Serpent spam list that I felt counted as a gunline, I have still fought massed serpents and won with my termies. With Deathwing all my terminators--the only units in my army--arrive on the first turn with twin-linked weapons (and with Belial's unit not scattering at all). And time and time again no matter who I'm fighting a massive blob of Hammernators falling into the enemy's midst always wrecks face and controls a good chunk of the enemy deployment zone (these are particularly hilarious to drop on the relic, too). Sure, they draw a ton of fire...but every AP2 pie plate that gets chucked at them is one that's not getting thrown at my less-durable guys. The Hammernators usually survive the whole game, too. It's by no means a 'general' solution, but I've already stated how I feel about that concept. Every army just needs to figure out its cool/weird trick that works.

On a side note I mentioned getting side shots on Chimeras and it was someone else who brought up predators, so I don't think anyone was being duplicitous.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Kain wrote:
I don't think there are any gunlines that can stop the Ten Tervigon list. Within a few turns there is absolutely no room on the board for the enemy to move and everything is caught up in a sea of termagants until everything dies. Anything the Termagants can't kill can be handled by the Tervigons, and there just isn't enough firepower to stop everything from crashing into you.

At points values higher than 2k, just add more stuff as it suits you. Make them choke on monstrous creatures and a swarm of termagants until they start screaming in terror every time they see a Tervigon out of PTSD after how long it takes for you to complete a single turn.

Out of curiosity, how many points is this hypothetical list? (We've got a few real WAAC wastoids who play tyranids that occasionally troll our regional events, so I always like to stay prepared.)

Exactly 2000, I posted it on the first page.

 Ailaros wrote:
The issue here is what's the point of a little bit of long-range support? It's just going to get wiped away by your opponent's lots of long-range support, leaving the rest of your units to tackle the exact same problems they had to tackle before. Except now you don't have as many points to spend on them because you spent them on long-range units.

If you have a single unit in cover that has long-range support, and it takes your opponent half of their firepower to bring it down, then that buys you a lot of time to get dudes across the field un-accosted.

Ten SS/Hammer terminators takes 36 plasma Hits (54 BS 4 shots or 27 guns in rapid-fire range) to kill on average. Even Guardsmen have trouble getting that many guns into a list. And then what points are left to engage anything else that turn? Blasts are inconsistent, and could scatter onto your own troops, so while they could do some damage, they aren't going to be a hand-wave of a solution.

I think one of the other posters was correct in thinking that there's definitely some burnout. When discussing an opponent's unit, Ailaros, you're always imagining every weapon of theirs hitting all of the time and you fail all of your saves. And when discussing your own units, it's always that you're paying SO MANY points for JUST A CHANCE to MAYBE GLANCE your opponent's transports. And then they have a deathstar of 20 plasmaguns inside!.

Obviously I'm exaggerating, but a lot of your arguments are coming across this way. I think it's evidence that your outlook is overly negative. I won't deny that gunlines have a huge buff these days, and that some are even more super-worse than others. But there are a lot of valid ideas that are getting hand-waved as "too much like a gunline" or "too easy to kill".

I will say that it's pretty certain that the playstyle you've obviously enjoyed in the past (massed charge over the hill to drown the enemy in bodies) doesn't work anymore. In 5th, you could still reasonably use flat-out number of bodies to overcome a lot of obstacles but I don't think it's valid anymore. Challenges, new ways of removing casualties, random assault range, and the prevalence of better anti-infantry weaponry just tipped the scales. Running just boots on the ground is currently dead.

You know what's interesting, I just realized that any army that can will turn into a gunline when facing a horde. I've never considered myself to have created a "gunline" list. In fact, I usually plan on advancing. But when playing against 40 Khorne Berserkers, why would I do anything tricky? Is it possible that you see gunlines everywhere because it's the rock to your scissors, and anyone who can pull off this change in tactics will? You flat-out win any assault my army would get into with you (except one, obvious exception), so why would I do anything but back away and shoot? So what we're really seeing is that you force your opponents to gunline or lose, and haven't made a list yet that can handle it when they do.

It's easy to be negative with the Wave Serpent in the game.

Martel732 wrote:
It's easy to be negative with the Wave Serpent in the game.

I believe the standard phrase here is "Quoted for Truth"

Ok I have been reading this thread for 3 days now.

OP heres the deal. The army you want doesnt exist. You want to beat a gunline? Play a gunline army. You dont want to play against a gunline army? Find a different group of people who dont play gunline armies. Play casual, not competitive. 5th Edition was all about the assault. Shooty armies had to deal with that. 6th edition is all about being shooty and now the assault armies get to deal with it.

Maybe you need to take a break from 40k for this edition and wait for 7th because you are shooting (pun) down everything anyone tries to tell you. Stick to the modeling and painting and wait for the rules to cater to the assault again.

 Xerics wrote:
Ok I have been reading this thread for 3 days now.

OP heres the deal. The army you want doesnt exist. You want to beat a gunline? Play a gunline army. You dont want to play against a gunline army? Find a different group of people who dont play gunline armies. Play casual, not competitive. 5th Edition was all about >cramming 21 Chimeras into a single army<. Shooty armies had to deal with that. 6th edition is all about being shooty and now the assault armies >still< get to deal with it.

Maybe you need to take a break from 40k for this edition and wait for 7th because you are shooting (pun) down everything anyone tries to tell you. Stick to the modeling and painting and wait for the rules to cater to the assault again.

Corrected for (tongue-in-cheek) accuracy. I still disagree with this, though. Playing a gunline army is hardly the only solution to a gunline. There are ways to win with a heavy assault focus (my DE still, somehow, manage to massacre shooty opponents with Wych/Hellion rushing)--those ways to win just happen to not be 'just walk right up to the enemy and start punching.' 5th edition was all about the shooting,too, it's just that general consensus seems to be that assault was much more viable back then (and yet I'm having more success with CC DE now than then).

Jimsolo wrote:You seem very discouraged about this, Ailaros. While several viable options have been presented, you seem about as optimistic as Eeyore on Chantix towards finding a solution.

It's not a matter of mere encouragement. I'm genuinely trying to find an answer here, which requires more than subjective guessing. I'm down on hammernators, for example, not because I don't want there to be a solution to mech gunlines, but because hammernators are a bad solution to mech gunlines.

Kingsley wrote:A Chimera carries units into small arms range.

Chimeras are a defensive weapon. They only move forward at the end of the game to move onto objectives after you've been all but tabled.

I've never seen a leafblower player load up on a bunch of static artillery and then start the game by charging his two or three chimeras forward in front of everything else. For good reason.

Unit1126PLL wrote: the point in a little bit of ranged support is the same reason you'd take a lot of ranged support: it's better than not taking any ranged support at all. I'm actually quite confused by the question.

If some ranged support is better than no ranged support, then it stands to reason that more ranged support is generally better than less ranged support.

If what makes you strong is the amount of gunline, you will therefore be weaker the less gunline you have. Which creates this problem I've been describing. If you're only doing a little bit of gunline, then that little bit of gunline isn't going to beat a lot of gunline, while the rest of your non-gunline now have fewer points to spend on themselves, weakening your overall non-gunline strategy. On the other hand, the more and more gunline you add, the closer you become to just playing a gunline.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:I think you're stuck thinking about things in a vacuum

I'm simply trying to keep things abstract. If there are general principles that make this problem difficult to solve, then there are general principles which will provide the answer.

Now, if you want to assert that there are no general answers across all armies, that's fine, but whatever specific army counter is going to have to come to grips with the principles behind it.

Because otherwise it's going to devolve into "Oh yeah? Well, once when I played a game in MY basement, THIS happened. So there."

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:I remember that a lot of the pics seemed to show that massive portions of the board were devoid of terrain--infantry hate this much more than vehicles

Well... yes and no. Infantry do get cover saves, but infantry RELY on cover saves more, so all these new cover-ignoring weapons are harder on them. Meanwhile, vehicles can be immobilized on terrain, but most of the time they can just move clean through it, up to 12". Infantry, on the other hand are ALWAYS slowed by terrain, so they're moving, at most, D6". And then some vehicles, like skimmers, aren't slowed by terrain at all. And that's not to mention the few barrage weapons who want to have LOS blocking terrain as much as possible.

Terrain does block fire lanes some amount, that's true, but mech mobility, and the above means that terrain isn't just a straight win.

Unless perhaps, as mentioned, you play a total cities of death board with 80% terrain, or, like bocage, or something.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:Sure, they draw a ton of fire...but every AP2 pie plate that gets chucked at them is one that's not getting thrown at my less-durable guys.

I don't get it. How many "other guys" are you bringing? If you're bringing a lot, then you're not bringing many terminators, which means they probably should be getting killed faster than being let on. Meanwhile, if you're bringing a lot, then there isn't going to be much to withstand a weakened gunline at the end of the game.

ElCheezus wrote:If you have a single unit in cover that has long-range support, and it takes your opponent half of their firepower to bring it down, then that buys you a lot of time to get dudes across the field un-accosted.

This still brings up the problem of how a bit of gunline can beat a lot of gunline. A single long-range support unit isn't likely to do THAT much damage, much less in time.

Having something in cover does help with the efficiency problem, though, but only if your opponent shoots at them. I mean, let's say I was playing DA. Who would you shoot at in the beginning of the game, the mortis dread with techmarine in 3+ cover, or at some of those 40 ravenwing bikes charging at you?

ElCheezus wrote:Ten SS/Hammer terminators takes 36 plasma Hits (54 BS 4 shots or 27 guns in rapid-fire range) to kill on average. Even Guardsmen have trouble getting that many guns into a list.

Ten hammernators costs, what, 500 points? That's the same cost as three plasma mechvet squads. If you start talking about more expensive terminators, like DA, you can afford to give the mechvets plasma pistols as well. In full rig, the guard player is putting out 24 plasma shots in a turn, plus whatever armor saves heavy flamers, multilasers, and the stray lasgun puts down.

That's half the terminator squad when they land, then they charge the chimeras and eat, say, 20 plasma shots of overwatch causing another to fall. Even if they wreck all three chimers (which is super unlikely, it's then three squads of somewhat singed plasma vets against only four terminators (assuming they haven't lost another from vehicle explosions either).

The terminators don't win this, and that was with generous parameters, like assuming that they land on target, and that the guard player doesn't have allies with interceptor, and that the guard player lets all of his chimeras get charged, rather than staggering.

And even then, it's not that disruptive, as all of the long range guns can do something else, because the vets have it covered. Or worse, they have other defensive weapons that you've given them good targets to shoot at now. The termies wont do well against three plasma mechvet squads and a punisher - those kinds of force concentration issues being sort of the point of playing mech lists in the first place.

If it looks like this isn't a good solution, it's because it isn't., not because I'm being overly dismissive.

ElCheezus wrote:You know what's interesting, I just realized that any army that can will turn into a gunline when facing a horde.

Well, when facing anything not a gunline.

And that's certainly true. I've seen hard-charging DE armies get suddenly skittish around me. Well, I suppose that was in 5th ed when you could play hard charging DE, but I digress. Anyways, assuming this to be true, what's the answer? Whenever I don't play a gunline, I'm up against a gunline, so the only way to get people to come to me is to play a gunline? It would be a defeat of a mech gunline (because they wouldn't be playing it as a gunline anymore), but it would be defeating it with a gunline, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote: (and yet I'm having more success with CC DE now than then).

How?

 Xerics wrote:
Ok I have been reading this thread for 3 days now.

OP heres the deal. The army you want doesnt exist. You want to beat a gunline? Play a gunline army. You dont want to play against a gunline army? Find a different group of people who dont play gunline armies. Play casual, not competitive. 5th Edition was all about the assault. Shooty armies had to deal with that. 6th edition is all about being shooty and now the assault armies get to deal with it.

Maybe you need to take a break from 40k for this edition and wait for 7th because you are shooting (pun) down everything anyone tries to tell you. Stick to the modeling and painting and wait for the rules to cater to the assault again.

Not sure what 5th edition you played. It catered to IG leafblower just fine. Many lists never got to assault IG leaf blower lists.

I have been following this thread for a couple of days and have some thoughts/advice to share.

First, in regard to the picture in page 1, what exactly was the plan here? You have foot mobile infantry with absolutely no long range fire support engaging vehicles. Meltas are an excellent anti-vehicle weapon, but you can't realistically expect your opponent to willingly drive his vehicles within melta range, nor can you expect to successfully chase down a vehicle on foot. If your going to rely on destroying vehicle at close range, you have to incorporate a delivery mechanism. Deepstriking stormtroopers, veterans in vendettas, veterans in chimera; doesn't matter what it is, as long is it can close in on the enemy vehicles quickly. Outflanking isn't a bad idea, but is insufficient alone because he must be near the board edges, and based on the picture, it appears you outflanked along the wrong board edge anyway, whether by choice or by luck. You needed your outflankers on the other side of the board to surround his vehicles and make it more difficult for him to evade you.

I also agree with a great many posters here that the definition of gunline being used in this thread is far too broad. I would not consider a fully mechanized list a gunline, nor would I considered mechanized veterans, and up close and in your face sort of unit, a gunline unit. And it seems a lot of problems being encountered stem from a desire to avoid using longer range weapons under any and all circumstances, even when they would be warranted.

Consider one of the main problems that have been referred to in this thread, veterans in chimera. Veterans are nasty units that are incredibly dangerous at short range while being cheap to field, and the chimera transports they are in are similarly cheap. Neutralizing the chimera does not eliminate the danger of the veterans because they can still disembark and shoot you. If you insist on getting close to them, you are probably going to take some serious casualties from massed BS4 plasma, melta or flamer fire, and given the low point cost of veterans, this could easily inflict more damage in terms of points than the veterans themselves cost. This has nothing to do with the gunline centric nature of 6e, it is simply the nature of IG veterans, and they have always presented this problem since the day the last IG codex dropped.

There are two ways to deal with veterans without suffering massive causalities in return

1.) Have sufficient firepower to destroy both the chimera and the veterans to the last three men (since that is were all the firepower resides) within the space of a single turn so they cannot retaliate.

2.) Use longer range anti-tank weapons to disable the chimera while keeping the veterans at arms length, thus preventing return fire the following turn.

Needless to say, option 2.) is considerably easier and safer, as it requires less firepower to execute and does not get your AT unit killed should you roll badly and fail to destroy the chimera in a single turn. But you have to use an AT weapon that keeps you outside of 18" of the chimera, such as an autocannon or missile pod, and you have been defining almost everything along these lines as either a gunline weapon or simply declaring it impractical. And this situation really isn't even a problem with an enemy gunline; the reason you are destroying the chimera at range is because the veterans are dangerous at close range, the exact opposite of a gunline. You would adopt a similar strategy against a ork truck filled with slugga boyz to avoid getting charged in the following round, and I don't think any level of twisted logic can be used to define those as a gunline unit.

The pictures on page 1 were a response to someone saying "take al'rahem", and me saying that it won't work (for much the same reasons you note), except was also using pictures to explain the point.

For the definition of mech gunlines, I've been giving examples. Guard leafblower. Eldar serpent spam. GK ranged killing power (psyflemen, coteaz with a bunch of plasma cannons, psyker henchmen, etc.) combined with henchmen in chimeras. Razorspam, especially with fast BA preds. Necron ark spam or an ork battlewagon+lootas list. Most armies have some way of creating the kind of list I'm talking about.

As for the "take a few gunline units in a non-gunline list", I'll direct you to my previous two posts.

And no, a list made up of just veterans likely isn't much of a gunline. The poblem, as has been mentioned, is that you can set up a gunline, and chip in a couple hundred points to have great defensive units in there as well.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:A Chimera carries units into small arms range.

Chimeras are a defensive weapon. They only move forward at the end of the game to move onto objectives after you've been all but tabled.

I've never seen a leafblower player load up on a bunch of static artillery and then start the game by charging his two or three chimeras forward in front of everything else. For good reason.

If they don't move up, I win-- my Marines take midfield and then I win on objectives. Few armies have enough firepower to eliminate my scoring units, and against those that do my firepower can generally neutralize the problem units (most commonly HYMP Broadsides) before they get effective.

 Ailaros wrote:
If what makes you strong is the amount of gunline, you will therefore be weaker the less gunline you have. Which creates this problem I've been describing. If you're only doing a little bit of gunline, then that little bit of gunline isn't going to beat a lot of gunline, while the rest of your non-gunline now have fewer points to spend on themselves, weakening your overall non-gunline strategy. On the other hand, the more and more gunline you add, the closer you become to just playing a gunline.

Your fire support elements aren't there to defeat the enemy gunline single-handedly-- they're to get in shootouts with enemy gunline elements and either draw their fire (allowing your scoring units to move up safely) or neutralize them (if they focus on your scoring units). It's a win-win-- if the opponent focuses their efforts on taking on your gunline elements, your scoring units get into position to win the game. If the opponent focuses their efforts on engaging your scoring units, you can start picking off key units.

 Ailaros wrote:

ElCheezus wrote:You know what's interesting, I just realized that any army that can will turn into a gunline when facing a horde.

Well, when facing anything not a gunline.

And that's certainly true. I've seen hard-charging DE armies get suddenly skittish around me. Well, I suppose that was in 5th ed when you could play hard charging DE, but I digress. Anyways, assuming this to be true, what's the answer? Whenever I don't play a gunline, I'm up against a gunline, so the only way to get people to come to me is to play a gunline? It would be a defeat of a mech gunline (because they wouldn't be playing it as a gunline anymore), but it would be defeating it with a gunline, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve.

I think this may be your problem. Overall, most of your armies seem to be "infantry charging across the board" (though there were some "vehicles with short-ranged weapons charging across the board" lists in there too), with limited fire support. Against that sort of army, I would likely elect to stand back and just try to shoot them off the table. Horde armies without good long range fire support suffer from a lack of force concentration that makes it easy to take out their relevant units one at a time. I honestly think your best bet would be to add more long range elements to your lists.

Kingsley wrote:If they don't move up, I win-- my Marines take midfield and then I win on objectives.

Or they table your army, and they win. Or they kill off your scoring units (how is this difficult to do against marines?) and they win. Or they blow your units off the objectives and make a late game dash for them, and win. Or they go for a draw and win on secondaries with first blood. Or you play Purge, Relic, or Will missions where it doesn't really matter. Or a big guns game, where their big guns score. Or big guns or crusade with an uneven number of objectives and you didn't get to place first, so they just win.

I don't know if there's a purely tabletop solution to losing so many guys so quickly you can't effect a tabletop solution.

Kingsley wrote:If the opponent focuses their efforts on engaging your scoring units, you can start picking off key units.

But not as fast as they're picking off your scoring units.

I mean, you could look at this exactly in reverse. Your opponent has forced you to waste points to bring gunline units that are going to try and dig your units out of cover while you're free to shoot at everything else.

Whatever advantages there are to a little bit of gunline, you get more of by bringing more gunline.

And it IS a bit silly, right? I mean, if 40k is a game of rock paper scissors, then the best solution to getting beaten by scissors is to take more scissors?

Not more siccors... Scissors made of harder material that cut their weak materialed scissors.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:If they don't move up, I win-- my Marines take midfield and then I win on objectives.

Or they table your army, and they win.

I've never been tabled in 6th edition. Realistically, it's not going to happen unless you have terrible rolls on Morale checks or just get completely overrun-- which usually happens with assault armies, not gunlines. The closest I've ever been to it happened in a game where I simply couldn't wound an enemy Wraithknight despite repeated las and melta hits-- but now that grav-guns are in the game I don't envision that happening again anytime soon.

 Ailaros wrote:
Or they kill off your scoring units (how is this difficult to do against marines?) and they win.

I start taking 30 Tactical Marines at like 1000 points and scale up from there. With enough investment in Troops, killing off your scoring units becomes very difficult-- and if the opponent does try to focus on that, I can always use cover, terrain, and transports to mitigate their firepower, while my Heavy Support units continue to pick them off.

 Ailaros wrote:
Or they blow your units off the objectives and make a late game dash for them, and win.

Again, this tends not to realistically happen with enough of a scoring presence. To be clear, I think the vast majority of 6th edition armies don't field enough Troops.

 Ailaros wrote:
Or they go for a draw and win on secondaries with first blood.

First Blood is by no means guaranteed.

 Ailaros wrote:
Or you play Purge, Relic, or Will missions where it doesn't really matter.

In Purge, I'll gladly hide my transports and deploy my Tactical Marines as expensive 10-man lascannon squads on foot. Is it efficient? Hell no. Does it yield kill points easily? Also no.

 Ailaros wrote:
Or a big guns game, where their big guns score. Or big guns or crusade with an uneven number of objectives and you didn't get to place first, so they just win.

My group typically either plays the BAO scenario or enforces that one objective goes in the center if an odd number of objectives come up to avoid that situation. If you allow uneven numbers of objectives with rulebook objective placement, there are indeed situations where you can end up being pretty screwed-- though with proper investments in mobility, perhaps not as many as one might think.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:If the opponent focuses their efforts on engaging your scoring units, you can start picking off key units.

But not as fast as they're picking off your scoring units.

I don't find this to be the case. My scoring units are usually resilient (Tactical Marines), numerous (Kroot) or both (I often run 48 Fire Warriors + allied Marines or Kroot). Firepower dedicated to entirely eliminating them is very inefficient, whereas my specialist fire support units are extremely efficient against their chosen targets.

For instance, let's say there's an exact mirror match and my opponent decides to use his Broadsides and Riptides to kill all my Fire Warriors. Are they effective at doing this? To some extent, yes, especially if he also dedicates his Pathfinders to the job-- but in the meantime my Riptides are going for his Broadsides, and my Broadsides are shooting his Riptides. Riptides kill Broadsides faster than Broadsides kill Fire Warriors.

 Ailaros wrote:
I mean, you could look at this exactly in reverse. Your opponent has forced you to waste points to bring gunline units that are going to try and dig your units out of cover while you're free to shoot at everything else.

Those points aren't wasted. Fire support elements are very useful in balanced armies-- I don't know why you think they wouldn't be.

 Ailaros wrote:
Whatever advantages there are to a little bit of gunline, you get more of by bringing more gunline.

Yes, but your weaknesses are also compounded. That's why balanced lists are IMO more effective.

 Ailaros wrote:
And it IS a bit silly, right? I mean, if 40k is a game of rock paper scissors, then the best solution to getting beaten by scissors is to take more scissors?

40k is only rock paper scissors when both players play with unbalanced lists.

There are a few of my points in an earlier post by the OP that were addressed and I'm a touch too pressed for time right now to derp around with the quote function.

On Hammernators:

I typically squeeze somewhere between 30 and 40 terminators into my Deathwing army, with the 'less-durable' guys being guys without the shields (and still these ones tend to survive for a very long time). So 1/3-1/4 of my army is the 10-man Hammernator blob (granted I don't tend to do this as often as it probably sounds like I do), with the rest usually being shooting-oriented 5-man Deathwing groups (I had a hilarious game vs. CSM where I just ran 3 units of 10...it went pretty damn well, actually). Not having any solid support units kinda hurts, but have troop terminators and not having anything on the board to get shot up if the enemy goes first usually makes up for it. I've never fought IG with it, but I've beaten Serpent Spam consistently with it and the one fight I had against Tau I won, too (I realise, though, that one fight isn't sufficient to make any assertions). Not to mention it absolutely wrecks Nidzilla and CSM. I'm not quite sure what the big difference in force composition there is between Wave Serpent Spam and Wave Serpent Gunline (really, they almost seem to be the same armies, played differently) is, but WS-spam is perfectly beatable by dropping terminators all over the place and then marching around the board krumpin' stuff. It's by no means the easiest way and the games get very tense and exciting (and this is a good thing) towards the end, but it has pretty much always worked.

On terrain and/or the game board in general:

I really think the sort of terrain/board layout that one usually plays on is a huge part of what sort of lists do well in the local meta. A battlefield reminiscent of a flat prairie with just a few structures/hills is going to greatly favour an army comprised of durable, shooty vehicles, whereas a battlefield with big pieces of LoS-blocking terrain that put huge bind spots in the firing lanes (forcing either spread out firebases or constant, awkward movement to get those good shots) is going to favour armies that can quickly advance behind the safety of the terrain and aggressively go for the kill. It might be worth a shot to radically switch up the sort of terrain (and terrain density) on the board and just see what it does for the game. Using terrain is *not* ever going to be a 'straight win' unless there is some really brokenly good piece on the board--but using the terrain available to its fullest potential can certainly swing a game in an army's favour.

On CC Dark Eldar:

As to how I win with CC DE...well I just keep doing what I've been doing. Deploy in sideways boats and try to make sure there's some sort of terrain piece (even if it's further down the board) blocking them, pivot forward for 3", move 6", disembark 6", charge 2d6" (rerollable w/ Fleet) inches) (The Hellions take a couple turns to get into assault but they usually make it). Most my opponents don't play castled-up and actively try to grab objectives so in most games there's something right on their deployment zone I can conceivably charge--and when there isn't then I just dart between terrain pieces and wait. This works much better when getting first turn...but pretty much all DE builds I've seen really shine with first turn. Heck, in one really crazy 2.5k game I lost 1000pts in the first turn of shooting and still managed to table my brother's CSM in the end with a (what I had believed to be) suicide rush at his force ('I'm toast, why not?'). Overwatch rarely does more than kill the odd wych and the random charge range, when given rerolls w/ fleet, usually come out in my favour (I have had horribly fatal failed charges, though, and admit this is always a very real risk). Aside from that 6th edition prompted a massive decrease in scary CC units within my local meta, so it tends to be very easy to overpower the enemy once I actually get to them.

I'm still not understanding the deathwing thing. Terminators are expensive for their damage output (well, unless you're CSM, but that's another matter), and they still suffer from the one-two problem of defensive units in transports as described above. In the case of wave serpents, it seems even stranger, because either you're spreading your termies out, in which case skimmers have the ability to focus them down, or else you're deploying all in one spot, in which case the skimmers can fly over your terminators and flat-out far away and start a new gunline game turn 2.

You're saying THAT you've won against mech gunlines, but I'm asking HOW you're winning (or why) you're winning with this, given all the problems described.

As for terrain, I'll reference a few posts ago. Foot gunlines may be hindered by terrain, but mech gunlines are less so (and sometimes benefit from it, thanks to mobility, etc.).

As for DE assaults, the reason you can get there is because your opponents are moving a bunch of stuff forwards, rather than just piteouslessly gunning all the flimsy boxes open?

 Ailaros wrote:
I'm still not understanding the deathwing thing. Terminators are expensive for their damage output (well, unless you're CSM, but that's another matter), and they still suffer from the one-two problem of defensive units in transports as described above. In the case of wave serpents, it seems even stranger, because either you're spreading your termies out, in which case skimmers have the ability to focus them down, or else you're deploying all in one spot, in which case the skimmers can fly over your terminators and flat-out far away and start a new gunline game turn 2.

You're saying THAT you've won against mech gunlines, but I'm asking HOW you're winning (or why) you're winning with this, given all the problems described.

As for terrain, I'll reference a few posts ago. Foot gunlines may be hindered by terrain, but mech gunlines are less so (and sometimes benefit from it, thanks to mobility, etc.).

As for DE assaults, the reason you can get there is because your opponents are moving a bunch of stuff forwards, rather than just piteouslessly gunning all the flimsy boxes open?

I really should not be constantly checking back here as following discussions is proving to be a very time-consuming activity.

I'm talking about big clusters of terrain mid-field with small courtyard-esque pockets between the ruins (a lot of our ruins don't have bases, either, so infantry mobility is much less affected than it may sound) and a few narrow channels between the clusters. Aside from a few prime across-the-board firing spots (which don't accommodate an entire army's worth of shooty stuff) the only way to get clear shots on infantry using the terrain is to move down the channels between the features and move the turret (or, G-d forbid, pivot the entire vehicle) to face down an alleyway and fire on the infantry. Until now I have not really given the terrain dynamic we have going on here much though and, regrettably, I cannot give a much better analysis than 'something about the terrain here forces vehicles to advance if they want to make a difference.' People have tried castling up with vehicles or playing shoot-and-scoot in their deployment zone (myself included) and it simply does not work.

With Deathwing there's not really a big secret as to how to squeeze out a victory from Wave Serpent Spam: the entire army deepstrikes and pops as many serpents as it can with T-L missiles (and assault cannons to the rear). The Hammernators also get the most fire directed towards them and they usually weather it very well. I'll admit that I think psychology in my meta works in my favour here because there is a vastly disproportionate amount of fire that gets thrown at my TH/SS unit (even the more-common group of 5 + Belial tends to last for a long time) and the other units tend to go fairly unmolested for a turn or so. After the initial strike the termies march through terrain, shooting at the remaining serpents or killing the units robbed of their transports. The Hammernators tend to stay prominently in the open, which may actually be a big part of why they take so much of the fire--they're more readily visible and being obviously menacing.

It's not so much that the enemy is moving towards me when I play DE (I usually get first turn, the Baron makes quite a difference sometimes!), but rather that they have something charge-able right on the edge of their deployment zone which I can make a crazy wych charge against on the first turn. It typically takes 2 rounds of CC for the Wyches to kill/break a given unit, so they're safely locked in close combat on the enemy's shooting phase and usually free by my next turn to find something else to kill. I do find it odd that *most* people keep deploying things forward and don't try to castle up further into their zone...but I guess that's just the general approach to the game here. I have had some pretty abysmally bad enemy shooting phases (DE definitely loses much more games than Deathwing, I'm not trying to make it sound like an unbeatable army), but usually the terrain setup saves my sorry bum from losing too much on the first turn. There is also a distinct lack of terrain-ignoring weapons in my meta which aren't flamer templates (and it's a little too late for the poor soldiers if I'm that close) in addition to a ton of 4+ cover, making the journey across the board much safer than it could be. Markerlights still exist, but they're not as spammed as they are in some of the horror stories that I hear.

Interesting discussion so far.

I don't think there is a general recipe on how to cope with the "best" gunline builds. They are after all the "best" right now and you should not expect a good win ratio against them.

A question to the OP. What win ratio are you looking for? As far as I know you generally dislike flyers and from what I've seen in your reports you haven't really been tapping into using allies (I agree with you btw, so this statement is not meant to start an argument) which means you are kind of handicapping yourself from the start by removing some list building options.

Ok trying to generalize a bit...

I think there is a lot of truth in saying if you have a very cc oriented army, then all opponents will try to transform themselves into gunlines as best they can. After all if defeat in cc is certain then postponing it for as long as possible must be the best tactic.

The same to some extent goes for short ranged weapons like plasma and melta. If your army is stronger in this area then your opponents optimal tactic would be to keep out of range for as long as possible.

Personally I don't think pure cc is viable in 40k (was it ever?) so I think any non-gunline "solution" needs to dominate at close range shooting AND close combat without over investing in either. There is some synergies in this as sometimes you will get to hurt your opponent twice in the same turn. It can be as straight forward as first shooting then assaulting a unit, but with skill and luck it is, as far as I know, possible to first pop a transport and then assault the guys that falls out of it.

Then you need to use all mobility options available, including meching up, even if this means loosing first blood as the first Rhino get's blown to bits. There has been some good army specific suggestions already in this thread!

The biggest reason is what has been labeled force concentration and timing above and this is probably what makes this type of list so much harder to play than a gunline. You need to make sure you can't be gunned to bits piece wise. This means your army must be designed to reach/start hurting the enemy roughly at the same time.

There is another big upside to being mobile as you will get area control as you know your opponent doesn't want to be within X" from you. The faster your unit is the bigger X will be.

I also still think LOS blocking terrain is essential. Sure, the gunline can use it as well, but it does reduce fire lanes and the game is no longer in point in click mode. Every time a unit moves a mistake can be made!

2nd edition Tyranids. Pure CC. Pure death.

lol a pure CC army would get completely tabled in this edition. Flamers would drop swarms in a heartbeat if they got too close and any good ranged weapon (Scatter Laser) is going to make their numbers dwindle (especially with the new bladestorm rule for shuriken weapons)

As someone who happens to typically play the fluffier army, i can feel that pain of showing up to a tournament and realizing that my fluffy (hey, i always bring rough riders and penal legion...) mixed IG army really has no strategic ability to really crack the mobile gun platform transports of everyone elses army...

That being said, and knowing your aversion to going with the flow of a generic tournament army what has OCCASIONALLY worked for me is the following:

"Pound the Ground" Two mantacore's for turn 1 Str 10 ordinance. Lay down a few template and reliably pen most anything short of a LR. And even those you have a 2/3 chance of penning. Having these usually also discourages "clumping" of vehicles to prevent you from getting multiple in one barrage. This spreads the foe out a bit. (I have found that two medussa sometimes work just as well, the AP2 making for a better explosion, and being more useful against all the things usually not in vehicles (3+/2+ saves/deep strikers)
I like to follow this combo up with a Colossus or two. (or a couple griffons) To target the juicy insides. Colossus ignoring cover and being AP3 makes it great at targetting those MEQ/TEQ that just came out of the transport your hit.
Additionally I try to work in an Alpha Striking unit. (Allied SM detachement drop pods)
I send these boys in towards one flank, while pounding the middle or other side with the heavy ordinance. My hope being that the opponent will lose a turn or two dealing with the cracked transports and MEQ threat, losing mobility and allowing the rest of my army to close with very little harassment.

I recently posted the question of best drop pod distraction unit, so far it looks like SW may provide the cheapest answer for marine distractions.

For the definition of mech gunlines, I've been giving examples. Guard leafblower. Eldar serpent spam. GK ranged killing power (psyflemen, coteaz with a bunch of plasma cannons, psyker henchmen, etc.) combined with henchmen in chimeras. Razorspam, especially with fast BA preds. Necron ark spam or an ork battlewagon+lootas list. Most armies have some way of creating the kind of list I'm talking about.

I never said you didn't define what gunlines were, I said that your definition was overly broad. For instance, on what planet does an Eldar serpent spam count as a gunline? Serpents are as fast as it gets without being a flyer, able to move 12" and fire two weapons to full effect or 30" flat-out. Speed is one of their primary attributes and under most circumstances they will not be sitting still, but pushing along your flanks, closing in on vulnerable units to unload their cargo, or even flying behind your lines. None of these behaviors are characteristic of a gunline. If you find they are just sitting in place, consider what other posters have suggested: you might simply be playing in a manner that makes gunlines particularly effective. Why else would your opponent be sitting still with them and not leveraging one of the serpent's greatest strengths (moving serpents 1" for the jink save is not proper use of their mobility)?

Same goes for some of the other builds you have mentioned: BA armor is all fast, their vehicle should be constantly moving around under normal circumstances, if they are not it is likely something you are doing wrong on your end. Remember in a game of tactics like 40k you want to be constantly forcing your opponent to react to your moves. If your opponent is so comfortable fighting your forces he is not even is not even having to significantly re-position fast units over the course of most of the battle, you may need reconsider your tactics or force composition.

Phanixis wrote:
For instance, on what planet does an Eldar serpent spam count as a gunline?

Ailaros seems to define "gunline" as "any army that doesn't immediately move in close so that I can have all of the benefits of close-range shooting and assault without actually having to figure out how to get there". So serpent spam is a gunline because it can shoot you and move away out of range so you can't catch it easily. Any attempt to dispute this, such as pointing out that mobility can be used to aggressively attack weak points, will be rejected with claims about "playing on easy mode" or "TFG always moves backwards" or whatever*.

Like his definitions for WAAC ("any army I have trouble beating") and TFG ("anyone who has fun doing something I don't enjoy")** this definition has nothing to do with the one everyone else uses. It's just the price you have to pay to participate in an Ailaros thread, you have to accept that words will constantly have new meanings.



*For example, when Ailaros was playing foot lists and I was advocating mech vets taking lots of Chimeras was a TFG gunline, no matter how many times I pointed out that melta/plasma vets can use their Chimeras to move up and kill stuff at close range. Then suddenly once Ailaros got some Chimeras taking vets and moving up to melta/plasma stuff off the table became the best way of playing IG.

**Or anyone who uses JSJ. My favorite Ailaros thread was when he claimed that Tau players who JSJ are all sociopaths because pure foot assault armies have trouble catching them. And this was back when Tau still had their old codex!

There has been a complaint about some of the responses in this thread. I'm not going to read the whole thread and try to figure out who is right or wrong.

Everyone please just remember that on DakkaDakka you need to engage with the other guy's argument by making countervailing points.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 Talore wrote:
As far as competitive play goes, I also find it not as interesting, but my local playgroup doesn't have many issues with diversity of lists. And yes, fielding a hyper-competitive list will allow you to win more, and is ''easy-mode" against someone who doesn't have a competitive list.

However, pretending that the game is just based on luck once you've got two hyper-competitive lists? That just isn't reflected in reality. The better player is going to win far more often than the inferior player. If this weren't the case, we wouldn't see successful players in tournament play be consistently successful. Anyone can bring tau/tau or taudar to the table, but only the best players are going to be consistently successful. It does not devolve into yahtzee just because you've got two top-tier lists.

Oh yea? Try checking tourney attendance then looking at lists. The same players attend all the same tournaments and are usually thew ones with the easy mode lists. Thats more reason why they are always winning then not. It doesn't help that by far more often then not the gamers who try out a tournament like adepticon for the first time with a "fun list" usually never repeat attend because of the idiotic builds that arrive. Furthermore most taented painters like to hobby a variety of models, so a lot of these "competitive" format tournies have rubbish looking armies in attendance. I'd say 90% or more from my own experience. Next add horrid terrain more often then not, and yea, the same types of individuals generally all attend the same tournies.

Here's an example, Da boys GT is a NY based GT that has composition and sportmanship oh and heaven forbid painting scores, yet none of the big names bother attend.... I wonder why that is? That argument is seriously tired man.Is there strategy? yes to a small degree, the main issue is that when these net lists that are spam hammy and fallow codex creep arrise, the game very much does just become a matter of who has the better bell curve in their list.

Emphasized statement is largely untrue. Justin Cook (NOVA winner) has attended DaBoyz several years. Greg Sparks (current Captain of ETC Team America) has attended 6 or more years. Nick Rose (darkwynn), Goatboy, Man Boy Genius (all ATC champs) have attended DaBoyz over the years. Jon Willingham, Mike M., Wyatt T, and others whose names escape me from current and previous ETC teams have attended several times.

As much as people love to hate comp, feedback at DaBoyz regularly features people thanking the TO's for providing a tournament where spamming and netlisting have been penalized or banned depending on how the comp scoring is factored each year. There are those who genuinely enjoy and are grateful for not having to face <this unit> x6 or <that unit> x3. Despite these things, the "big names" still do attend and still place at the top of the pack.

On topic (mostly): While I agree ailaros' lists and approaches are unconventional, they highlight the major imbalances in 40k. Those being that not every 1850pt (or whatever point) army is created equal. If you want to create an army that's 80% assault units featuring KP denial to draw on objectives and win on first blood, that's not a balanced army. Playing an unbalanced army will give you bad matchups that you may not be able to overcome.

The problem is rarely the army you're playing against, rather your own choices in list building. If you want to create a gimmick list, you have to accept the bad matches. If you want to create a balanced list approaching TAC, you have to accept the fact that your "balance" will give you a chance at all armies, but the games will be hard fought as you'll have very few "auto-wins". If you want to spam serpents or chimeras or whatever, you have to accept the potential for hard counters or an entirely nerfed army when new editions or codexes release.

The current meta under the influence of rapid fire codex and supplement releases is fluid. The meta from Adepticon to WGC to NOVA changed rapidly over just a few months, and will continue especially with 2 big "horde" releases expected in the next 6 months between Nids and Orks. We all know this hobby demands massive financial investment. If you want to play competitively a game that isn't designed for competitive tournaments, you need to be open and willing to constant reinvestment.

No offense but that's hardly the type of turn out I consider a shark tank. For my purposes the emphasized statement is largely true. I'm not claiming there are no good payers at da boyz, actually on the contrary given the format I'd say it takes more skill (as a whole for the entirety of the hobby) which is why comp is heavily weighted. One or two big fish there. That's internet fish btw and I largely believe these guys are just over self/cross promoting each other in many cases, and these few guys have no excuse not to take the top three seats.

Being an advocate for balance is always easier from the armchair of the best codexes. It's easy to Say "take a TAC list" when you have Tau, eldar or demons as ammunition. Try taking a TAC blood angel list, isn't easy by a long shot.

Not trying to call you out Hyv3mind as I have always enjoyed your blog and drive for the hobby and community health. But! Take your last battle report for example, your opponent had 45 lootas and 3 battle wagons yet you acted surprised when it took an average of 180 S7 shots to down your WK whom you willingly put in harms way turn 1 without initiative. Maybe thats because the WK is too durable for most armies? A whole other debate. That is the type of durability built into the recent armies that makes taking TAC lists much easier for some, and impossible for others. That ork army was the antithesis of comp btw and it still was on its heals all game. Sadly thats about as good an ork list as I have seen in a long while too.

I do agree Ailaros unnecessarily handicaps himself more often then not but to some degree hidden in his vague argument I see his point. With 2 RECENT armies using composition required lists it takes strategy to pull a win. With lists like the one I linked previously, you basically are winning the game with a couple lucky rolls and hardly any strategy. It's a know brainer winning with serpent or riptide spam.

I forgot Ben Mohlie, Alan B (pajamapants, 2012 ETC singles champion), and Alan H (blackmoor) as well over the past 2 years. If you think the entire USA ETC team from 2011 (3rd overall), current ETC players minus Tony, Alex, and Nick, and the ATC champs 2 years running minus Paul and Kenny are all "internet big fish" and not actually some of the best players in America, I'll agree to disagree. Andrew G. attended and won DaBoyz last year but that was without comp due to the newness of 6th.

Winning with serpent spam or riptide spam is hardly a "no-brainer". Yes, good players do well with them, but I don't think there was a single list in the top bracket of NOVA with 5+ serpents. They may be broken against some armies but the more you repeat a unit, the bigger weaknesses you create for others to exploit. Trip/quad tides are strong no doubt, but mostly because they haven't been around long enough for people to practice against or adjust their lists to counter. I give that build 6 months before they fade away just like 'Cron air and triple drakes have.

You mentioned my games but I'm not entirely sure why. I used 1 wraithknight and 2 serpents with no spam anywhere. Balanced and diverse lists are what I promote and use both for personal reasons and to fight the common belief that "spam is good". The ork list was max spam, and very unbalanced. It was an ork list without any assault units! It's the very reason he lost, because he couldn't engage my beast unit which falls apart a lot easier in melee than to shooting. If he would have had a 30 boy unit to assault/counter assault instead of max lootas, he could have met me in the middle and forced a draw, possibly even won.

Anyways, all I am trying to say is the game is unbalanced and approaching it with unbalanced lists only makes it worse for competitive players. Yes, you may get lucky with pairings and walk all over people with lists list Ailaros designs, but don't for the most part a lot of the issues people bring to the tactics forum can be solved with an open mind and willingness to redesign lists that people have become to attached to.

Not trying to sound confrontational at all, just provide feedback and thanks for the continued readership Red Corsair.

Woah, woah. This thread isn't "How can ailaros win with this strange lists?" This is "how do you defeat gunlines based on abstract principles?"

Let's not make this personal, people.

And riptide spam takes skill to use? That's a new one. Let's never use close combat, and scarcely use the movement phase, and only do damage in the shooting phase, the success or failure of which is entirely determined by die rolls. And that's before we mention that when you have a room full of people of roughly the same skill with roughly the same list strength, that skill and lists become control variables and the whole thing devolves into who is luckiest anyways.

And it still doesn't answer the question. "Gunlines are actually hard to use" doesn't say much about how to defeat them. There are principles at play here that are creating problems. "Be a better player" doesn't address any of these, nor does "Bring a better list". Especially if lists that are "better" are also gunlines.

 Ailaros wrote:
Woah, woah. This thread isn't "How can ailaros win with this strange lists?" This is "how do you defeat gunlines based on abstract principles?"

And the problem is you've generalized the problem so much that it's impossible to answer. The tactics against an Eldar serpent spam "gunline" that can reposition across the table in a single turn will be completely different from the tactics against an IG earthshaker/sabre spam list that lines up a bunch of extremely efficient "MCs" and never leaves its deployment zone.

And yes, your weird lists are relevant because you're making things even more complicated by adding a bunch of self-imposed limits and turning the question into "how can I beat "gunlines" without changing anything".

And riptide spam takes skill to use? That's a new one. Let's never use close combat, and scarcely use the movement phase, and only do damage in the shooting phase, the success or failure of which is entirely determined by die rolls. And that's before we mention that when you have a room full of people of roughly the same skill with roughly the same list strength, that skill and lists become control variables and the whole thing devolves into who is luckiest anyways.

Sigh. So if the game is all about who is luckiest then why are you asking a question about strategy? Just line up your models and roll dice and see what happens.

Especially if lists that are "better" are also gunlines.

This is only true because you've defined "gunline" so broadly that pretty much any list that doesn't declare second-turn charges with the whole army is a "gunline".

 Peregrine wrote:

Phanixis wrote:
For instance, on what planet does an Eldar serpent spam count as a gunline?

Ailaros seems to define "gunline" as "any army that doesn't immediately move in close so that I can have all of the benefits of close-range shooting and assault without actually having to figure out how to get there". So serpent spam is a gunline because it can shoot you and move away out of range so you can't catch it easily. Any attempt to dispute this, such as pointing out that mobility can be used to aggressively attack weak points, will be rejected with claims about "playing on easy mode" or "TFG always moves backwards" or whatever*.

Like his definitions for WAAC ("any army I have trouble beating") and TFG ("anyone who has fun doing something I don't enjoy")** this definition has nothing to do with the one everyone else uses. It's just the price you have to pay to participate in an Ailaros thread, you have to accept that words will constantly have new meanings.



*For example, when Ailaros was playing foot lists and I was advocating mech vets taking lots of Chimeras was a TFG gunline, no matter how many times I pointed out that melta/plasma vets can use their Chimeras to move up and kill stuff at close range. Then suddenly once Ailaros got some Chimeras taking vets and moving up to melta/plasma stuff off the table became the best way of playing IG.

**Or anyone who uses JSJ. My favorite Ailaros thread was when he claimed that Tau players who JSJ are all sociopaths because pure foot assault armies have trouble catching them. And this was back when Tau still had their old codex!

Well, I see Ailaros as a respectable member of the Dakkadakka community for the reason that he doesn't backtalk the OP in a valuable discussion in his own thread.

He also doesn't rudely interject to shut down and use language that suggests that they are unequivocally 'never in a million years' level wrong 24/7 whenever some suggests something that doesn't directly correlate with his own opinions.

Besides over simplifying the problem, the solution will depend greatly on the army you are facing and the army you are using. The most effective way to stop a gunline army would be to field your own gunline army and attempt to out shoot them. As the OP says this is not feasible or desirable, then we have to start looking at Assault Armies and the unorthodox armies. Assault Armies just don't cut it any more. They are, believe it or not, just not fast enough to get across the board to get into the assault. Combined with Interceptor and Overwatch... well, what does make it into combat won't be very effective. Drop Pods or DS'ing right in front of the enemy lines is a suicide move now that nothing can assault the turn it arrives from reserves or Deep Strikes. That means what ever army you use will have to withstand a brutal round of shooting by your opponent, then a round of Overwatch. On top of that, there is the fact that 1/2 your army must start on the board, and the rest will be coming in piece meal over four-five turns. Less if you invest in the points for helping to roll for reserves or you get lucky.

That leaves large point sink style units to somehow get across the table to assault. Something like a Land Raider with Assault Terminators... and that's a 500+ point unit. A large blob of Assault Marines, or Vets in a Stormraven or something else along those lines... but again, you have to withstand a couple turns of shooting.

That leaves the unorthodox armies... and they will still be hit and miss for effectiveness. From a Space Marine perspective, we're talking about a Drop Pod of Sternguard with all combi-flamers/melta's doing the suicide drop in front of the enemy lines to take as many out as they can so the other units in the army can rush forward and try to make it into assault. Or fielding the Air Force of as many flyers as you can, but a good gunline list is going to have Interceptor and Skyfire. I've heard of really good Daemon players making a go at it, but I really wonder if they have faced a really good player's gunline? Let's face it, it's not that hard to play a gunline list. Your biggest challenge is where to place the big guns in the deployment phase followed by target priority. It would be all to easy to fall into a sense of complacency with such an army, and the player just wouldn't have the experience to deal with such an army that forces him to move around or have to sacrifice units, or modify target priority over successive turns. After a couple games against such an opponent, I'd be confident that the gunline player would learn how to deal with such an army and come out on top.

In the end, it's tough to swallow, I know, but Sixth Edition is the Gunline/shooting edition, and the best armies will be the ones that can take full advantage of it.

I would run fliers. They can't be hit most of the time and they get to fire when they come on the board., even if your opponent gets first turn.

Wow, this thread blew up since I last checked it!!!

So what's the problem with deep striking some terminators with storm shields? Most of the time they'll survive one round of shooting and then be able to assault. I guess really the only problem is them scattering into your units, but if they're well enough placed that shouldn't be an issue. If that happens the gunline is essentially defeated either way, because you have to concentrate on the termies or your army gets tied up, or you let the rest of the army get closer and assault you like normal.

So essentially this discussion has gone everywhere but to some sort of conclusion. I believe this is due to the extreme abstracts being bandied about that are completely crazy.
Some examples are;
-That long range anti tank in a predominantly aggressive army will always be shot to death with no significant gain.
Patently false, put them on a skyshield, in a bastion, behind an ADL out beyond 42" and they will waste a crazy amount of opponent firepower. Almost all of which will be expensive high quality shots.
-DS are always unreliable in when and how they show up.
There are a whole series of abilities to ensure that your reserves arrive. If you took an ADL above you get a comms relay for 20pts and get you reserves in 8/9 times on turn 2.
-Magically transports never get immobilized and the troops in them never get pinned nor take casualties from explosions.
If you consider 8/9 unreliable how is a 58% chance to pass a Ld8 morale test a forgone conclusion.
-The same solution should apply to all mechanized lists if they can stand back and shoot in any situation. This meaning that the solution needs to deal with DE skimmer spam, waveserpent spam, IG leaf blower, 4 landraider spam, and Tau Riptide spam....
We are running the gamut of AV11, 12, 14, cover being the primary defence/numbers being the primary defence, fast skimmers to regular vehicles, and even for good measure a bunch of foot troops and 3 T6 MCs. Literally the only common thing about these lists is that they use the shooting phase and are placed on a board during warhammer 40K games. Heck even the ranges go from 24" to 90". This is why the only correct answer to this thread is play well and take a good and balanced list.
-Mechanized gunlines are the top contenders to win in this game. (this is not true as there would not be countless threads ranting about chaos daemons, an army literally incapable for playing as a proper gunline or mechanized anything)
Actual mechanized gunlines are not the win button being espoused in this thread. Tau, necrones, and chaos daemons would not do as well as they do if they were. This is even more evident if you look at the winning eldar lists that are bringing stuff like wraithscythes, wraithknights, and jetbike units which tend to take up ~700 pts in most of these lists. That is 1/3 of a 1500 point list. At what point is this a mechanized gunline? When 50% of the points are spent on tanks? When 30% of the points are spent on tanks? Is it a mechanized "gunline" if there is no line of guns?...BTW this literally makes no sense if there is not a line of guns. I have never seen a single winning DE player that forms a line with his tanks. They tend to envelope and encircle in my experience. They often tend to walk a large number of units turn 2-3.

I think if we actually want to find general solutions we should looks at the general mechanized builds that tend to form "gunlines". This would break down to; resilient relatively low number skimmer spam, flimsy but numerous skimmer spam, resilient land tanks w/ fire support, and cheap land tanks w/ fire support. If a productive discussion is to happen then the categoy "mechanized gunline" must be broken down to something more manageable and that actually has a coherent meaning as a group.

There also has to be a more realistic view on probabilities. Something that will kill it's points in transports 50% of the time over the course of the game is a decent choice and anything above that is good. If this is not the break down then transports would be worthless. This has to be supplemented with the ability to survive to continue to do so. This is why things like helldrakes and riptides are good as they can put out decent damage each turn but can survive to do so most of the game.

Melee is a valid anti tank and anti troops inside. The problem is getting there. This is where occupying the board and disrupting the opponent deployment zone comes into play.

If you bust a vehicle the unit inside does not immediately destroy you. Mechanized force still have plenty of problems with force concentration where if you attack one flank of the line the units on the other side may not even be within 24" of you and will almost assuredly not be within 12". If the tanks are bunched up then blast weapons and multi charges will wreck the whole lot. This is why a definition of how much fire support is a gunline and how melee is not automatically invalidated.

Hopefully we can remove some of vitriol from this thread and focus the discussion to make it useful.

I wouldn't say I'm necessarily making those assumptions.

The problem that's going on is that people are offering only part solutions as if they were whole ones.

So, take your deepstriking example. Yes, taking a coms relay does help get them in on time. Not perfect, of course, but better, certainly. However, now you're spending more points on those deepstrikers without adding any killing power, so it's now an even more asymmetric piece trade when the deepstrikers are killed. It doesn't do anything to fix the efficiency problem. Also, it does nothing to fix the time problem, as you still have to open up the transports before the deepstrikers can kill what's inside, and if the deepstrikers have to handle this on their own (because, for example, your anti-transport stuff has been sufficiently neutralized by your opponent's other stuff), then they're going to lose that fight.

In this case, the deepstrikers are solving one problem, but doing nothing (or exacerbating) the other two. And that's before you consider that sometimes, even with a comms relay, they still won't show up on time, and that not every army has access to scatterless deepstriking, in which case they might mishap for a delay (or worse), or be out of position (countering the concentration problem they were designed to fix in the first place). Or your opponent may have interceptor that will hurt your deepstrikers, or have good blast weapons that will force them to choose between shooting and running (or dying). Or you opponent can castle up on objectives, and deepstriking has never been good against castling, especially in this edition.

And instead of addressing this long list of both specific and abstract problems, people are merely saying "Try some deepstrikers? They worked for me once". That's just not good enough.

Also, I'd note that these kinds of lists have more in common than merely an armor value. They all have the one-two problem of needing to open transports before you can kill the guys inside. They all alpha strike. They all contain cheap, good defensive units (usually which score). They all care about terrain less, as they're more mobile, and some of them just straight fly over it (and some shoot over it with barrage weapons). They all have great force concentration, packing a lot of firepower into a small footprint. They can all reposition reasonably quickly against sudden threats, often while losing little firepower in the process.

There's a lot of things that these lists have in common. Yes, you're going to want to color things differently whether you're facing off a bunch of venom blasterborn or fewer mechvets in chimeras, but that's going to be a variation on a theme, not an entirely different solution.

I would certainly agree that some mech gunlines are also just regular gunlines. Mech gunlines may be stronger in general, but not necessarily in specific (see tau, for example), and in any case, we're talking about gunlines and mech gunlines being castor and pollux - face-beating twins among scrawny mortals.

It's interesting that you bring up that these kinds of lists aren't 100% this kind of list, and I'd certainly agree with that as well. Once you've brought something so powerful that you basically get to tell your opponent if he gets to play his army or not, you can easily splurge a few points on something else, whether fast objective takers, or whatever. Indeed, it's sometimes those few non-gunline units that can make it worse. Dismantling a GK mech gunline is one thing, but dismantling a GK mech gunline when I know that any mistakes will see a dreadknight suddenly arriving and beating up whatever I was going to use, or acting as a screener, or being a throwaway unit to attack my objectives, well, there the game just got even harder.

But in any case, even if they're not 100% pure, it's still most of their points, and it's still the core problem.

And demons do, at the moment, have a temporary solution in their screamerstar, but that's one unit in one army, played one way. And even then, it's hardly unbeatable (grimoire doesn't always work, and doesn't work on the person with it, etc.). It's a balance glitch, rather than an indicator of a broader solution. A solution that, unless we happen to be playing screamerstar demons right now, we don't have access to. Something more general, that any (or at least most) armies could build towards in a certain fashion is the kind of solution I'm looking for.

 Ailaros wrote:
The problem that's going on is that people are offering only part solutions as if they were whole ones.

No, the problem is that you're insisting on having a single strategy or unit that counters a wide variety of opposing strategies that have little in common besides being arbitrarily thrown into your "gunline" label. If that's what you're looking for, just give up now. There is no automatic counter-strategy where you take unit X and it makes all of these "gunlines" go away.

Not really. What you did here is hand wave the actual argument away and pick apart little details in a series of specifics.

An IG mech gunline will be some chimera-vets, some artillery, and some vendettas. This army responds to DS forces by shooting them and if they fail to kill it they will loose units each turn in multicharges and sweeps. The biggest secret to facing these armies is that the mechvets are not the offensive output of the army. If you can handle the fire support you will cripple their ability to engage. The mechvets are also rather slow in comparison to a bike army or fast skimmers. They can very easily be danced around as their only good weapons all want to be within 24". This means the answer is an alpha or beta strike with a small effective unit of can openers. It doesn't even matter if it is not particularity "cost effective" as you have an excellent chance to survive the return fire if you deal with the firesupport and were either long range or use those vehicle ruins as cover.

A waveserpent spam can only be pinned down by occupying the board or engaging with units approximately as maneuverable. DS units near then will get you a beta strike and if they cannot kill the DS unit they will loose a turn of shooting re-positioning. DS a unit of hammernators is meaningless against this unless you kill the skimmer or can catch the wraithknight. A good alpha strike is the best weapon but that is a bit gun line like. A beta strike can be effective here but you need to compensate for the 4+ cover save and if possible get rear armour or use HP stripping. The good news is the firepower is relatively low compared to an IG gunline and the stuff inside of the waveserpents tends to be relatively soft. They also have to get out of the serpent to do anything. The best way to kill this type of army is to just flood the mid board with bodies and drop something very scary onto flanks. The waveserpent armies also tend to be more dispersed. The absolute best way to kill a waveserpent is in close combat. Considering the range on the stuff inside a serpent this happens more than you think but you need multiple units to pin down waveserpents. The standard formation is a middle occupy unit (usually a tough 24" shooty/with some melee, ie plague marines with plasma or melta are excellent), a chaser unit (DS oblits, CD daemon prince with flickering fire, spawn w/ lord, DS legion of the dead w/ melta, etc.), and something in the rear (devastors, havocs, or even just another fast unit that could loop back). Each of these units can have other purposes and you can use a single unit to threaten multiple skimmers but as long as they all have krak grenades or can kill a waveserpent if within 12" then the skimmers no longer have a truly safe place to escape to.

I will just do those two since this will probably be largely ignored but as should be seen from this the way you deal with just those two armies is different. Landraider spam is not even threatened by any of the units mentions above and is essentially different in nearly every way as is a Tau gunline where interceptor is prevalent and the majority of the gunline is essentially static.

You have a misunderstanding of the abilities of chaos daemons armies if you think screamer star is the only viable build. The strength of the codex is grimoire, fate weaver, FMC w/ ML3, cheap troops, fast melee threats, and spammable psychic powers. Screamer star is a one trick pony and is not necessarily the best trick that can be done.

Thanks ansacs for bringing this discussion back on track!

The problem that's going on is that people are offering only part solutions...

There also has to be a more realistic view on probabilities. Something that will kill it's points in transports 50% of the time over the course of the game is a decent choice and anything above that is good. If this is not the break down then transports would be worthless.

I think ansacs makes an important point. There might not be a 100% solution, but if the table is full of "part solutions" some good things are going to happen (and you will win games). ansacs last post really paints the picture. Against two quite different "gunlines" you might have to execute two quite different game plans. As a consequence a unit that plays a key role in one game might become a supporting unit in the next. I think building armies that can be played in different modes will be the greatest challenge for me (as a gunline guard player) when I embark on my next 40k project (likely to be CSM).

It's also reasonable that with a high level of abstraction all you can get is part solutions. They are after all general and can be broken down by pointing at specifics. Still I think this discussion has room for both arguments of the type "this is a general tool" and for those along the line "this unit(s) works for me".

A word on definitions.

A lot of people seem really bent on only defining a gunline as a literal line of static long-ranged firepower. No mech, no movement, no assault, not much in the way of hard-hitting defense. The problem with this definition is that we all know how to deal with it: get close and assault. Yawn.

The other problem is that very few people do this anymore. Now the gunline has evolved to fit the definition put forward by Ailaros. Long-range firepower, but also mobility, with a good eye on point defense, and frequently (army dependent, usually) a non-trivial number of vehicles (which is usually the mobility component). Basically, gunlines have learned to cover their butts.

Now, with that understanding, yes, Wave Serpents are quite definitely gunline material. In fact, they're basically the *best* gunline material, closely followed by a myriad of Tau units.

Anyway.

Assumption: if we have a way to deal with the way-too-mobile gunlines (Eldar, DE, Tau), we have the tools to deal with the less-mobile ones (IG, Preds, etc.)
Possible issues: mobility has an opportunity cost in that the points we spend here can't be spent on firepower
Suggestion: Bikes have mobility, are relentless, can carry heavy weapons that take out transports and then can engage in assaults the same turn. Their higher T shines even more in CC where anti-tank weapons can't be pointed at them. In combination, we can compensate for our lack of firepower by taking a unit with huge amounts of firepower but have quite little mobility. Devastator squads and their ilk do that, maybe.

After this, we really have to get down to the point where we talk about point efficiency and therefore specifics. I mean, massive hordes of Imperial Guard blobs CAN still work, right? It's just harder to put down *enough* bodies to drown your opponent. Which isn't a sign that assault blobs are impossible, they're just points inefficient due to the changes in the rule set.

Ultimately, I feel like we've covered a number of possible solutions already. Mobility in our army counters mobility in theirs. Long-range firepower (especially anti-tank), can open their transports before our anti-dudes reach them, countering the turn-time issue. Saturation can basically endure their force concentration with our own and also put them on the clock to respond. The real issue is in the specifics, now. What combinations of these ideas work? What combination of units/defensive elements do the opponents actually take? How many shots actually land?

Are there any good battle reports that illustrate any of these things working or failing? If you know of any could you link them? Things the game would have to be most interesting: a "good" gunline along the lines of what Ailaros defines, a non-gunline opponent, some of indication that these strategies work or don't and why.

As a mech gunliner player who's played a *lot* against an assaulty army, I may be able to shed some light on this.

The most effective way of taking out a mech gunline is to concentrate as much force as you can on a single flank of their army. Mech gunlines rely entirely on speed and concentration to do their damage, so if you attack at the most distant part of their flank, you'll limit the effectiveness of their return firepower. Obviously there will always be a couple of nearby units that will land some blows, but as long as *your* localised force is greater than there's, you'll have the initiative. They will have to close the distance to you in order to maximise damage - thereby putting themselves right in your guys' way - or retreat to avoid your melee and in turn limit the damage they're doing to you, though of course they can never retreat faster than you advance.

How you acheive this is down entirely to your army, but it helps if you have reliable deep strikers and fast back-up from the main force.

A word on definitions.

A lot of people seem really bent on only defining a gunline as a literal line of static long-ranged firepower. No mech, no movement, no assault, not much in the way of hard-hitting defense. The problem with this definition is that we all know how to deal with it: get close and assault. Yawn.

The other problem is that very few people do this anymore. Now the gunline has evolved to fit the definition put forward by Ailaros. Long-range firepower, but also mobility, with a good eye on point defense, and frequently (army dependent, usually) a non-trivial number of vehicles (which is usually the mobility component). Basically, gunlines have learned to cover their butts.

Now, with that understanding, yes, Wave Serpents are quite definitely gunline material. In fact, they're basically the *best* gunline material, closely followed by a myriad of Tau units.

Anyway.

Assumption: if we have a way to deal with the way-too-mobile gunlines (Eldar, DE, Tau), we have the tools to deal with the less-mobile ones (IG, Preds, etc.)

Your playing awfully fast and loose with the definition all the same. Infrequent use of gunlines in the current meta does not give you or Ailaros license to outright ignore the meaning of the term. And besides, last time a checked, Tau armies composed of firewarrios, pathfinders and broadsides camping out behind an ADL were popular, and that is a right and proper gunline.

Most of us don't mind some flexibility with the use of the term. I don't mind if you refer to an IG force running artillery and heavy weapons teams that runs some mech vets for interference as a gunline, nor the aforementioned Tau army if it uses some Eldar jetbike allies for objective grabbing. But when you start referring to an army that is composed of nothing but flying tanks as gunlines and have to employ the adjective "way-too-mobile" just to force fit different armies to your twisted definition of gunlines, things start to get absurd and the term becomes meaningless. You even included Dark Eldar in your definition. If an army whose entire force vaults across the table in the space of a turn to engage you at point blank range is considered a gunline, then is there any army that can't be defined as a gunline using the increasingly distorted definition of gunline?

This whole thread would likely be a lot shorter and clearer had Ailaros not abused the definition of gunline to begin with and provided a more accurate topic title, such as "Defeating mechanized forces without long range anti-tank weapons" or something similar. Using "strict", or should I say correct, definitions facilitates communications rather than hamper them, as should be evident by the fact that a lot of the post in the first few pages of the thread are posters just attempting to clarify what Ailaros means and is looking for because of his gross misuse of the term gunline.

Right everyone seems to be taking issue to the way the term "gunline" is being used.

If we replaced it with "Obscene amounts of overwhelming ranged fire power", does that help further the discussion?

I mean that's what we are seeing at the moment, aside from daemons, Taudar really take shooting to the next level.

 Mushkilla wrote:
Right everyone seems to be taking issue to the way the term "gunline" is being used.

If we replaced it with "Obscene amounts of overwhelming ranged fire power", does that help further the discussion?

I mean that's what we are seeing at the moment, aside from daemons, Taudar really take shooting to the next level.

The way to beat that list is to find ways to mitigate their firepower. LOS blocking terrain, big beefy characters tanking shots for the squad, reserving units, etc. Basically the same way you guys did in fifth.

 ElCheezus wrote:
The problem with this definition is that we all know how to deal with it: get close and assault. Yawn.

Except that's massively oversimplifying the problem. Everyone knows that Tau die if you charge them, but getting there without being shot to death is not exactly a trivial problem.

The other problem is that very few people do this anymore. Now the gunline has evolved to fit the definition put forward by Ailaros. Long-range firepower, but also mobility, with a good eye on point defense, and frequently (army dependent, usually) a non-trivial number of vehicles (which is usually the mobility component). Basically, gunlines have learned to cover their butts.

You know what a mobile shooting army that shoots you while using its speed to stay out of range of return fire is called? A kiting army. There's no reason to misuse the term "gunline" when we already have a perfectly good name for that strategy.

And no, it isn't an evolution of the gunline strategy, it's an entirely separate strategy that has been around for a long time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mushkilla wrote:
If we replaced it with "Obscene amounts of overwhelming ranged fire power", does that help further the discussion?

Not really, because it's still too broadly defined. Against an IG gunline part of your strategy will probably involve exploiting the gunline's inability to get out of its own deployment zone, while a similar strategy is useless against an Eldar kiting list that can redeploy across the table in a single turn. If you try to come up with a single strategy to deal with lists whose only thing in common is that they aren't declaring turn-2 charges with the whole army then you're not going to get anywhere.

 Mushkilla wrote:
Right everyone seems to be taking issue to the way the term "gunline" is being used.

If we replaced it with "Obscene amounts of overwhelming ranged fire power", does that help further the discussion?

I mean that's what we are seeing at the moment, aside from daemons, Taudar really take shooting to the next level.

What is a generalized strategy for an army that shoots you using an assault army? This is the same question as how do I win all of my games? Because if you define gunline as any army that outshoots you and you want to do so with an assault army that means you want to ensure wins against any army that cannot out assault an assault based army. The question stated as such is as ridiculous as how to win every game.

Generally I like reading Ailaros' posts, this one? I'm confused.

You want to be on par with an army that utilizes the best tactics they have at their disposal (regardless of how cheesy it might be), without having to commit to the same sort of tactics?

Ok, that's...a goal, I guess. Apparently changing the definition of 'gun line' armies is another one, given the hilarious definitions in this thread.

You need to analyze each army differently, there is no 'one strategy to rule them all', that's the point of the different armies, none of them are the same. To expect one is just as silly as your definition of a gun line army, so shame on you.

To answer the question about dealing with loaded transports? I have an oddball answer. Rough Riders. Yeah, they suck hard, but I've used them with various heavy weapons to pop transports and then charge/murder the occupants. Hellhounds supporting infiltrating melta-stormtroopers, mass basilisk fire, a deathstrike or two (lol), swarm them with guardsmen and give the sergeants powerfists and melta bombs. I don't see the problem here, it's like you refuse to see any solution to the problem in favor of the 'have to join them to beat them' rant you're doing.

Meh.

So, you want an unbeatable strategy and list that doesnt use any guns? Well, that aint going to happen. Many valid suggestions have been said, but you just blow them off in a wave of generalities.

Honestly, I am suprised at the hostility of a lot of posters in this thread. I am in large part fully in support of Ailaros- on all his points.

I think its rediculous that people are calling out Ailaros based on the lists he does. I've read through some of his lists and battle reports- honestly its refreshing. He puts together well thought out lists, that run counter to the popular meta, and experiments with new ways to play the game. I practically threw up in my mouth when that poster was complaining about how they were telling Ailaros to use Mech Vets. Hes trying to explore different ways to play the game competitively, of course he is not going to listent to somebody mindlessly promoting netlists like mech vets (he is well aware of what they do, I assure you)!

Ailaros' frustration also harks back to the initial problem of this thread. How you define it or not, there is a certain list build that is plagueing competitive 40K, and its a type of build that is in many ways incredibly frustrating to play against and exceedingly boring to play with. I actually ended up shelving my Eldar in large part because all the skill involved with winning with Eldar just became shuffle shuffle turkey shoot and the army became boring to play. What it ultiamtely comes down to, is 40K is most interesting at the 0-24 inch range. In closer ranges there is a trade off between moving closer and rapid firing but risking assault, or moving back and shooting weaker at longer ranges. Close range engagements focus far more on all three phases of the game and as a result are often more enjoyable for the players. The problem with 40K now is that so many new and powerful long ranged weaposn are being introduced that they can be doubled down on. This is weakening the close range dance, and replacing it with set up on opposite sides of the board and shoot eachother game. Occassionally straffing away from deep strikers. The game is rotting. I generally like 6th edition, but the meta is aweful, and between flyer spam on one hand, and gunlines on the other, competitive 40K is the least fun it has ever been in my 5 years of playing.

So when people come into this thread and make asanine statements like, "Serpent Spam can move really fast therefore it takes skill to use and is not a gunline" is missing the point completely. Serpent Spam is a mobile long range firing base, it is not engaging in the 18 inch dance of death, its just scooting and shooting. Which coincidentally is what mech vets do (just slower).

What Ailros is going for is trying to find solutions to defeat different armies that aren't just more dull long range spam armies. Its really sillly looking at a lot of posts here- this thread is saying "I do not enjoy playing with gunlines, what are some ways I can counter gunlines whithout using one?", to which a large number of responses are in line with "noob, l2p, take better lists (implication that not taking a gunline is tantamont to handicapping yourself)" or "your definition of a gunline is wrong, no further comment"

How about instead of people arguing about the definition of a gunline, if you have a thought about how to deafeat a certain build (serpent spam for instance) post it. Also I am amazed at the spite people in this thread seem to have for innovation...

There have been several suggestions for how to beat specific lists from the various factions. Pod armies, bike armies, AV14 spam, good terrain, good terrain placement, the right amount of prudence, taking multiple survivable targets to over load his target priority, etc.

The problem is that every single idea has been brushed aside with nary a glance. Either the unit is examined from the worst case scenario while the enemy rolls all sixes, or the suggestion is outright ignored!

Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Martel732 wrote:
Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Indeed. Hydras will eat them alive.

akaean wrote:Honestly, I am suprised at the hostility of a lot of posters in this thread. I am in large part fully in support of Ailaros- on all his points.

I think its rediculous that people are calling out Ailaros based on the lists he does. I've read through some of his lists and battle reports- honestly its refreshing. He puts together well thought out lists, that run counter to the popular meta, and experiments with new ways to play the game. I practically threw up in my mouth when that poster was complaining about how they were telling Ailaros to use Mech Vets. Hes trying to explore different ways to play the game competitively, of course he is not going to listent to somebody mindlessly promoting netlists like mech vets (he is well aware of what they do, I assure you)!

Ailaros' frustration also harks back to the initial problem of this thread. How you define it or not, there is a certain list build that is plagueing competitive 40K, and its a type of build that is in many ways incredibly frustrating to play against and exceedingly boring to play with. I actually ended up shelving my Eldar in large part because all the skill involved with winning with Eldar just became shuffle shuffle turkey shoot and the army became boring to play. What it ultiamtely comes down to, is 40K is most interesting at the 0-24 inch range. In closer ranges there is a trade off between moving closer and rapid firing but risking assault, or moving back and shooting weaker at longer ranges. Close range engagements focus far more on all three phases of the game and as a result are often more enjoyable for the players. The problem with 40K now is that so many new and powerful long ranged weaposn are being introduced that they can be doubled down on. This is weakening the close range dance, and replacing it with set up on opposite sides of the board and shoot eachother game. Occassionally straffing away from deep strikers. The game is rotting. I generally like 6th edition, but the meta is aweful, and between flyer spam on one hand, and gunlines on the other, competitive 40K is the least fun it has ever been in my 5 years of playing.

So when people come into this thread and make asanine statements like, "Serpent Spam can move really fast therefore it takes skill to use and is not a gunline" is missing the point completely. Serpent Spam is a mobile long range firing base, it is not engaging in the 18 inch dance of death, its just scooting and shooting. Which coincidentally is what mech vets do (just slower).

What Ailros is going for is trying to find solutions to defeat different armies that aren't just more dull long range spam armies. Its really sillly looking at a lot of posts here- this thread is saying "I do not enjoy playing with gunlines, what are some ways I can counter gunlines whithout using one?", to which a large number of responses are in line with "noob, l2p, take better lists (implication that not taking a gunline is tantamont to handicapping yourself)" or "your definition of a gunline is wrong, no further comment"

How about instead of people arguing about the definition of a gunline, if you have a thought about how to deafeat a certain build (serpent spam for instance) post it. Also I am amazed at the spite people in this thread seem to have for innovation...

The main reason the gunline definition is important is that your own take is wrong according to Ailros in this thread as DE venom spam has specifically been referenced. This has also made discussion impossible because I have referenced how to engage and defeat 3 types of gunline builds in this thread in multiple different ways and yet each time they have been almost completely ignored as that way does not defeat some other form of "mechanized gunline" that plays in an entirely different way.

I do agree that calling Ailros out for wanting to play niche lists is not on topic nor even productive and all the stuff about playing a gunline and that being the only way is not only wrong but just outright goofy as the thread title is relatively clear about this point.

Martel732 wrote:Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Not at all. The best way to kill a serpent is 1) melee, 2) melta to the butt, and 3) kill the ones that shot their serpent shields. The assertion that you can only beat serpent spamm with mass S7/8 shooting is patently false and has been shown to be so many times in the batrep part of the forum. Saying so would indicate CD would never win against waveserpents. Actually S7 shots are pretty terrible at it unless you get to ignore cover or/and tank hunter. (18 hits average to strip HP from 1 serpent is not good)


I actually really would like this discussion to go somewhere but if a solution has to expand to all there types of "mech gunlines" no solutions will be optimal or even reasonable.

What's wrong with Bike armies? Turboboost + darkshroud (you can always ally if you don't want to do DA) is a 2+ cover, 3+ armor save. Kill the markerlights first with shooting, then get into hth.

Martel732 wrote:
Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Can I take this as your endorsement of missile launchers ?

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Can I take this as your endorsement of missile launchers ?

Did MLs get a ROF greater than 1?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ansacs wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Not at all. The best way to kill a serpent is 1) melee, 2) melta to the butt, and 3) kill the ones that shot their serpent shields. The assertion that you can only beat serpent spamm with mass S7/8 shooting is patently false and has been shown to be so many times in the batrep part of the forum. Saying so would indicate CD would never win against waveserpents. Actually S7 shots are pretty terrible at it unless you get to ignore cover or/and tank hunter. (18 hits average to strip HP from 1 serpent is not good)


I actually really would like this discussion to go somewhere but if a solution has to expand to all there types of "mech gunlines" no solutions will be optimal or even reasonable.

I said AT RANGE. Melee is not at range. Melta to the butt is not at range. I know very well that these are the best ways to take them out. Unfortunately, Eldar players know this as well. Also, Eldar players have this annoying tendency to keep their shields up until your weapons that are a threat are dead. I've read batreps and I don't understand why so many Eldar players are greedy/impatient.

Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Indeed. Hydras will eat them alive.

Serpents are better at killing Serpents, point for point, than Hydras are at killing Serpents. If we ignore cover (because Serpents can and Hydras ignore the easy cover for Serpents), it takes 225 points of Hydras to kill a Serpent. It takes 209 points of Serpent to kill a Serpent. The best counter to Serpents is Serpents. (Tau, IG, and GK units. I haven't run numbers for Tau that includes markerlights. That gets *really* complicated since MLs have so many uses. Hard to imagine anything is better than Hydras, though.)

Edit: I originally said Serpents were better at killing Hyrdas than the other way around, which was incorrect. Hydras are better at killing Serpents than vice versa, because killing a Hydra only kills 75 points. However, it stands that Serpents are better than Hydras at killing Serpents, which is what I changed.

ansacs wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Look, GW decided to make the Wave Serpent essentially immortal for its point cost in the shooting phase. Why they did that, I have no idea. This fact will skew this discussion horribly.

THE way to deal with Wave Serpents at range is to spam S7/8 shots. This requires a "gunline" in some form to be viable, I think.

Not at all. The best way to kill a serpent is 1) melee, 2) melta to the butt, and 3) kill the ones that shot their serpent shields. The assertion that you can only beat serpent spamm with mass S7/8 shooting is patently false and has been shown to be so many times in the batrep part of the forum. Saying so would indicate CD would never win against waveserpents. Actually S7 shots are pretty terrible at it unless you get to ignore cover or/and tank hunter. (18 hits average to strip HP from 1 serpent is not good)

1) Meleeing a fast skimmer is easier said than done. I've done it, but with the range they have, they can usually avoid it if they're keen on it. 2) That's a good feat of maneuvering, again against a fast skimmer. I can see Drop Pods doing this occasionally but again the Serpent can be kept with its rear at board edge if he's worried about it. 3) Yes, these are better targets. They're only AV 12 with a 4+ cover they take with them. Odds of a BS4 Lascannon 1-shotting that is 6%. Odds of a unit of 4 BS4 LCs taking it out in a single volley is 21% (not 24%, by the way, because two good results doesn't net you anything, I use the binomial probability distribution). And they can take more Serpents than you can take Dev squads. And they can control when you see that opportunity by either not shooting or with their movement.

Anyway, enough bitching from me about Serpents. Especially when it's off-topic. Eeek. Here, this is relevant:

akaean wrote:What it ultiamtely comes down to, is 40K is most interesting at the 0-24 inch range. In closer ranges there is a trade off between moving closer and rapid firing but risking assault, or moving back and shooting weaker at longer ranges. Close range engagements focus far more on all three phases of the game and as a result are often more enjoyable for the players.

I think that nails it pretty well. I'm a little biased, though, as I'm mainly playing GKs these days.

Martel732 wrote:I said AT RANGE. Melee is not at range. Melta to the butt is not at range. I know very well that these are the best ways to take them out. Unfortunately, Eldar players know this as well. Also, Eldar players have this annoying tendency to keep their shields up until your weapons that are a threat are dead. I've read batreps and I don't understand why so many Eldar players are greedy/impatient.

ElCheezus wrote:1) Meleeing a fast skimmer is easier said than done. I've done it, but with the range they have, they can usually avoid it if they're keen on it. 2) That's a good feat of maneuvering, again against a fast skimmer. I can see Drop Pods doing this occasionally but again the Serpent can be kept with its rear at board edge if he's worried about it. 3) Yes, these are better targets. They're only AV 12 with a 4+ cover they take with them. Odds of a BS4 Lascannon 1-shotting that is 6%. Odds of a unit of 4 BS4 LCs taking it out in a single volley is 21% (not 24%, by the way, because two good results doesn't net you anything, I use the binomial probability distribution). And they can take more Serpents than you can take Dev squads. And they can control when you see that opportunity by either not shooting or with their movement.

Anyway, enough bitching from me about Serpents. Especially when it's off-topic. Eeek. Here, this is relevant:

So I will assume neither of you read what I posted in this thread about taking on a waveserpent list (which BTW is totally different than taking on a chimera-vets list). The basics of it is taking on waveserpent requires a three prong approach with a board control and disruption. With 3 units you can effectively engage a cluster of waveserpents and force them to reveal rear armour or allow you into melee. Additionally saying smart players keep them back and don't use the shields is actually self contradictory as if they do both they will not cause damage nor claim objectives. How do they win then? A WS player needs to either move the serpent up or fire the shield so they either are moving key units into position or dealing meaningful damage to you. Additionally if you are bringing enough threats to bear a waveserpent list usually has to fire its shields to deal enough damage to be meaningful. That or they brought major damage dealers inside the serpents so they have to move up to use them.

ElCheezus wrote:Serpents are better at killing Serpents, point for point, than Hydras are at killing Serpents. If we ignore cover (because Serpents can and Hydras ignore the easy cover for Serpents), it takes 225 points of Hydras to kill a Serpent. It takes 209 points of Serpent to kill a Serpent. The best counter to Serpents is Serpents. (Tau, IG, and GK units. I haven't run numbers for Tau that includes markerlights. That gets *really* complicated since MLs have so many uses. Hard to imagine anything is better than Hydras, though.)

Edit: I originally said Serpents were better at killing Hyrdas than the other way around, which was incorrect. Hydras are better at killing Serpents than vice versa, because killing a Hydra only kills 75 points. However, it stands that Serpents are better than Hydras at killing Serpents, which is what I changed.

Actually the best ranged unit I have seen at killing serpents is dark reapers and/or Tau buff commander+pretty much any 6-3 shot S7-9 shooting unit. The only reason I don't say Str 10 is that there isn't really much that a buff commander could join with Str10.

the answer is simple enough bring enough dakka to take out the transport (shouldnt be more than half your army if you really want to be sure to do it) the rest of your army can be anything else you want it to be, half your army being shooty isnt a gunline army.
you can probably have less than a third of your army being a good shooting and still pull this off, I dont play IG so I dont know what options your have for that but for chaos you can get 3 teams of 7ish Havocs with 4 autocannons in an Aegis defense line with Quad gun plus 3 heldrakes and you got a solid base to deal with any of those lists leaving plenty of points to do all sorts of other stuff, yes that is a cheesy start but you could find ways to change it arround.
This doesnt have to be a gunline depending on what you use those extra points towards.
and isnt a mech gunline at all.

You know, the wave serpent has two other weapons it can fire even if it keeps the shield in defensive mode. Wait a turn or two for the warp spiders to scrub all the devastators to death or for bright lances to frag the tri-las preds and THEN start in with shooting the shields. The game has more than two turns, you know.

Units getting close enough to assault the skimmers have a horrible tendency to eat a full war walker barrage to the face. Because Eldar players know what makes wave serpents go boom, too.

Eldar can wait until quite late to claim anything, because they are fast. I know this works, because my BA often *retreat* for a turn or two to deny flank or avoid CC and then claim stuff later.

Martel732 wrote:
You know, the wave serpent has two other weapons it can fire even if it keeps the shield in defensive mode. Wait a turn or two for the warp spiders to scrub all the devastators to death or for bright lances to frag the tri-las preds and THEN start in with shooting the shields. The game has more than two turns, you know.

Units getting close enough to assault the skimmers have a horrible tendency to eat a full war walker barrage to the face. Because Eldar players know what makes wave serpents go boom, too.

And how many of those weapons have a range greater than 36"? and how much damage does a single scatter laser do to a SM? (almost a whole marine!) and with the shucannon? (almost another marine!) So a whole 5 serpents can kill a SM TAC squad assuming you manage to get them all in range with their backs to the board and still in range.

Why do you assume that a unit of devastators is hanging out in the back field with no support and no cover. Additionally it has been a while since I saw regular devastators toted as being a standard. Do you honestly believe that all of the opponent's can openers will be sitting around with no bubble wrapping and/or proper corner and cover placement? I personally am seeing melta bikers, drop sternguard or legion of the damned, drop fusion suits, Iron Fist Centurion Devs, etc. as the long range can openers. The predators also work but they are usually in a corner behind bolstered ruin wall, skyshield, or ADL.

I think you are forgetting that you either move up to 12" then fire your guns or turbo boost. Over the course of a 5 turn game without using shields you will only kill an average of 16 MEQ or 49 GEQ. If you start firing your shield on turn 2 then you are susceptible to DS melta (which was one of my suggestion). Your making huge assumptions that an army that spent over a third of its points on skimmer tanks which it keeps out of optimum range and doesn't shoot it's main weapon can match an army that spent those points on stuff to kill things. You also are assuming you have stuff outside the serpents which magically will not be targeted or killed.

You are looking at whole eldar armies versus the single unit. The warwalkers can fire but yet dropping melta or fast closing melee doesn't get to close nor fire back? Spiders kill long range anti tank turn two which is before the anti tank can kill a warwalker on turn one?

The DS unit shows up, apparently fires at the front of a serpent according to you, and ignores the WW which will kill them to a man. These are what people are talking about when they say assuming 6's for the opponent and assuming 1's for yourself.

It is frustrating as I play 4 different MTO style armies and I am trying to give a generalized version of a strategy that works and works well against serpent spam style armies (CD-FMC circus, CSM plague marines/oblits, DW, and RW/white scars).

I think you are severely underestimating how painful the Eldar can make getting these rear shots. But obviously, all the tablings I see Eldar putting on people means nothing.

I never said I was rolling all 1's and he was rolling all 6's. My problem is that the hoops that have to be jumped through to deal with the Eldar *troop transport* are kinda silly.

I don't like suicide melta troops because I play TAC lists, and I still find throwing away marines to be a dubious strategy.

Eldar are the perfect army to stick it to players who thought they could gunline. The problem being that a good MTO type list is hard to do with many 5th edition armies and is a more difficult army to play than a gunline.

The serpent isn't a "troop transport" anymore. It is a gunboat with some troops in it. Actually my biggest disappointment with the dex is they didn't allow falcons as transports so they relegated the falcon as near useless. The weird thing about serpents is they are ~3 times the price of the other "troop transports" other than the necron flyer...so there is your comparison point. The real problem with the serpent is the dexs need to be updated with their ignore cover weapons. (and DA just have to take it like always)

DS melta is not the same as suicide melta. It just needs an aggressive list that will be in the opponent's face turn 2 f the opponent only shoots at the DS melta. It also needs very careful placement (ie it uses all phases of the game )

Wow, this has been an interesting (and long!) read.

I think Ailaros's question is perfectly valid and although many seem to disagree about the usefulness of this thread (due mainly to the definition of mechanised gunline) there have been some excellent points and tactics so far.

I'd like to pose the question another way, this is also a "general" question but may get closer to the question.

Rather than looking to destroy the gunline, perhaps the question is how do you neutralise its advantages enough to win the game?

Of the rulebook missions, 5 are objective based, and as pointed out a couple of them give advantages to HS or FA units. Then there are the secondaries, which in many of the games I play are in fact the deciding factor (particularly First Blood).

So, for 5 of the 6 book missions (as an aside, +1 to Xenocidal's batreps which are excellent and interesting scenarios) what general things do you need to do in order to win the game?

So, noting that every player has different reasons to use and not use certain units (flyers, mech etc) I suggest the following for discussion.

a) Timing...the key thing with timing is to have more or equal numbers of objectives/secondaries at the time the game ends. So, the strategy inputs are that units have to either make it through 5 turns (resilience) or be protected enough to be able to do the job (via reserves, bastions, LR, whatever). Also you need to place the objectives in a way you can achieve the end result.

b) Mobility : Mobility is primarily required to challenge/contest the opponents objectives. Mech gunlines can do this hands down.
So, generally, if you don't have the ability to move fast, the units that are moving need to be either tougher, or so numerous that they can't all be completely destroyed.

c) Area denial: It is not necessary to kill all the opponents mech. It is only necessary to be able to deny them the ability to contest your main objective (the one you hope will win you the game).

d) Effectiveness : I suggest that this needs to be refocussed...effectiveness needs to be measured on whether you can win the game....not on whether you can pop mech and kill everything inside.

From this, some highly generic rules for discussion

* Play on tables which have an appropriate amount of terrain - this seems to be a critical point

* Remember that the objective is to win the game and play to your strategy.

* Get First Blood. As there are likely to be significant difficulties keeping a mech gunline away from your objectives you NEED to get First Blood.

* Resilience : The easiest way not to get shot off the board, is not to be on it. Reserve a couple of troop units (preferably an outflanker/DS if you can - that helps with mobility). Otherwise take the bastion/skyshield/whatever. Abuse LOS blocking terrain. Abuse anything that gives you the ability to determine whether reserves come on.

* Area denial : You need a plan to be able to kill a couple of mech, not all of it. You can assault, shoot, block, whatever, but make sure you time this properly.

* Resilience (again) : Troop resilience is going to be critical - get the 2+ save in the troop squads (if you can). If not, have way larger squads because only 1 model needs to survive to contest (or capture). Given a 6 troop restriction, if you aren't going to be using mech, you'll probably want all 6, with a mix of large, tougher units and small min squads. With this, the focus should be on pushing the timing issue onto the mech gunline...make it hard for them to completely kill all your units in the necessary time.

Now, the problem with this is that you may not like the resulting list, or the way it plays. So, the answer to the OP question may generally be - no, it isn't possible (or it is only possible with certain armies - ones that can meet the above criteria - Crons comes to mind (and I'm not talking about wraithwing with flyer spam)).

For me, I have no problems having a fun game of mech gunline vs mech gunline. The ability to outthink your opponent and position your mech better is a challenge in and of itself. It is even more challenging when you have to take on a mech gunline without one (whatever your definition of mech gunline is).

Given 6th ed focus on objectives I think any army can win against any other....IF there is appropriate levels of terrain and there is a correct focus on secondaries.

MarkCron wrote:

From this, some highly generic rules for discussion

* Play on tables which have an appropriate amount of terrain - this seems to be a critical point

* Remember that the objective is to win the game and play to your strategy.

* Get First Blood. As there are likely to be significant difficulties keeping a mech gunline away from your objectives you NEED to get First Blood.

* Resilience : The easiest way not to get shot off the board, is not to be on it. Reserve a couple of troop units (preferably an outflanker/DS if you can - that helps with mobility). Otherwise take the bastion/skyshield/whatever. Abuse LOS blocking terrain. Abuse anything that gives you the ability to determine whether reserves come on.

* Area denial : You need a plan to be able to kill a couple of mech, not all of it. You can assault, shoot, block, whatever, but make sure you time this properly.

* Resilience (again) : Troop resilience is going to be critical - get the 2+ save in the troop squads (if you can). If not, have way larger squads because only 1 model needs to survive to contest (or capture). Given a 6 troop restriction, if you aren't going to be using mech, you'll probably want all 6, with a mix of large, tougher units and small min squads. With this, the focus should be on pushing the timing issue onto the mech gunline...make it hard for them to completely kill all your units in the necessary time.

I like your post, and you raise some good points, and these general strategy bits are good. BUT the problem with this is that it is actually playing to the Eldar's game. I'm an oldschool Eldar Player, playing all through 5th and into 6th with the Old Codex, and the above was pretty much the only way Eldar would win. Not even a year ago, Eldar were outshot by nearly every other army, and out assaulted by nearly every other army, the path to victory was essentially always keep the objective of the game in mind, make use of terrain to block off enemy shooting lanes, focus fire on the threats, and then make a play for the objectives at the end, or retreat once you've gained a kill point lead. People keep toting Line of Sight Blocking Terrain, and honestly Eldar love LoS blocking terrain, see the thing is with 12 inch move and shoot 2 guns Eldar can hide from some guns, and focus fire on others, then switch. Their gunline can move around and get better angles, because their stuff is faster.

So what the problem is, is that Eldar didn't get any worse at this style of play, except now with the boost up to bs4 and the Serpent Shield becoming an insanely good weapon, Eldar just end up tabling their opponents instead of barely managing to supress them. Dancing around terrain and trying to use Area denial is playing to Eldar's game, and is not a good idea.

The trick to beating Eldar was, and still is (abiet more difficult now) is to force them into the open. Wave Serpents aren't invincible, and most tanks i've lost in 6th edition whether Serpents, Falcons, or Chaos Rhinos have been killed by Hull Points, which the shield does not defend against. Honestly the less terrain there is on the board, the less effective Eldar are on the whole. And with Eldar at least, there isn't a lot of killyness inside the Serpents unless your opponent is filling them with full Guardian or Dire Avenger Squads or Wraithguard Squads, at which point it should be a more reasonable number of Serpents on the table.

Flyers work pretty well against Eldar
Storm Ravens are actually pretty scary for Eldar if they don't have a Crimson Hunter, or the Crimson Hunter is already on the board. And they can slingshot a terminator or marine unit and maybe a dread into a multi charge against several serpents.
Heldrakes still give Eldar fits, namely because they are pretty durable, and can be used to target Jetbikes, Reapers, or Wraith units on objectives and make it difficult for Eldar to win objective games.
Vendettas are also highly effective since they are durable with the flying rules, and shoot hard at the Serpents with Las Cannons. At the end of the game they can drop off scoring units as well.
Night Scythes should be able to outshoot an equivalent number of points of Serpents without breaking a sweat, and drop off troops onto objectives with pinpoint accuracy.

Similar to fliers, units which don't need line of sight are effective against Serpents, like Manticores. a Manticore can hide deep in cover which makes even a 12 inch strafe unlikely to see it, and can still indirect fire its d3 s10 large blasts all over the Serpents and potentially get multiple glancing hits on several Serpents.

The issue at hand, is that Serpents right now are a devestating fire base, that plays extremely well to the Line of Sight Blocking + Focus Fire strategies that are often effective against gunlines. And with the new buffs to the army find that instead of getting overrun by Assault Marines or Bikes Eldar can often shoot them off the table before they get to them. That said, I find bikes and other fast assault units can still put a lot of pressure on Eldar, but certain things help a lot. Mark of Nurgle can be great for making Scatter Lasers and Shuriken Cannons less effective overall, Feel No Pain is always excellent for saving a few more guys, having a 2+ save (sanguinary guard for instance) can make closing a lot easier as well especially if the eldar player is just running 5 man DA squads. And having multiple threats, an entire army of fast close range units will have a much better chance at closing with Eldar than just a few units.

 akaean wrote:
Flyers work pretty well against Eldar
Storm Ravens are actually pretty scary for Eldar if they don't have a Crimson Hunter, or the Crimson Hunter is already on the board. And they can slingshot a terminator or marine unit and maybe a dread into a multi charge against several serpents.
Heldrakes still give Eldar fits, namely because they are pretty durable, and can be used to target Jetbikes, Reapers, or Wraith units on objectives and make it difficult for Eldar to win objective games.
Vendettas are also highly effective since they are durable with the flying rules, and shoot hard at the Serpents with Las Cannons. At the end of the game they can drop off scoring units as well.
Night Scythes should be able to outshoot an equivalent number of points of Serpents without breaking a sweat, and drop off troops onto objectives with pinpoint accuracy.

Similar to fliers, units which don't need line of sight are effective against Serpents, like Manticores. a Manticore can hide deep in cover which makes even a 12 inch strafe unlikely to see it, and can still indirect fire its d3 s10 large blasts all over the Serpents and potentially get multiple glancing hits on several Serpents.

This is true but not a general solution to this type of army. Storm ravens can be entirely ignored by serpent spam armies and many armies cannot even take decent flyers. Vendetta, night scythes, storm eagles, storm talons, and nightwings are all flyers that can be very annoying to serpents but that is because they can either be spammed to counter serpents or can get rear shots.

Manticores are mediocre against the serpents but devastating against everything else. The problem being that serpents get a cover save against them just for moving. Both of these suggestions also ignores the entire non mechanized "gunline" aspect of the thread. Still a good units though.

 akaean wrote:
People keep toting Line of Sight Blocking Terrain, and honestly Eldar love LoS blocking terrain, see the thing is with 12 inch move and shoot 2 guns Eldar can hide from some guns, and focus fire on others, then switch. Their gunline can move around and get better angles, because their stuff is faster.

So what the problem is, is that Eldar didn't get any worse at this style of play, except now with the boost up to bs4 and the Serpent Shield becoming an insanely good weapon, Eldar just end up tabling their opponents instead of barely managing to supress them. Dancing around terrain and trying to use Area denial is playing to Eldar's game, and is not a good idea.

The trick to beating Eldar was, and still is (abiet more difficult now) is to force them into the open. Wave Serpents aren't invincible, and most tanks i've lost in 6th edition whether Serpents, Falcons, or Chaos Rhinos have been killed by Hull Points, which the shield does not defend against. Honestly the less terrain there is on the board, the less effective Eldar are on the whole. And with Eldar at least, there isn't a lot of killyness inside the Serpents unless your opponent is filling them with full Guardian or Dire Avenger Squads or Wraithguard Squads, at which point it should be a more reasonable number of Serpents on the table.

This is self contradictory. You say that one of the strength's of the eldar is their mobility and then go on to say that you should not use board control to limit that mobility. You also ignore the physics of a LoS blocking object in that the further you are away from the object the further you have to travel to change perspective. This means to see around a LoS blocking building in the middle of the board the serpent has to either travel much more than 12" or they have to get closer to it...guess what that does to the rear armour and what range that brings the 60" range serpent shield gunboat into? Interesting that suddenly with 2 LoS building mid board we are talking about either serpents with limited fire lanes or serpents moving up into the midboard area.

You repeatedly ignore in this discussion that serpent generate their own cover and are immobilized on a 1 when they land in terrain. Serpents want a largely empty board with perhaps a couple walls in their deployment zone. They dread area terrain everywhere and LoS blockers in the midfield/opponent's deployment zone.

Additionally how do you propose to "force them into the open" when you propose that board control and mobility are not factors? Are you aware that serpents can sit with their back to the board edge and gain a 5+ or 4+ cover save depending on holo fields? Serpents do not need cover nor do they have to close unless you give them a reason to do so.

Look through my 5th edition tactica. The mech eldar tactics were almost completely based around ample LoS blocking terrain. I would almost go so far as to say Eldar were unplayable against IG or SW on an open board because they would simply be out ranged and out shot. What line of sight blocking terrain did was allow Eldar to isolate parts of the enemy army, allowing them a force concentration advantage.

What people aren't getting is that eldar now in 6th edition are *just as good* at this if not better. The issue is now Eldar can outshoot these armies in the open, and generate their own cover. But line of sight blocking terrain in the middle still plays to eldar strength of isolate and destroy. Just like it always has.

I also have played eldar through 5th edition (since 3ed actually). There has been a huge change from 5th edition skimmer armies. This being that serpents are now gun boats that can transport troops not troop transports. Now the majority of lists that use them take minimal guardian or dire avenger squads and rely on the serpents, warp spiders, and warwalkers to do damage. They also tend to keep them more dispersed rather than grouped up into armoured columns like they used to. The range edge is actually with the serpents now. LoS blocking terrain always benefits the army with the lowest range as it is the only limiting factor to a 60" range weapon.

You keep stating 5ed tactics but the game rules and the vehicles in question are more different than rhinos and razorbacks or fire dragons and dark reapers.

Are we getting too focussed on Eldar here?

It seems that the primary concern with the Eldar is both their mobility and their shooting effectiveness.

Coming back to my earlier point, with a combination of the use of reserves, terrain and resilient squads AND assuming that the non eldar player gets First Blood, what would the non eldar player need to do to win?

I don't think it is necessary to kill all the serpents....but can the eldar, in a say 1850/1750 list, shoot 2 resilient troop squads (ie with 2+ save) off the board in one turn? A realistic view please - this would be say turn 3, and SOME damage would have been done by the non eldar player (maybe ).

I've had Eldar kill 21 FNP ASM in a turn that I was getting down to shuriken range with BA. Yeah, they used their shields THAT turn, but the were fine whittling me to down by 7-8 marines a turn before that with immortal wave serpents. 7-8+7-8+21= Eldar win right there without even trying hard.

Martel732 wrote:
I've had Eldar kill 21 FNP ASM in a turn that I was getting down to shuriken range with BA. Yeah, they used their shields THAT turn, but the were fine whittling me to down by 7-8 marines a turn before that with immortal wave serpents. 7-8+7-8+21= Eldar win right there without even trying hard.

So what you are telling me is that an eldar player was within 36" range of your ASM with ~8 serpents for two turns without you doing any damage whatsoever and then they were able to close 8 squads of dire avengers to within 18" of your squads and shoot you to death. I am not surprised at the loss since seemingly they shot you with no counter for 3 turns. Did you try to refuse flank and DS half you army on one side of his army? Did you take melta on any of you ASM? I just have a hard time imagining this fight as anything but you rolling all 1's in your shooting and assault ranges.

Additionally if we want to talk about games we have played I played a game recently where I melted half my plasma guns (in a mech vet army) in a single turn with 20 out of 30 rolls being 1's. Does this mean I should not use plasma or that mech vets are terrible? (I also have a game with my eldar in which I dangerous terrained my jetbike farseer to death in 2 turns) Quoting games is of limited use.

War walkers and wraith knights were also involved.

I'm just providing one data point that shows Eldar can do plenty of damage with their shields up. I think a bit of reduced firepower is worth an almost immortal transport. "Oh, you paid for lascannons? Sucker! You can't penetrate my tanks, LOL"

Deep strike is a sucker's bet. All it does is just piecemeal your list for your opponent.

And, yeah, I shot back, but have you added up the BA's throw weight lately? And do you think the Eldar guy would be dumb enough to leave his shields down if I could get meltas within range? Please. The serpent shield is the ultimate middle finger to melta.

If you want to say this says more about how miserable the BA are right now, that's fine. But please acknowledge the fact that Eldar lists can do a lot of damage without firing the shields for a couple of turns. Note that there is also not much reason to hold back if you opponent lacks ranged AP 2 or AP 1. I don't think AP 3 MLs are scary enough to sacrifice the damage output.

How many points were you playing if we are talking about wraithknight(S) and warwalkers in a serpent army?

DS is only a suckers bet if you don't bring a comms relay. If you do it is a beta strike. Or if you took ASM w/ DPs then it is an alpha strike with some minimum ASM squads coming down later to contest.

The nice thing about LC is they keep the shields up and buy you some time to maneouvre something that can shoot it in the butt or assault it. This is why DS is important as it force a serpent player to either shoot the shield and possible get slagged by melta or let you get in closer. Honestly I am suprised you are not complaining more about the wraithknight as it usually brings the pain against BA.

Honestly BA are not in a great spot against much of anything right now. Heck it doesn't even have anything to do with gunlines nor with mechanized forces.

I'm working on marine lists to address my Eldar/Tau woes. I believe the above game was 1999+1. (1 FOC) BA is stuff is just so expensive, and Eldar have withering firepower at 36". They just force save after save. Oh, and in this game, the war walkers had some nice stuff to go run behind after they shot. Don't forget there's nothing stopping them from backing up and just scooping objectives after you have basically nothing left.

Nah, Wraithknights are way easier to kill than Wave Serpents. Plus, their shooting is weaker for their points, I think. And Mephiston can eat endless amounts of them as long as he doesn't get shot to death.

I'm making some allied lists that contain Mephiston and other BA that still kinda work, and then the rest Iron Hands.

I've always enjoyed my Ravenwing. Might get tabled half the time, but damn do they make a mess out of gunlines in the process. Yes, please line your guys up so I can just zoom up one after another and poke them to death with my bolt pistol.