This came up in a thread, and I thought I'd give it its own topic.

So, should units be able to assault on the same turn they arrive via deep strike?

Not everyone, but some units should be able to

Yes but very limited. No generic marines, no eldar, no tau (lol maybe tau) no necrons. Certain nids aka stealers, certain orks aka red skulls, maybe CSM, maybe DoC. Maaaaybe space wolves and BAs but they would need to keep this from being the new cents everyone just splashes for.

Not sure how anyone would go about sorting that mess out but it would definitely be game altering, and potentially in a good way IMO.
Currently there is no incentive to bring assault/counter assault, meanwhile powerhouse ranged units are free to drop in and erase 1+ units with ease and without reprise. Let the assault side have similar and for once give it to a faction that needs it.

Warp talons might actually get used once in awhile if they could...They would still suffer from no grenades though

No. Assault is actually very powerful inherently (can't be shot at, can attack in both player's turns, prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting, can sweeping advance even off a single wound, can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging). The only problem assault has is actually getting to combat which is why the more reliable shooting ends up being better in most cases. But the few units that can get to assault reliably (because of durability and/or mobility) are extremely strong as a result.

Allowing deep strike assaulting is bad because it removes pretty much any counter play to deal with it. It basically lets the deep striker pick what units they want to remove from the game (either by killing it or just tarpitting it) and lets them do it for free.

Only my units should be able to.

dominuschao wrote:
meanwhile powerhouse ranged units are free to drop in and erase 1+ units with ease and without reprise. Let the assault side have similar and for once give it to a faction that needs it.

This is no where near as powerful as letting a unit assault out of deep strike. For one a shooting unit only does damage to a single unit at a time which is no where near close to the list of things assault units get to do (can't be shot at, can attack in both player's turns, prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting, can sweeping advance even off a single wound, can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging). And second of all anything a shooting unit can do when deep striking can be done by a unit that was already on the board (such as blowing up a tank)

Assaulting from deepstrile is a bad idea. Maybe assaulting from infiltrate and scout if you went second could work, but having turn one charges with no chance of retaliation is not fair or interactive so no.

 CrownAxe wrote:

dominuschao wrote:
meanwhile powerhouse ranged units are free to drop in and erase 1+ units with ease and without reprise. Let the assault side have similar and for once give it to a faction that needs it.

This is no where near as powerful as letting a unit assault out of deep strike. For one a shooting unit only does damage to a single unit at a time which is no where near close to the list of things assault units get to do (can't be shot at, can attack in both player's turns, prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting, can sweeping advance even off a single wound, can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging). And second of all anything a shooting unit can do when deep striking can be done by a unit that was already on the board (such as blowing up a tank)

Well, isn't that true of assault? A unit on the board can assault and do that list of things you said they can do.

Assault from reserves such as outflanking I think is fine but not from Deep Striking. You can somewhat counter play against outflanking (don't sit near the board edge) but very few things can stop a deep striking unit from appearing anywhere they want on the board. Only certain special cases should be made for assault from deepstrike (and they should be weaker assault units).

I think the poll would be better with a conditional response.

Should all units get to assault from DS with no other rule changes, absolutely not. Assault is inherently more powerful than shooting. It is in fact at least 2 times more powerful as you can kill units in both your assault phase and the enemies assault phase.

However if you allowed units to shoot full BS overwatch at units assaulting from reserves and didn't allow multi charges then it would be fine for essentially all units.

Alternatively you just allow limited units and formations to charge from reserves, aka what is currently being done.

Absolutely, it has to be allowed in order to not gimp stuff like Terminators, Assault Marines, Warp Talons and so on and really there's no good reason to not allow it.
There's all these complaints about "oh you can't get shot" and "there's no counter!" and such, forgetting about overwatch, screwing up charges and how units in Assault are probably getting hit back and in the handful of circumstances where they're not (for example, hitting vehicles), they have no protection against getting shot and such. Not to mention the inherent unreliability of Deep Striking.
The only issue might be charging out of Pods, but there are better ways to deal with that.

Rihgu wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

dominuschao wrote:
meanwhile powerhouse ranged units are free to drop in and erase 1+ units with ease and without reprise. Let the assault side have similar and for once give it to a faction that needs it.

This is no where near as powerful as letting a unit assault out of deep strike. For one a shooting unit only does damage to a single unit at a time which is no where near close to the list of things assault units get to do (can't be shot at, can attack in both player's turns, prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting, can sweeping advance even off a single wound, can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging). And second of all anything a shooting unit can do when deep striking can be done by a unit that was already on the board (such as blowing up a tank)

Well, isn't that true of assault? A unit on the board can assault and do that list of things you said they can do.

I can shoot units with weapons from my deployment zone

I can't charge a unit from my deployment zone

You can't shoot a tank with a Meltagun from your deployment zone.

 CrownAxe wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

dominuschao wrote:
meanwhile powerhouse ranged units are free to drop in and erase 1+ units with ease and without reprise. Let the assault side have similar and for once give it to a faction that needs it.

This is no where near as powerful as letting a unit assault out of deep strike. For one a shooting unit only does damage to a single unit at a time which is no where near close to the list of things assault units get to do (can't be shot at, can attack in both player's turns, prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting, can sweeping advance even off a single wound, can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging). And second of all anything a shooting unit can do when deep striking can be done by a unit that was already on the board (such as blowing up a tank)

Well, isn't that true of assault? A unit on the board can assault and do that list of things you said they can do.

I can shoot units with weapons from my deployment zone

I can't charge a unit from my deployment zone

Both of those statements are not true in all cases. Wraithblades with D-Scythes cannot shoot an enemy unit in the enemy deployment zone from their deployment zone. Very mobile units can charge from their deployment zone or can charge enemies that have advanced.

Please no.

I have multiple armies that would be able to use this ability to great effect, both GK's and CSM's, but this is not something the game needs.

Being able to hop in from deep strike and straight into an assault anywhere, often on turn 1 for many armies, is way too point-click-win.

As someone else stated, if you're playing Tau or IG against something an army with even just a couple deep-strike-assault units, you might as well just not bother setting up.

I think yes, but it shouldn't be compatible with scatterless DS. Not every unit should have it, either. But certain armies are supposed to be all about striking from nowhere before the enemy realizes what is happening to them, and should be able to represent that better on the field.

That being said, almost all my lists are DS heavy lists, so I'm about as biased as it gets.

Rihgu wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

dominuschao wrote:
meanwhile powerhouse ranged units are free to drop in and erase 1+ units with ease and without reprise. Let the assault side have similar and for once give it to a faction that needs it.

This is no where near as powerful as letting a unit assault out of deep strike. For one a shooting unit only does damage to a single unit at a time which is no where near close to the list of things assault units get to do (can't be shot at, can attack in both player's turns, prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting, can sweeping advance even off a single wound, can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging). And second of all anything a shooting unit can do when deep striking can be done by a unit that was already on the board (such as blowing up a tank)

Well, isn't that true of assault? A unit on the board can assault and do that list of things you said they can do.

I can shoot units with weapons from my deployment zone

I can't charge a unit from my deployment zone

Both of those statements are not true in all cases. Wraithblades with D-Scythes cannot shoot an enemy unit in the enemy deployment zone from their deployment zone. Very mobile units can charge from their deployment zone or can charge enemies that have advanced.

You are missing the point. My point was countering the idea that "shooting gets to deep strike and shoot with out repercussions so why can't assault?" by pointing out that shooting already can do that while on the table (such as shooting a long range weapon from outside range of the opponent or staying behind BLoS terraina and shooting barrage) and its not breaking the game a result because shooting is very simply "target one unit and deal damage to it. Assault in no way gets to do anything like that because they have to walk up the table and be prone for at least one turn giving your opponent a chance to respond which is important because assault is way more powerful then shooting is (as i've listed all the benefits asaualt has twice already),

I agree there needs to be some changes to the assault rules. But assault out of DS is not one of them.

I can see arguments for certain units to be allowed to do so. But army wide, no. Vehicle or special character ability... Ohh Hell No! (especially on something that can be taken and abused with allies)

No. People should start putting more terrain on the board!

ansacs wrote:Alternatively you just allow limited units and formations to charge from reserves, aka what is currently being done.

And that sucks, you get the ability in one stupid cheesy Pay-To-Win formation and everything else that needs it is left out in the cold. Better to just say units DSing without a Vehicle get to choose between Shooting and Assaulting that turn and keeping the "cannot charge out of a vehicle on the turn it arrives from reserves" rule to stop the theoretical Pod abuse that people seem to be zeroed in on. The Overwatch bonus mentioned might be a solid idea, though full BS might be too much, maybe +1 to their Overwatch BS might be less crazy.

Vaktathi wrote:I have multiple armies that would be able to use this ability to great effect, both GK's and CSM's, but this is not something the game needs.

It absolutely is, no doubt and no question about it. There are many Deep Striking CC units like Assault Marines, Warp Talon and all kinds of Terminator that are gimp by this stupid mistake and there's no way they can properly function without it.

Vaktathi wrote:Being able to hop in from deep strike and straight into an assault anywhere, often on turn 1 for many armies, is way too point-click-win.

No more than the shooty variant, in fact much less because you don't have to worry about making the charge, getting Overwatch or getting crushed by the unit you're hitting (potentially before you get to swing) in order to unload your Flamers/Meltas/Grav/etc.
What are you more afraid of, Assault Marines rushing you or Devastator Centurions giving you a face full of Grav Cannon?

CrownAxe wrote:You are missing the point. My point was countering the idea that "shooting gets to deep strike and shoot with out repercussions so why can't assault?" by pointing out that shooting already can do that while on the table (such as shooting a long range weapon from outside range of the opponent or staying behind BLoS terraina and shooting barrage) and its not breaking the game a result because shooting is very simply "target one unit and deal damage to it. Assault in no way gets to do anything like that because they have to walk up the table and be prone for at least one turn giving your opponent a chance to respond which is important because assault is way more powerful then shooting is (as i've listed all the benefits asaualt has twice already),

Your point is wrong. Most guns definitely do have a finite range and many have a VERY short range. Letting people jump in and Flamer/Melta is no different than letting them jump in and punch people.

And as a general thing since it's a point that doesn't seem to be sinking in, if charging out of Drop Pods and the like is the concern that's easily worked around as mentioned above.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:
No. People should start putting more terrain on the board!

Terrain has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

The main argument against assaulting from Deep Strike was the fact that the enemy doesn't get any chance to respond to the unit's arrival before they wind up locked in combat, which is a bit of a blow to shooty armies.

Overwatch theoretically should have removed that issue...

For mine, Overwatch shooting should be more effective, but not automatic (say, hit at normal BS, but require a Leadership or Initiative test), and it should revert to the 2nd edition style of 'Do it whenever you want instead of shooting in your shooting phase'.

With that in place, I would have no issue with units assaulting from Deep Strike.

Sounds like a good solution, just one thing.

 insaniak wrote:
the 2nd edition style of 'Do it whenever you want instead of shooting in your shooting phase'.

What do you mean, whenever you want? Like during your opponent's phase or something? Never played 2E.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I have multiple armies that would be able to use this ability to great effect, both GK's and CSM's, but this is not something the game needs.

It absolutely is, no doubt and no question about it.

Well, there is or it wouldn't be so controversial. Playing armies that would benefit from this, I can see exactly how absurd this could turn out to be, the level of thought required to break a Tau army with GK's with this ability would be nonexistent, the army would play itself. DS in with everything turn 1, if even just half my DS'ing units can make it in, the game will be over as the Tau player will likely be down 3-4 units (probably fairly critical ones) between shooting and the assaults. Anything like a Hammerhead might as well just not get deployed if it's not completely surrounded by bubble wrap (that also can't be broken through by other means).

There are many Deep Striking CC units like Assault Marines, Warp Talon and all kinds of Terminator that are gimp by this stupid mistake and there's no way they can properly function without it.

It's not a mistake, in cases where it's been allowed, it quickly kills interest in the game. Does anyone remember Planetstrike? No, it was a terrible, one-sided mess that, more often than not, ended with games being decided by the end of turn 2.

This isn't just a thoughtstorming exercise, it's something that's been tested in the past and resulted in disaster.

No more than the shooty variant, in fact much less because you don't have to worry about making the charge, getting Overwatch or getting crushed by the unit you're hitting (potentially before you get to swing) in order to unload your Flamers/Meltas/Grav/etc.
What are you more afraid of, Assault Marines rushing you or Devastator Centurions giving you a face full of Grav Cannon?

Overwatch from most units might as well not exist for all the good it does. The difference between assault and shooting is that most defensive measures are irrelevant. LoS and cover can be used to castle against shooting, but having a sweet cover save doesn't mean squat against close combat.

For something like a vehicle heavy IG army, particularly against something like GK's or SM's that can DS turn 1, this would literally be a turn 2 tabling routinely. They don't get to fight back, they don't get to overwatch, they're hit on 3's on rear armor, multi-assaults can be very easy and still extremely effective (who cares about losing the +1 charge attack when you're attacking with grenades, or have more than enough attacks in the first place at S6/8 to make it irrelevant?) and Aegis lines or cover would be largely irrelevant save for the sole impediment of possibly slowing an assault move (which, from drop pods, would likely be totally irrelevant between safe DS and 6" disembark).

Your point is wrong. Most guns definitely do have a finite range and many have a VERY short range. Letting people jump in and Flamer/Melta is no different than letting them jump in and punch people

Except the flamer/melta has to land pretty much exactly right, and is a relatively specialized tool. Most DS'ing assault units are going to have more wiggle room thanks to having an additional assault move, and usually better choice of targets as they'll have weapons that are effective against a wide array of units, In the case of the melta, they also have to worry about armor facing and cover saves, CC attacks get to hit rear armor and do not allow cover saves. Lets also not forget that if you could pair assaults with DS, you could often use both of these weapons *AND* follow it up with an assault.

I think it could be simplified to allow any action after deepstrike. Deep strike in withthe usual scatter rules. Then take an initiave test with -1 modifer onthe result. Pass, move, shoot, assault whatever. Fail and the unit is stunned. No action what-so-ever. Easy peasy

worldwrekka wrote:
I think it could be simplified to allow any action after deepstrike. Deep strike in withthe usual scatter rules. Then take an initiave test with -1 modifer onthe result. Pass, move, shoot, assault whatever. Fail and the unit is stunned. No action what-so-ever. Easy peasy

That will penalise low initative units so hard that it would make such units pointless to deep strike.

Tau Crisis and Stealth suits, for example, become totally useless when Deep Striking thanks to their low Initiative despite it being a manoeuvre that they regularly use in fluff. \they would literally only have a 1/6 chance to be able to do anything after landing, not to mention potential mishaps with scatter.

Space Marines of all types, on the other hand, still have at least a 50% chance to be able to act after arrival and now their possible actions are increased.

Yes, they should be able to do it... IF Deep Strike was more dangerous like it was in 3rd edition! Make it that mishaps occur if any model lands in dangerous terrain, and make mishaps kill the unit on a 3 or less.

As it stands now, most expensive melee-oriented units are terrible, deep strike or not. Terminators/MANZ, Melee-dreads, melee Carnifex, Flayed Ones, Melee Obliterators, etc are all horrible units that will typically try to "sneak" their way across the table only to get blown away by the nearest scatbike or grav gun that glances their direction.

Carefully applying assault from DS is one way to help alleviate this problem, but I don't think it's the only solution (nor is it a solution that will work in all cases). Consider how most people treated Assault Marines as garbage until the new formation came out - suddenly everyone was crying about how OP Assault Marines were in that context. If applying assault from deepstrike like that caused such a radical swing in opinion, surely there must be a middle ground where we can have meaningful assault units (e.g. they don't show up and roll face immediately, nor do they slog across the board and die before doing anything).

I must say, it was one of my biggest 40k disappointments when I learned that DSing a squad of melee terminators next to (or into) an enemy squad - aka the big thing they're known for in the fluff - was less effective and more expensive compared to just deleting something with podded Sternguard 99% of the time. Sadly, it's immersion breaking nonsense like this that has pushed me out of the game...

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Sounds like a good solution, just one thing.

 insaniak wrote:
the 2nd edition style of 'Do it whenever you want instead of shooting in your shooting phase'.

What do you mean, whenever you want? Like during your opponent's phase or something? Never played 2E.

I think it's like Necromunda. You skip your shooting phase to 'go on overwatch,' essentially allowing you to interrupt your opponent's turn to fire with that unit.

The excuse that its unfair to the shooting unit being tied up and not allowed to respond is stupid simply because there are currently DS shooty units that have the ability to erase whole units on the turn they land and the target got to do nothing in response.

What comes around, should be able to go around.

However, having said that, I think the rule that no assaulting on turn 1 is a good one. The ability to assault out of DS would not over write this one.

Allowing assault from deep-strike would be very helpful for my Khorne-raptor list. Alas, it's a broken and lazy mechanic that shouldn't exist. The only reason the BA's formation that allows it isn't broken and spammed is because of how incredibly expensive it is.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Sounds like a good solution, just one thing.

 insaniak wrote:
the 2nd edition style of 'Do it whenever you want instead of shooting in your shooting phase'.

What do you mean, whenever you want? Like during your opponent's phase or something? Never played 2E.

That's what he means, anytime you want (usually in the opponents turn). Note that a unit had to be set to overwatch and couldn't shoot in their own turn.

 Jayden63 wrote:
The excuse that its unfair to the shooting unit being tied up and not allowed to respond is stupid simply because there are currently DS shooty units that have the ability to erase whole units on the turn they land and the target got to do nothing in response.

What comes around, should be able to go around.

Or we could just address fixing those absurdly ridiculous DS units like Grav Centurions that most people agree are some sort of issue. There aren't a huge number of super scary DS shooting units, and most heavily-shooting focussed DS units are typically suicide squads. Aside from Grav-Centurions, there's not a whole lot of deep striking units that are going to routinely wipe out units unless we're talking weeny infantry being hit by flamers or tanks getting hit by meltaguns.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Jayden63 wrote:
The excuse that its unfair to the shooting unit being tied up and not allowed to respond is stupid simply because there are currently DS shooty units that have the ability to erase whole units on the turn they land and the target got to do nothing in response.

What comes around, should be able to go around.

Or we could just address fixing those absurdly ridiculous DS units like Grav Centurions that most people agree are some sort of issue. There aren't a huge number of super scary DS shooting units, and most heavily-shooting focussed DS units are typically suicide squads. Aside from Grav-Centurions, there's not a whole lot of deep striking units that are going to routinely wipe out units unless we're talking weeny infantry being hit by flamers or tanks getting hit by meltaguns.

The lowly Tac Squad can easily kill two units on the drop in many armies. Scourges, DE gunboats, Wraithguard in a DS transport, hordes of bugs in a bug drop pod, Sternguard, MT command squads, and IG vet squads can all easily kill an entire unit on the turn they Deep Strike. The ability of units to wipe another unit out right off the bat is all over the place for shooting units. I don't think giving a similar ability to assault units is going to break the game that much.

I'm fine with assaulting out of reserve, but out of DS is a bit much.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Jayden63 wrote:
The excuse that its unfair to the shooting unit being tied up and not allowed to respond is stupid simply because there are currently DS shooty units that have the ability to erase whole units on the turn they land and the target got to do nothing in response.

What comes around, should be able to go around.

Or we could just address fixing those absurdly ridiculous DS units like Grav Centurions that most people agree are some sort of issue. There aren't a huge number of super scary DS shooting units, and most heavily-shooting focussed DS units are typically suicide squads. Aside from Grav-Centurions, there's not a whole lot of deep striking units that are going to routinely wipe out units unless we're talking weeny infantry being hit by flamers or tanks getting hit by meltaguns.

The lowly Tac Squad can easily kill two units on the drop in many armies. Scourges, DE gunboats, Wraithguard in a DS transport, hordes of bugs in a bug drop pod, Sternguard, MT command squads, and IG vet squads can all easily kill an entire unit on the turn they Deep Strike. The ability of units to wipe another unit out right off the bat is all over the place for shooting units. I don't think giving a similar ability to assault units is going to break the game that much.

Unless we're talking particularly small squad sizes, and abnormally good dice luck, they're generally not going to be outright wiping most non-vehicle targets, and you can at least have some defenses against these types of things (aegis lines, jink, terrain cover, etc) that would generally do nothing against assaults.

Except that Aegis lines and terrain cover do do something to prevent assaults, since they make it harder to complete a charge, and may possibly inflict casualties on the chargers, depending on unit and terrain type. In addition, the charging unit will still suffer from Overwatch fire, which a Deep Striking shooting unit will never have to contend with.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Except that Aegis lines and terrain cover do do something to prevent assaults, since they make it harder to complete a charge, and may possibly inflict casualties on the chargers, depending on unit and terrain type. In addition, the charging unit will still suffer from Overwatch fire, which a Deep Striking shooting unit will never have to contend with.

Overwatch from most units typically has a negligible effect, even a unit like IG plasma vets has as much chance of hurting itself as it does an attacking unit with overwatch. Very few units can make anything meaningful of Overwatch. As for Aegis lines, they *can* slow an enemy down, however this would be less of an issue than a 4+ cover save would be for a shooting unit (especially if we're talking about something like Drop Pods where they can DS safely, and disembark 6" to get across the aegis line or right up to it).

Im sorry that the tau crisis wont work that well but every other codex has 3 to 4 units that are deep stike, good in cc and are absolutle useless. Assulting out of deep strike is good counter for all those heavy shooting gun lines that are so popular in this meta.
If yoy dont want a deep strike attack to hurt, deploy so it wont.
Nothing is perfect but every army Is able to compensate.
It might even bring those useless assault modes with all the dust on them back into the sunlight. One can only hope.
No deep strike assault on t1 is an auto include

worldwrekka wrote:
Im sorry that the tau crisis wont work that well but every other codex has 3 to 4 units that are deep stike, good in cc and are absolutle useless. Assulting out of deep strike is good counter for all those heavy shooting gun lines that are so popular in this meta.

It's not the heavy gunlnes that are the problem, one will notice that they're generally not placing anything remotely near the top in most events. It's generally armies with gobs of damage mitigation, speed, and psychic support, very often some sort of Deathstar component.

Now granted, most Tournaments also have their own missions and house rules, but in general, heavy shooting gunlines aren't dominating anything, if they were, you'd see a whole lot more IG armies than we typically do (I think the highest placing IG army of the year at any big tournament, that wasn't an allied meatbag contingent, was like 46th at the LVO out of 222 players, 67th at Adepticon out of like 186).

When you look at "power armies", you see multi-book SM armies of various flavors combining into a single big deathstar backed up by psyker support, penta-flyrants, Eldar jetbike spam, Decurions with Wraiths, etc, not IG/Tau style gunlines.

If yoy dont want a deep strike attack to hurt, deploy so it wont.

Kinda hard to do when deep strike can, by definition, come in just about anywhere, and then they get a 2d6" assault move to boot (or, with a pod, not only come in anywhere, but do so safely, and get a 6" disembark to boot). There are *some* things you can do to mitigate this, but they're hardly foolproof.


The issues with heavy CC units really need to be dealt with in a different way.

There might be a couple units that could warrant assault from Deep Strike, but they'd really have to be something like "can only come in turn 3+" or be *very* expensive.

 Vaktathi wrote:
When you look at "power armies", you see multi-book SM armies of various flavors combining into a single big deathstar backed up by psyker support, penta-flyrants, Eldar jetbike spam, Decurions with Wraiths, etc, not IG/Tau style gunlines

I took a look at the top 16 lists from NOVA. More than anything else I noticed there weren't any armies with a 4+ or worse armour save, and barely any T3 at all.

You might see a rebalancing in which units are considered useful (like Skyhammer ASM) but it terms of external balance it's not exactly a magic bullet.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
When you look at "power armies", you see multi-book SM armies of various flavors combining into a single big deathstar backed up by psyker support, penta-flyrants, Eldar jetbike spam, Decurions with Wraiths, etc, not IG/Tau style gunlines

I took a look at the top 16 lists from NOVA. More than anything else I noticed there weren't any armies with a 4+ or worse armour save, and barely any T3 at all.

You might see a rebalancing in which units are considered useful (like Skyhammer ASM) but it terms of external balance it's not exactly a magic bullet.

Yup, I think the only T3 units were Warp Spiders (sporting 3+sv's and Flickerjump) and Spore Clusters as min troops for Hexa-flyrants and some Summining Tzeentch daemons, almost no non-skimmer tanks except the 4th and 9th place Gladius Strike Forces, and huge numbers of fast-tough units like Bikes, TWC's, and Necron Wraiths.

Yes, but only Daemons of Khorne.

The size of the board and the amount of terrain makes a difference too. If you can DS units into seams where they can't be targeted, and who can then act freely on the following turn, it's a huge advantage over a bike/beast unit that needs to advance for an extended time through a killzone.

As it is, if there's no backfield vulnerability to take advantage of, and the table is so short the advantages of minimizing your exposure through DS is negligible, what's the point? We could arguably balance shooty DS alpha strikers by making Interceptor more common. How much of the game should revolve around who can null deploy more effectively and who gets the turn sequence they want, anyway?

A lot of units can be affected by issues that don't translate directly from the codex (like the poor Basilisk), and DS'ers are definitely among them.

Why has no body discussed interceptors and the effect they have on deep strikers/ all reserves... I find it funny that this little tidbit gets ignored while at the same time people are saying that allowing assault out of deep strike is unfair. There are mechanics; rules wise, unit wise and tactics wise to effectively shut down an assault out of deep strike unit/army. I should know I have run the Angels Fury Spearhead Force and in many games is does not matter at all.

Would work just fine if it was limited and done in a way you can't abuse it. But just allowing it straight up to a unit would probably cause those units to get spammed and clog up another players important units from shooting/moving.

Then again, it would also shift the meta more on the melee side ( which is now all but nonexistent, shooting is king ) and that'd be great.

Kapitalist-Pig wrote:
Why has no body discussed interceptors and the effect they have on deep strikers/ all reserves?

Well, because the conversation on dakka doesn't reflect game design. In design, you start with an experience you want to deliver, then write rules to deliver that experience. Discussion focuses around a common goal, the fulfillment of a unified vision.

On dakka, people don't share the same views at all of how the game should operate. So we disagree easily, and dialog deteriorates quickly into snide jabs and pissy comments for certain individuals who their ego is at stake.

Or was that a rhetorical question you asked?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Runic wrote:
Then again, it would also shift the meta more on the melee side ( which is now all but nonexistent, shooting is king ) and that'd be great.

The other question is competition and role redundancy between units that either move in transports, or by bikes or mounts.

Typically the best choice will make the other two obsolete, which is a factor in deciding the pros and cons of enabling Deep Strike assault.

There's plenty of strong melee stuff, looking at most tournament results, melee units feature rather heavily, and in fact many of the top lists are heavily centered around melee units.

What seems to be the most constant thing however is that multi-save, multi-wound and/or T5+ units, typically with some sort of HQ and Psyker support, and formation freebies, are dominating. Some of these can be shooting based, such as Farsight blobs allied in with something like Eldar, some of them can be heavily melee based, like TWC deathstars or Necron Wraiths, some can be both like like Ravenwing and other Biker deathstars.

In general however, it's those units that have solid mobility and resiliency through multiple wounds and/or high toughness, and that always get to take a save of some sort, that seem to be consistently showing very strongly, regardless of their shootiness or choppiness.

Yes but limited to Terminators and their equivalents of other armies.

I don't get it. In some threads, Necrons are unkillable, Flayed Ones butccher anything, and everyone complains. Here, Flayed Ones are terrible because they just get shot up.

?

100% NO

Honestly? Yes. It's the only way some units have a chance with the amount of sheer firepower that armies can bleed out now. Assault is terrible now, and this would give some units (Genestealers, Lictors, ext) the boost they need. Also, being able to pile into another combat after killing a unit in assault.

Some very few units getting to assault from reserves wouldn't be terrible. I use to run my vanguard vets in 5th, using heroic intervention to assault from ds. They weren't very efficient, they came in on a random turn, and unless I had something else down field where they were landing with locator beacon, I had to worry about scatter/mishap. They were hardly game breaking, and the premium you paid for them prevented spamming them.

Skyhammer formation allows two units to assault from ds. Combined with a giant heap of other rules. After all the doom and gloom dust settled, it isn't as bad as everyone thought it was. Yes that formation can be powerful, but assault marines aren't cc beasts. The only reason the assault marines aren't a tax on that formation is the first round buff.

Honestly, if assault marines could assault from ds, would they see much more play? Maybe a bit, in some more gimmick list. Give terminators this ability and suddenly DW becomes "omg op".

Giving a few under rated/powered units some ds or just regular reserve charge abilities wouldn't be game breaking. It would all be in the execution that would make or break it.

Wyches and Hellions desperately need to be able to assault from Reserve. (Preferably DS as well.)

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wyches and Hellions desperately need to be able to assault from Reserve. (Preferably DS as well.)

Exactly. They need something to not be a waste of plastic.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wyches and Hellions desperately need to be able to assault from Reserve. (Preferably DS as well.)

Or they need a banshee mask type item, assualt from reserves or DS is just a bad idea

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wyches and Hellions desperately need to be able to assault from Reserve. (Preferably DS as well.)

Or they need a banshee mask type item, assualt from reserves or DS is just a bad idea

Hardly. Overwatch, Interceptor, and random charge range all put extra penalties on the assaulter that shooters don't suffer, so it's hard to say one is broken and the other isn't.

Of course, scatter makes yet another hurdle to cross.

Even if you gave both units DS assault right now, they still wouldn't be great. It would elevate them off the pine to the point that someone might field them again, but it certainly isn't going to break them.

So why change the rules to let them assault from deep strike?

Why not instead change the rules to give those units an actual useful role in an army?

Both are in dire need of some actual bite. if wyches are going to get shredded by anything that so much as sneezes in their direction, then they'd be better be damn good when they reach combat. So, what do they get? S3 attacks with no special rules. Thunderwolves eat your heart out.

So, hellions, would you like the HoW, special weapons and toughness of reavers? Tough. Instead, you get to be really, really fragile with basically no defence whatsoever and your only offence is S4 attacks. No, you can't have 2 attacks each - what do you think you are, a melee unit?

Again, neither of these units need to be able to assault from reserves. What they need is to be competently designed. At some point, GW got it into their heads that DE units should be really fragile *and* really pathetic offensively. You know, the exact opposite of what a glass cannon is supposed to be.

When they're prepared to have units that are more fragile than eldar, marines etc. but his *harder* to compensate, then DE (including Wyches, Hellions and such) will be fine.

What if you gave ds units a 1d6 charge instead of 2d6? Then even if they landed 1 inch away, if you were in cover, -2 penalty would mean they only have a 2/3 chance of making it.

Once again still not everything ds and charge, just a few units. I'd like to say 1 or 2 for each army, but I wouldn't know which ones to pick for each.

Assault from Deep Strike is too much. Assault from Outflank is a happy medium I think.

The problem of course is that many assault lists can't afford one turn of Eldar shooting.

Okay, that old-fashioned Overwatch actually sounds a lot better, more effective AND a fairly interesting strategic choice instead of just "Eat inaccurate lead, melee armies!" whenever you're hit.

 vipoid wrote:
So why change the rules to let them assault from deep strike?

Why not instead change the rules to give those units an actual useful role in an army?

Because for many units that IS their useful role in the army! All their fluff, rules and design are built around this crunch impossibility...
That's something that a lot of these detractors seem to be missing, if it needs to be rebalanced and limited in some ways (which still seems to mainly be based on an exaggeration mostly but alright) then rebalance and limit it as needed but no Assault from Deep Strike just gimps certain units into complete pointlessness with no hope...
The important bits would seem to be:
• Still no Assaulting out of a Transport that just arrived from Reserves (whether it be a freshly dropped Drop Pod or a Land Raider you somehow managed to Deep Strike it doesn't matter, anything would count, you have to drop on your own if you want this!)
• CHOOSE between Shooting and Assault when you arrive, NOT both (except maybe as a special rule for certain units like some Terminators, but DEFINITELY not in general).
• If you pick Assault, you declare the unit you charge on arrival which either gets a bonus on Overwatch against you (still not sure about full BS, but can consider it, Blasts definitely should be allowed though, maybe Templates should be treated as having rolled a 3 on their D3s?) and maybe things that don't normally Overwatch would be allowed or alternatively it's treated as having Interceptor against you even if it doesn't normally have that rule. Should be the big one to help, if it doesn't then it's probably because the unit's too weak (and getting stomped is just the natural result of a much stronger unit bullying a much weaker one, it's a lot of points to do a very trivial task so it'd be kinda depressing if it DIDN'T work all that well.) or because their target is a melee-focused unit (which speaks for itself! ).

Other additional things to consider:
• You have to choose which action you want BEFORE rolling Reserves and such, the Assault option makes it harder to arrive, mishaps easier to get and/or worse and so on.
• If you pick Assault you don't get to move other than charging, you just have to charge from wherever you happen to land. Better stock up on those Locator Beacons!
• It's a disordered charge even though you only get to attack one unit.

Possibly more too, but that's what I could come up with. Maybe some other ideas could be added?

I suggest you try those rules with GKs or such against Tau or IG and see what happens.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
Assaulting from deepstrile is a bad idea. Maybe assaulting from infiltrate and scout if you went second could work, but having turn one charges with no chance of retaliation is not fair or interactive so no.

Shooting units completely off the board on turn 1 with no chance of retaliation because Eldar is also not fair or interactive, yet it happens all the time. At least the assaulted units will have a chance to fight back. I am all for it to be honest. It will tone down gunlines quite a lot and force diversity in the lists.

 vipoid wrote:
I suggest you try those rules with GKs or such against Tau or IG and see what happens.

I suggest you actually state issues instead of vaguely insinuating them for no reason.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

I suggest you actually state issues instead of vaguely insinuating them for no reason.

The issues have been stated by myself and others multiple times, you just refuse to see/accept them.

Hence, I'm suggesting that you try the rules against the armies they'll hurt the most, so that you can actually experience the issues.

 vipoid wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

I suggest you actually state issues instead of vaguely insinuating them for no reason.

The issues have been stated by myself and others multiple times, you just refuse to see/accept them.

Hence, I'm suggesting that you try the rules against the armies they'll hurt the most, so that you can actually experience the issues.

Being able to charge the scatterbikes from deep striking would go a long way towards toning down the madness and getting into the nose of obnoxious cheesers. Plus, gunlines right now are way too free to just min-max on shooting, while assault lists have to deploy assault units, utility/protection, possible transports/teleport beacons/ special characters to offer outflank or infiltrate etc plus cannon fodder and some shooting to counter threats from range. Shooting armies just have it too easy at the moment. If tau just get wrecked from assaulting from deepstrike (they won't because of interceptor riptides and supporting overwatch), they should make their list diverse enough to add kroots and other blitzkrieg stuff to pillar around their suits/tanks. Same goes for IG, those conscripts are just ridiculously cheap, buy them and circle your tanks and command units.

A rule change such as the proposed one would shape up the meta so wildly that nobody knows what would happen eventually. Yes, it might become way to terrifying to get 3 trygons reliably deepstrike and charge the enemy, but so far said Trygon is one of the biggest jokes of the game, along with all the other overcosted for no reason whatsoever assault units (terminators, warp talons etc etc).

I would be okay with assaulting from reserves or Outflank/Infiltrate, but not Deep Strike. It would be going too far, as it would give a massive advantage to the assaulting player that the defending player could do nothing about.

People have brought up the justification of shooting units being able to delete units via deep-strike, so assault units should be able to charge. This ignores one important factor: the defending player can still shoot the deep-striking unit dead in the next shooting phase. If the assault goes as the charging player wants, the assaulting unit will still be locked in combat during the opponent's turn, rendering shooting ineffective. The lack of cover saves in assault and the ability to unit to be instakilled via sweeping advances makes assault potentially even more powerful than shooting.

Assaulting from Deep-Strike is a bad idea that, while benefiting many underused units, would make the game's balance as a whole suffer greatly. We already have a great example in the form of skyhammer. You wouldn't think that two squads of Assault Marines could do much damage on the charge, but with the support of the Relentless Devastators they are supremely overpowered. Now imagine if any army could do that. Only the Tau and some Dark Angels would survive due to their ability to boost their overwatch beyond normal levels.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

I suggest you actually state issues instead of vaguely insinuating them for no reason.

The issues have been stated by myself and others multiple times, you just refuse to see/accept them.

Hence, I'm suggesting that you try the rules against the armies they'll hurt the most, so that you can actually experience the issues.

Being able to charge the scatterbikes from deep striking would go a long way towards toning down the madness and getting into the nose of obnoxious cheesers.

Scatter bikes being a staple of Tau and IG lists.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Being able to charge the scatterbikes from deep striking would go a long way towards toning down the madness and getting into the nose of obnoxious cheesers. Plus, gunlines right now are way too free to just min-max on shooting, while assault lists have to deploy assault units, utility/protection, possible transports/teleport beacons/ special characters to offer outflank or infiltrate etc plus cannon fodder and some shooting to counter threats from range. Shooting armies just have it too easy at the moment. If tau just get wrecked from assaulting from deepstrike (they won't because of interceptor riptides and supporting overwatch), they should make their list diverse enough to add kroots and other blitzkrieg stuff to pillar around their suits/tanks. Same goes for IG, those conscripts are just ridiculously cheap, buy them and circle your tanks and command units.

A rule change such as the proposed one would shape up the meta so wildly that nobody knows what would happen eventually. Yes, it might become way to terrifying to get 3 trygons reliably deepstrike and charge the enemy, but so far said Trygon is one of the biggest jokes of the game, along with all the other overcosted for no reason whatsoever assault units (terminators, warp talons etc etc).

Gunlines are not "free"; they require support form the rest of the army, just in a different form than assault units. Tau may be able to boost their overwatch, but they can only overwatch once. Meanwhile, assault units can shoot and then potentially assault multiple units, especially if there are multiple assaulting units. IG conscript bubble can be easily shot through to get to the mean of the army. It wouldn't just be Tau getting wrecked, it would be every army that deploys units in the backfield to hold objectives. It would also put even more power in the hands of melee deathstars, which are obnoxious enough as is. Trygons, Warp Talons, and Assault Terminators may not be overpowered now, but I can guarantee that they would be if you could assault from Deep-Strike. If you want to improve melee, get rid of random charge ranges and allow people to charge from stationary or combat speed vehicles.

Once upon a time, it was possible to assault directly out of reservers. I built a couple lists that maximized that potential. I never lost a game. The end.

No, assaulting from deepstrike/reserve is a *terrible* idea, one which should not be in the game unless it comes at a severe penalty (automatically a disorderly charge made at Initiative 1, units may only charge a single enemy unit/may not multicharge) or is limited to very specific special character models.

 vipoid wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

I suggest you actually state issues instead of vaguely insinuating them for no reason.

The issues have been stated by myself and others multiple times, you just refuse to see/accept them.

Hence, I'm suggesting that you try the rules against the armies they'll hurt the most, so that you can actually experience the issues.

Being able to charge the scatterbikes from deep striking would go a long way towards toning down the madness and getting into the nose of obnoxious cheesers.

Scatter bikes being a staple of Tau and IG lists.

I never said anything about Tau or IG, this was all you. The fact is that assaulting from DS would nerf scatbikes. As usually in the world, context matters, you stripped all of my comment except for the part that would make it seem irrelevant. So as I wrote clearly in my post yet you cheerfully elected to ignore, Tau would laugh off any deep striking armies with their interceptor riptides and missilesides. Ig should also be able to deploy so many bodies that deepstrike would become largely insignificant.

The armies that would really really hurt from such a change would be glass cannon armies like Eldar, which rely on their mobility and ridiculous shooting to come on top of the opposition. And that's perfectly fine by me, Eldar need the limited field.

Something along the lines of units assulting from deep strike count as a disordered charge and enemies may fire overwatch with BS2 versus units assaulting from deep strike would give it a good balance - that, coupled with having to come in from reserves, scatter, and the normal hazards of DSing I think it would be fairly balanced.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Once upon a time, it was possible to assault directly out of reservers. I built a couple lists that maximized that potential. I never lost a game. The end.

No, assaulting from deepstrike/reserve is a *terrible* idea, one which should not be in the game unless it comes at a severe penalty (automatically a disorderly charge made at Initiative 1, units may only charge a single enemy unit/may not multicharge) or is limited to very specific special character models.

Once upon a time units were not what they are now, shooting was definitely NOT what it is now and the biggest, toughest and meanest unit on any table was a carnifex or something of the like. Things have moved tremendously from that point, with LoW everywhere and D weapons chilling around for fun. You can't make a viable assumption based only on what used to happen once upon a time. You need to take today's evidence into account. And today's evidence is that close combat sucks terribly and the assault armies are reduced to even less than fluffy status.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

I never said anything about Tau or IG, this was all you.

I know, so why the hell did you quote me to talk about Eldar?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Once upon a time, it was possible to assault directly out of reservers. I built a couple lists that maximized that potential. I never lost a game. The end.

No, assaulting from deepstrike/reserve is a *terrible* idea, one which should not be in the game unless it comes at a severe penalty (automatically a disorderly charge made at Initiative 1, units may only charge a single enemy unit/may not multicharge) or is limited to very specific special character models.

Even then, there were counters to that approach.

 vipoid wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

I suggest you actually state issues instead of vaguely insinuating them for no reason.

The issues have been stated by myself and others multiple times, you just refuse to see/accept them.

Hence, I'm suggesting that you try the rules against the armies they'll hurt the most, so that you can actually experience the issues.

100% factually wrong, I made no less than 6 SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS in order to address that, many of which would actually seem to be pretty damn overkill, you seem to be under the impression that those SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS that I mentioned and that were not acknowledged elsewhere aren't good enough for some reason and you haven't said why for no good reason at all.
No, you have to say it. If you have a problem with them, lay it out there. If you're going to say or suggest something, you MUST back it up, that's not optional.

As a Black Templar player with 20 Assault Marines and 20 Assault Terminators gathering dust, I'd love the ability to assault out of deepstrike. However, I think it would be too strong.

Overwatch would not phase me. I've lost more models to gosh darn booby-trapped random objectives than overwatch, and I always bring assault units.

Interceptor? Again, I bring drop pods all of the time, even against tau, and I'm not scared of dangling my bits in your face. I'd get to assault? Say goodby to all of your marker light units on turn 1 or 2.

I like the game as-is, with the exception of super heavies and fliers. Assault from deepstrike should be rare IMHO.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Once upon a time, it was possible to assault directly out of reservers. I built a couple lists that maximized that potential. I never lost a game. The end.

No, assaulting from deepstrike/reserve is a *terrible* idea, one which should not be in the game unless it comes at a severe penalty (automatically a disorderly charge made at Initiative 1, units may only charge a single enemy unit/may not multicharge) or is limited to very specific special character models.

Once upon a time units were not what they are now, shooting was definitely NOT what it is now and the biggest, toughest and meanest unit on any table was a carnifex or something of the like. Things have moved tremendously from that point, with LoW everywhere and D weapons chilling around for fun. You can't make a viable assumption based only on what used to happen once upon a time. You need to take today's evidence into account. And today's evidence is that close combat sucks terribly and the assault armies are reduced to even less than fluffy status.

Late 5th/Early 6th wasnt *that* long ago, and even then we (as in the various gaming groups I frequented) had a lot of issues at the apocalypse scale (when Lords of War and D strength weapons were arguably more brutal than they are now) where units coming out of reserve would just neutralize large swathes of the opposing army, titans/superheavies included, without the opposing side had any answer. The game very quickly stopped being about who had more skill/better units, and who was able to take more advantage of the reserves rules.

If assault armies are struggling, Id say it has more to do with the nature of the assault rules than it does with the ability to assault from reserve. Being able to assault from reserve doesn't fix the assault rules, it just breaks the game further.

@Kronk: Then apply restrictions as needed, don't just make many many units useless because they're balanced around a tactic that doesn't exist.
Much better to come up with ideas to balance it than to just doom whole units to be useless forever.

As requested:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

• Still no Assaulting out of a Transport that just arrived from Reserves (whether it be a freshly dropped Drop Pod or a Land Raider you somehow managed to Deep Strike it doesn't matter, anything would count, you have to drop on your own if you want this!) Fair enough.
• CHOOSE between Shooting and Assault when you arrive, NOT both (except maybe as a special rule for certain units like some Terminators, but DEFINITELY not in general). Well, it's not a good sign that you're already proposing exceptions. But, even then, what is this solving? The entire problem with having units assault after deep striking is that they can immediately lock down shooty units, and this is doing nothing whatsoever to address that.
• If you pick Assault, you declare the unit you charge on arrival which either gets a bonus on Overwatch against you (still not sure about full BS, but can consider it, Blasts definitely should be allowed though, maybe Templates should be treated as having rolled a 3 on their D3s?) and maybe things that don't normally Overwatch would be allowed or alternatively it's treated as having Interceptor against you even if it doesn't normally have that rule. Should be the big one to help, if it doesn't then it's probably because the unit's too weak (and getting stomped is just the natural result of a much stronger unit bullying a much weaker one, it's a lot of points to do a very trivial task so it'd be kinda depressing if it DIDN'T work all that well.) or because their target is a melee-focused unit (which speaks for itself! ).
This *might* help a little, but even overwatching at full BS it's still just one chance to stop the assaulting unit, after which the shooting unit is almost certainly dead. Moreover, what about multi-charges? And what about units like vehicles, which can't overwatch at all?
Other additional things to consider:
• You have to choose which action you want BEFORE rolling Reserves and such, the Assault option makes it harder to arrive, mishaps easier to get and/or worse and so on. It's hard to address this point because it's so vague. Although, I'm more interested in what the fluff behind it would be. "Ok, lads, we're going to try and assault them - so everyone put on the teleporters we bought off thar Ork scrap dealer."
• If you pick Assault you don't get to move other than charging, you just have to charge from wherever you happen to land. Better stock up on those Locator Beacons! But... if we're already ruling out charging from a vehicle, and run prevents charging, what other movement could they possibly get?
• It's a disordered charge even though you only get to attack one unit. Where did the 'only get to attack one unit' come from? In any case, I'm not sure that a disordered charge would even be a negative - as it just increases the chances that you'll still be in assault (read: can't be shot) in the enemy turn.

Possibly more too, but that's what I could come up with. Maybe some other ideas could be added?

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
@Kronk: Then apply restrictions as needed, don't just make many many units useless because they're balanced around a tactic that doesn't exist.
Much better to come up with ideas to balance it than to just doom whole units to be useless forever.

Sorry, why does preventing assaulting from deep strike mean units will be useless forever? I refuse to believe that there are units that can't possibly be good unless they can assault from deep strike.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
@Kronk: Then apply restrictions as needed, don't just make many many units useless because they're balanced around a tactic that doesn't exist.
Much better to come up with ideas to balance it than to just doom whole units to be useless forever.

I don't need to. I've told you why I don't want it at all.

You want to assault with terminators? Bring a land raider or deep strike and weather the storm.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I say yes, assault from deep strike. Change-up the rules, switch the strength from shooting to melee. All those armies that have increase Overwatch will do better.

Peoples armies will adapt and we will see a completely different type of game, and I'd be happy to play it.

I think yes.

It might become a bit broken on non-scattering Deep Strikers, but, if units aren't allowed to move either, then it becomes quite a risky business. Either you deep strike close to your target and risk scattering onto it and mishapping, or you go further away and risk failing your charge (and scattering away, making it even harder to make the charge).

Some people have also raised concerns about such units being able to essentially pick multiple units to take out of the game, but it would be simple enough to say these units may assault, but may not multi-assault on the turn they deep strike.

No, deepstriking assault (and even outflanking reserves) is simply too powerful (as evident by previous editions in which assault ruled the roost).

What should happen is deepstriking units should only be shot at using Snap Fire rules. This represents the fact that, "HOLY $%##!!! A gnarly assault unit just dropped right into my battle line!!!!", which would be pretty unnerving for even the most stalwart troops.

 Icculus wrote:
I say yes, assault from deep strike. Change-up the rules, switch the strength from shooting to melee. All those armies that have increase Overwatch will do better.

Peoples armies will adapt and we will see a completely different type of game, and I'd be happy to play it.

It wasn't that long ago (4th/early 5th) that the assault phase was the dominant factor in the game, and melee trumped shooting. People complained and GW apparrently listened. I would say that the game is arguably better balanced today (in terms of the shooting/melee dichotomy) than it was back then. Anyway, needless to say, a lot of people said what you are saying here when they argued in favor of shifting from melee to shooting, it didn't quite work out that way.

TL;DR: Veteran players have already lived through the 'completely different type of game', you have no idea what you're asking for.

Honestly, assaulting from deep strike is kind of fun, and a very high risk-high reward maneuver.

I used to do it when zagstruk wasn't awful, and assaulting after deep striking was a balance. You wanted to get close enough to be able to assault, but not so close that you'd mishap.

Deep striking into assault range is risky enough to be allowable, imo, on some units. Some caveats for me would be:

Nothing that can reroll or reduce scatter ranges, or auto-pass deep strike mishaps (like drop pods). If you want to pull it off, you'd better be willing to risk the unit.

Independent characters should probably not be allowed, or be severely limited.

Take some penalty for attempting it, such as dangerous terrain tests and not being able to shoot the turn you arrive.

But overall, I thought it was a fun addition, and could be now in certain units.

For cries sake it's hard enough for armies like IG to stop DS units as it is. One round of shooting and OW is often not enough to kill enough units. Especially if that blob has been already shot at for a turn or two. Add a half competent assault unit and yeah.... fun for us!

I also get the impression vehicles would suffer massively if this was allowed too, what can they possibly do in their defence?

If you want to allow assault from DS you would have to find a was to completely gimp it, which would mean most people would still not do it.

Also isn't deepstriking suppose to have inherent disadvantages anyway? Seeing you essentially get to deploy almost anywhere and that unit is unable to be damaged until it enters the table?

There we go, thank you!

vipoid wrote:Well, it's not a good sign that you're already proposing exceptions. But, even then, what is this solving? The entire problem with having units assault after deep striking is that they can immediately lock down shooty units, and this is doing nothing whatsoever to address that.

So that you can't do both at once, you have to choose one or the other.
If you're so, so worried about that in specific, what about the defending unit getting to make an Initiative Test to run away and/or gaining Hit & Run/something similar?

vipoid wrote:This *might* help a little, but even overwatching at full BS it's still just one chance to stop the assaulting unit, after which the shooting unit is almost certainly dead. Moreover, what about multi-charges? And what about units like vehicles, which can't overwatch at all?

Well, if it's multiple chances needed, could do the auto-Interceptor (without the "can't fire the same weapon afterwards") restriction AND the boosted Overwatch, perhaps also with the Initiative Test to run away and/or Hit & Run move mentioned above. Or multiple Overwatches, but that would be weird.
Part of the point of declaring the unit is to snuff out multi-charges, on arrival you pick THE unit which gets to do this stuff in defense and only charge THEM, nobody else.
Also I was specifically thinking of specially allowing Vehicles/Slow and Purposeful/etc to Overwatch with the same bonuses when I mention "units that otherwise couldn't". You charge a Vindicator from DS, it gets to give you a face full of Demolisher Cannon, possibly twice. Or you charge those Grav Cents from DS, prepare to get Grav Cannon'd! With rerolls! Maybe twice, again! I'll admit it's not much help to units too weak to do much or that don't have guns, but I already covered those situations.

vipoid wrote:It's hard to address this point because it's so vague. Although, I'm more interested in what the fluff behind it would be. "Ok, lads, we're going to try and assault them - so everyone put on the teleporters we bought off thar Ork scrap dealer."

Well the specifics I thought of were requiring a higher roll to arrive, more scatter and mishaps that were easier to get (not sure how, admittedly) along with perhaps being deadlier somehow (like maybe the unit is destroyed on any mishap?).
Surprisingly, I actually thought of fluff for it, the difference between them just plonking down and firing their guns and them immediately crashing down and rushing forward like utter maniacs, though I'll admit this might be a little flimsy for the differences caused.

vipoid wrote:But... if we're already ruling out charging from a vehicle, and run prevents charging, what other movement could they possibly get?

Movement in the movement phase and someone mentioned an Assault move. None of that, just charging. And someone else mentioned reducing charge range from DS to 1D6, how about that as well?

vipoid wrote:Where did the 'only get to attack one unit' come from? In any case, I'm not sure that a disordered charge would even be a negative - as it just increases the chances that you'll still be in assault (read: can't be shot) in the enemy turn.

Already handled earlier but just to restate, the "declare the target" thing (You're right to point this out, it was important and I should've really phrased it better). I can see the point, it wasn't too much of an important point, just a potential extra thing that I thought might've been worth suggesting.

In any case, thank you for responding, these were perfectly valid things to bring up, and I'm trying to meet those who have issues with the idea halfway with these things.

vipoid wrote:Sorry, why does preventing assaulting from deep strike mean units will be useless forever? I refuse to believe that there are units that can't possibly be good unless they can assault from deep strike.

Believe it. With Deep Strike and specific melee weapons they're literally geared up for a tactic that doesn't exist, it would be like a Crisis Suit that can't fire its guns, a Rhino with no Transport Capacity or a Platoon with only 1 Guardsman in it.

kronk wrote:I don't need to. I've told you why I don't want it at all.

You want to assault with terminators? Bring a land raider or deep strike and weather the storm.

You do, you have concerns that it might be OP? Come up with nerfs, rather than just doom whole units! Imagine what the game would be like if someone at GW said "I don't think we can make Necrons balanced, let's just not make them".

That options already exists, it doesn't work. Otherwise you wouldn't have those Assault Termies gathering dust, would you?

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Sorry, why does preventing assaulting from deep strike mean units will be useless forever? I refuse to believe that there are units that can't possibly be good unless they can assault from deep strike.

Believe it. With Deep Strike and specific melee weapons they're literally geared up for a tactic that doesn't exist, it would be like a Crisis Suit that can't fire its guns, a Rhino with no Transport Capacity or a Platoon with only 1 Guardsman in it.

I'm going to ask, did anyone here play Planetstrike?

Does anyone remember 3.5E CSM daemon summoning?

Assault from Deep Strike is not an untested concept. It has been tried before, in editions with much harsher mishap penalties (mishaps were auto-unit-kills back in 4E, and has twice the destruction chance on a mishap in 5E that they do now). It has never been anything but a disaster that proved to be insanely powerful.

The rules are currently schizophrenic on deep strike. An assault unit stands there and waves at you because they don't want people KOing units out of deep strike, but they seem to have no problem whatsoever with a sternguard pod, skyhammer devs, farsight bomb etc popping in and KOing units out of deep strike.

Either assault units need to even the tables and be able to do their damage out of DS just like shooty ones, or neither type should be able to rock people out during DS. EG deep strike could cause shooting to always be snapshots in addition to not charging.

topaxygouroun i wrote:I never said anything about Tau or IG, this was all you. The fact is that assaulting from DS would nerf scatbikes. As usually in the world, context matters, you stripped all of my comment except for the part that would make it seem irrelevant. So as I wrote clearly in my post yet you cheerfully elected to ignore, Tau would laugh off any deep striking armies with their interceptor riptides and missilesides. Ig should also be able to deploy so many bodies that deepstrike would become largely insignificant.

The armies that would really really hurt from such a change would be glass cannon armies like Eldar, which rely on their mobility and ridiculous shooting to come on top of the opposition. And that's perfectly fine by me, Eldar need the limited field.

If you want to nerf Scatbikers, there are a lot better and cleaner ways to do so. Interceptor shuts down your own shooting, and is ineffective if you have multiple unit arriving at the same time. Gunline armies would have no effective means of responding, as overwatch outside of Tau is rarely effective and bubble wrap units are very vulnerable to shooting. Think about it: do you really want Dark Eldar to be able to land a S7 T7 Corpsetheif claw with 3+ FnP exactly one inch away from your backfield units?

topaxygouroun i wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Once upon a time, it was possible to assault directly out of reservers. I built a couple lists that maximized that potential. I never lost a game. The end.

No, assaulting from deepstrike/reserve is a *terrible* idea, one which should not be in the game unless it comes at a severe penalty (automatically a disorderly charge made at Initiative 1, units may only charge a single enemy unit/may not multicharge) or is limited to very specific special character models.

Once upon a time units were not what they are now, shooting was definitely NOT what it is now and the biggest, toughest and meanest unit on any table was a carnifex or something of the like. Things have moved tremendously from that point, with LoW everywhere and D weapons chilling around for fun. You can't make a viable assumption based only on what used to happen once upon a time. You need to take today's evidence into account. And today's evidence is that close combat sucks terribly and the assault armies are reduced to even less than fluffy status.

One upon a time Blood Angels ruled the game thanks to consolidate into combat, and IG could blow armies off the table. Anecdotes are irrelevant in light of how the game has developed since.

Assault is powerful in the form of deathstars, but it relies on fast and tough units with various additional shenanigans to whether enemy shooting. If you want to improve assault, change how charges and overwatch work, not introduce yet another broken mechanic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
The rules are currently schizophrenic on deep strike. An assault unit stands there and waves at you because they don't want people KOing units out of deep strike, but they seem to have no problem whatsoever with a sternguard pod, skyhammer devs, farsight bomb etc popping in and KOing units out of deep strike.

Either assault units need to even the tables and be able to do their damage out of DS just like shooty ones, or neither type should be able to rock people out during DS. EG deep strike could cause shooting to always be snapshots in addition to not charging.

I could support some sort of penalty for shooting after deep-striking, but not snap shots. Maybe a penalty to Ballistic Skill?

I think they should be able to, but it's a disordered charge. Units can deep strike and shoot (and in some cases, like Deathwing, actually shoot better!) and assault units should have the same sort of deal.

Assault as through difficult, hitting at init 1 and with overwatch at full BS (because the chargers are disoriented).

Also, s̶i̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶o̶p̶p̶o̶d̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶s̶a̶u̶l̶t̶ ̶v̶e̶h̶i̶c̶l̶e̶s̶ no assaulting from Droppods, or similar.

How's that?

Edit: Droppods are open-topped and thus assault.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
I could support some sort of penalty for shooting after deep-striking, but not snap shots. Maybe a penalty to Ballistic Skill?

I'd also be up for deep striking causing a penalty to a unit's BS.

Though, frankly, I think that's what snapshots should be anyway.

 devinple wrote:
Assault as through difficult, hitting at init 1 and with overwatch at full BS (because the chargers are disoriented).

Also, since droppods aren't assault vehicles no assaulting from Droppods, or similar.

How's that?

Drop Pods are open topped so are assault vehicles

I like the idea of having a penalty to Shooting after Deep Striking, that is far more 'balancing' then allowing Assault after Deep Strike.
Swinging at Initiative 1 is not enough, as the vast majority of the 'locked in combat' benefits occur simply by being locked in combat.

 Baldeagle91 wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
or a Platoon with only 1 Guardsman in it.

Wouldn't that be the result anyway by letting units assault from deepstrike?

 niv-mizzet wrote:
The rules are currently schizophrenic on deep strike. An assault unit stands there and waves at you because they don't want people KOing units out of deep strike, but they seem to have no problem whatsoever with a sternguard pod, skyhammer devs, farsight bomb etc popping in and KOing units out of deep strike.

There's a lot more you can do against that in terms of castling up and defense, but at the same time, there's a lot of people who aren't ok with farsight bombs and skyhammer devs either

 Vaktathi wrote:
I'm going to ask, did anyone here play Planetstrike?

Does anyone remember 3.5E CSM daemon summoning?

Assault from Deep Strike is not an untested concept. It has been tried before, in editions with much harsher mishap penalties (mishaps were auto-unit-kills back in 4E, and has twice the destruction chance on a mishap in 5E that they do now). It has never been anything but a disaster that proved to be insanely powerful.

I remember, and thats why I am 100% against the idiotic idea of reintroducing it to the game.

The rules are currently schizophrenic on deep strike. An assault unit stands there and waves at you because they don't want people KOing units out of deep strike, but they seem to have no problem whatsoever with a sternguard pod, skyhammer devs, farsight bomb etc popping in and KOing units out of deep strike.

I would say deep striking shooting units should be toned down, if anything. It would help do away with the concept of suicide melta units, etc. A simple fix would be Deep Striking units fire their weapons at BS2. Done.

That, however, does not change the fact that a deepstriking assault unit is more capable than a deepstriking shooting unit. A shooting unit can only have 1 target, back in the day, a deepstriking assault unit could tie up multiple units, in fact, a single unit could tie up whole swathes of an army if your positioning was good and your opponent was unprepared for it.This was made worse by the fact that these units were able to consolidate into combat, and basically became immune to ever being shot at, meaning the only way to combat the dedicated melee unit was by having a better dedicated melee unit available.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I'm going to ask, did anyone here play Planetstrike?

Does anyone remember 3.5E CSM daemon summoning?

Assault from Deep Strike is not an untested concept. It has been tried before, in editions with much harsher mishap penalties (mishaps were auto-unit-kills back in 4E, and has twice the destruction chance on a mishap in 5E that they do now). It has never been anything but a disaster that proved to be insanely powerful.

I remember, and thats why I am 100% against the idiotic idea of reintroducing it to the game/

Right? The nightmares this sort of thing caused were ridiculous.

All these people saying yes to assault out of deepstrike would change their tune real quick if nid drop pods suddenly allowed this. Or if ork ROK pods were made and could carry 20 orks. And allowed assault out of them. Its a broken mechanic. And this is from someone who has played orks since 3rd ed.

 Orock wrote:
All these people saying yes to assault out of deepstrike would change their tune real quick if nid drop pods suddenly allowed this. Or if ork ROK pods were made and could carry 20 orks. And allowed assault out of them. Its a broken mechanic. And this is from someone who has played orks since 3rd ed.

Or the Farsight Bomb drops, vapourises one unit with plasma fire, fires Farsights Plasma shots at a different, less dangerous unit, hits two tanks with Melta shots and then assaults the unit Farsight shot at to avoid being shot on the opponents turn. End of the opponents assault phase and if they're still in combat then the bomb uses hit and run to get out of combat and do it all over again.

My opinion is that there should be three types of Deep Strike. Have it broken down into Deep Strike (Teleport), Deep Strike (Descent), and Deep Strike (Ambush.) This way you can have each type server a different purpose and have unique drawbacks. Let Teleport shoot upon deep strike so that you can still have shooting based units use it effectively. Let Descent have rules similar to what Swooping Hawks do, let each model make one attack against a target unit within 6" as they descend onto the battlefield. Let Ambush be for things like Tyranids, units that sole role is to appear and strike with surprise. This way you can have the best of all worlds with just some fairly simple additions to the game.

How about instead of letting the DS unit assault, making it so that the opposing player can only snap fire at a deep striking unit until a full game turn after it deep strikes? Fluffy (they were surprised) and doesn't seem too imbalanced (they can reposition to accommodate).

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
How about instead of letting the DS unit assault, making it so that the opposing player can only snap fire at a deep striking unit until a full game turn after it deep strikes? Fluffy (they were surprised) and doesn't seem too imbalanced (they can reposition to accommodate).

It's all fun and games until someone drops a 20-strong unit of Flayed ones or a Draigo-star in and your one chance to do something about them went bye-bye, especially when it would make them immune to blast and template weapons.

 CrownAxe wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

dominuschao wrote:
meanwhile powerhouse ranged units are free to drop in and erase 1+ units with ease and without reprise. Let the assault side have similar and for once give it to a faction that needs it.

This is no where near as powerful as letting a unit assault out of deep strike. For one a shooting unit only does damage to a single unit at a time which is no where near close to the list of things assault units get to do (can't be shot at, can attack in both player's turns, prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting, can sweeping advance even off a single wound, can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging). And second of all anything a shooting unit can do when deep striking can be done by a unit that was already on the board (such as blowing up a tank)

Well, isn't that true of assault? A unit on the board can assault and do that list of things you said they can do.

I can shoot units with weapons from my deployment zone

I can't charge a unit from my deployment zone

Tachyon Arrow has Range: Infinite.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
How about instead of letting the DS unit assault, making it so that the opposing player can only snap fire at a deep striking unit until a full game turn after it deep strikes? Fluffy (they were surprised) and doesn't seem too imbalanced (they can reposition to accommodate).

It's all fun and games until someone drops a 20-strong unit of Flayed ones or a Draigo-star in and your one chance to do something about them went bye-bye, especially when it would make them immune to blast and template weapons.

At least you had a chance. What chance do Warp Talons have? You could have moved. When Draigo or a giant horde of flayed ones comes near, you should be turning heels.

I think the real question is, does 40k need more alpha strike?

This thread is discussing the means, while ignoring the ends.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
How about instead of letting the DS unit assault, making it so that the opposing player can only snap fire at a deep striking unit until a full game turn after it deep strikes? Fluffy (they were surprised) and doesn't seem too imbalanced (they can reposition to accommodate).

It's all fun and games until someone drops a 20-strong unit of Flayed ones or a Draigo-star in and your one chance to do something about them went bye-bye, especially when it would make them immune to blast and template weapons.

At least you had a chance. What chance do Warp Talons have? You could have moved. When Draigo or a giant horde of flayed ones comes near, you should be turning heels.

Please your comparing one unit to a whole army? IG already has a tough time, now any drop pod army or GK army would table them turn 1. First turn whole formation deep strikes, unloads its guns at close range and charges what is left over and the IG player can hope his loaded dice won't get noticed too much.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
Assaulting from deepstrile is a bad idea. Maybe assaulting from infiltrate and scout if you went second could work, but having turn one charges with no chance of retaliation is not fair or interactive so no.

there is nothing preventing assaulting from turn one. you mean first turn player?

 Gordon Shumway wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
How about instead of letting the DS unit assault, making it so that the opposing player can only snap fire at a deep striking unit until a full game turn after it deep strikes? Fluffy (they were surprised) and doesn't seem too imbalanced (they can reposition to accommodate).

It's all fun and games until someone drops a 20-strong unit of Flayed ones or a Draigo-star in and your one chance to do something about them went bye-bye, especially when it would make them immune to blast and template weapons.

At least you had a chance. What chance do Warp Talons have? You could have moved. When Draigo or a giant horde of flayed ones comes near, you should be turning heels.

In theory, sure. In practice that doesn't work so much. Not everything is an Eldar Jetbike that can simply relocate to the other side of the table, and if it's a critical location, relocation may not be an option. With an assault threat bubble potentially up to 40" in diameter (6" move+ up to 12" assault move, with 3-4" unit base radius in any direction), it can often be basically impossible to vacate that threat range, and that's assuming a footslogging unit.

Changing core rules to fix Warp Talons is the wrong way to fix Warp Talons. If Warp Talons really need that, then make it specific to them and put some restrictions on it (e.g. Warp Talons may assault from deep strike, but may only begin rolling for availability on turn 3).

Being new to the game I can't for the life of me understand why some one can DS me with meltas and take out what they want but if I deep strike I have to get shot up a round before I can do my thing. My army is kdk so don't seem fair but I guess there must be reasons. I play casual so whatever. Pass the pretzels while you shoot at me this round

I voted no. NO. NO

Right now assault is far too powerful as it is. Assault troops find getting in to melee far to easy and can quickly massacre anything that they encounter there with a shocking ease. Now I know that there are those assault lovers out there whom will cry heresy at my post but hear me out, please.
I play Imperial Guard. We are not a melee army and our strength relies upon shooting the out of the enemy long before they reach us. This is an extremely difficult task for us to pull as we are relying upon overpriced weapons and joke guns that are usually being fired at BS stupidly low and our close quarters capacity is really, really, crap to the point of being unable to fight at all in assaults (seriously, even with overwatch my Veterans will rarely put more than a single wound on a Tactical Squad). As you can imagine my priority is usually to feth up incoming assault stuff fast.
Now on to the Deepstriking part. This is where things go from oh crap to of in a matter of a dice roll. Suddenly my opponents crap is dropping in left right and centre. Now in the good old days of 40K when the game did not obviously cater to the average 10 year old space marine player the act of deepstriking was incredibly risky. There where very, very, very, few wargear pieces that would let you drop in without a scatter and unlike todays "hold their hand and pamper them" deepstrike rules scattering into terrain or an enemy unit was actually really, really, bad. If even one model just brushed a terrain piece or an enemy unit then the entire unit had to roll on the mishap table and the results where so utterly nasty that it actually made deepstrike a risky tactic, although a real game winner if you could pull it off.
Fast forward a few editions and now we have pamperhammer in space. Deepstrike is almost entirely without risk, with multiple wargear options providing a no scatter bubble to dedicated transports like the fething droppod allowing units coming in to drop as close as they like to the target with no fear of mishap. And even if you lack these glorious options then you only roll on the mishap table if you hit an enemy unit - and in all honesty that mishap table is a pale comparison to its former self - and hitting terrain has no effect whatsoever.

Deepstriking is really strong - my army, Inquisitor and all, was tabled by a Grey Knight army that used the nemesis formation and dropped in. Did they assault? No, at least not at first. They just shot every unit of mine in the vicinity to gak. And THEN on turn two, after my responding fire killed not enough, they assaulted and pretty much tabled me. Right now both Assault and Deepstrike are too powerful. Deepstrike units tend to be damn tough and usually just bounce everything I throw at them (Someone earlier was going on about how an IG Veteran Section can kill an entire squad in one turn of shooting - someone whom was obviously talking out of their ass and has never faced IG before - even Melta vets will struggle to kill three MEQ's) whilst assault units basially laugh at me. Ooohh, scary overwatch. So much firepower, such nasty overpowered BS 1 lasguns. Really? I am lucky if I can even inflict a couple of hits and I can think of only one occasion when Overwatch actually did anything to my opponent (he lost A basic marine).

So no, assaulting from Deepstrike is far to powerful and would pretty much break what little semblance of balance we have left. Deepstriking and assaulting should have its risks. Stop whining and in all honesty deal with it.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
The rules are currently schizophrenic on deep strike. An assault unit stands there and waves at you because they don't want people KOing units out of deep strike, but they seem to have no problem whatsoever with a sternguard pod, skyhammer devs, farsight bomb etc popping in and KOing units out of deep strike.

The super-majority of shooty units that deep-strike don't have nearly as much burst-damage potential as melee units, and the ones that do, such as the units/formation you've mentioned, are almost universally reviled in the community for being unbalanced.

Which frankly is just another mark against assaulting from deep-strike, as a huge number of melee units can match the damage potential of Farsight bomb/Skyhammer while being much cheaper and prolific, if they could assault out of deep-strike.

It costs 540 points to drop 60 daemonettes on the board. 60 daemonettes can easily kill over a thousand points of stuff in a single turn if they all manage to get the charge off.

Grimlineman wrote:
Being new to the game I can't for the life of me understand why some one can DS me with meltas and take out what they want but if I deep strike I have to get shot up a round before I can do my thing. My army is kdk so don't seem fair but I guess there must be reasons. I play casual so whatever. Pass the pretzels while you shoot at me this round

Those meltas are good at engaging just one thing, vehicles, and cover saves can really bork up a couple of meltaguns, there's a good number of defensive options. A couple of BS4 meltaguns against a 4+ cover save AV14 Leman Russ tank are, on average, more often than not whiff entirely even assuming they land right and in double-pen range, and will only explode their target in about 1-in-8 attempts. Meanwhile a Tac squad landing out of a drop pod and assaulting a Leman Russ are going to have a much easier and safer time ensuring proper range and will have a far greater chance of killing the tank because they ignore the cover save and get to hit rear armor instead of AV14.

Hell, if you could assault from Deep Strike, you could actually do both, melta the tank, and then assault it if you fail to kill it

"Right now assault is far too powerful as it is. "

That is an absurd statement.

". Right now both Assault and Deepstrike are too powerful."

Nope. You to be doing something wrong in list construction because I can cripple deep striking GK with BA's crappy firepower. You only need to kill around 15-20 models and their army falls apart.

" Deepstrike units tend to be damn tough "

You mean invis centurions are too tough. Everything else that deep strikes is asking to get its face shot off in short order. And they do.

Martel732 wrote:
"Right now assault is far too powerful as it is. "

That is an absurd statement.

". Right now both Assault and Deepstrike are too powerful."

Nope. You to be doing something wrong in list construction because I can cripple deep striking GK with BA's crappy firepower. You only need to kill around 15-20 models and their army falls apart.

Yeah, but did you know he plays guard????

 GangstaMuffin24 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Right now assault is far too powerful as it is. "

That is an absurd statement.

". Right now both Assault and Deepstrike are too powerful."

Nope. You to be doing something wrong in list construction because I can cripple deep striking GK with BA's crappy firepower. You only need to kill around 15-20 models and their army falls apart.

Yeah, but did you know he plays guard????

Guard only have about triple the firepower of a BA list. Woe is they.

Martel732 wrote:
"Right now assault is far too powerful as it is. "

That is an absurd statement.

". Right now both Assault and Deepstrike are too powerful."

Nope. You to be doing something wrong in list construction because I can cripple deep striking GK with BA's crappy firepower. You only need to kill around 15-20 models and their army falls apart.

Really? Because, you know, I had around 30 plus a tank in their DZ. And I lost all of them in a single turn.

Rather than telling me I am absurd try telling me where I have gone wrong and making a logical and factual arguement. Except you cant because you know I am right.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Right now assault is far too powerful as it is. "

That is an absurd statement.

". Right now both Assault and Deepstrike are too powerful."

Nope. You to be doing something wrong in list construction because I can cripple deep striking GK with BA's crappy firepower. You only need to kill around 15-20 models and their army falls apart.

Really? Because, you know, I had around 30 plus a tank in their DZ. And I lost all of them in a single turn.

Rather than telling me I am absurd try telling me where I have gone wrong and making a logical and factual arguement. Except you cant because you know I am right.

30 what? And a tank? In the GK DZ? What are you talking about?

First off, when you see GK alpha strike you have to set up a certain way. That way is dependent upon the board, but the point is to protect the units that you most care about and offer up plenty of chaff to get shot at and then assaulted. Units not being able to consolidate into another combat gives shooty lists a plethora of regular firing opportunities on top of overwatch. Use this to your advantage. GK are playing a lot of points to kill units that aren't worth very much. And then getting shot in the face more with melta/plasma. That's basically the worst possible scenario for them ever.

I'm calling your statement absurd because assault has never been weaker in the history of 40K. Ever. It's difficult to get enough units into CC and then there are units like Scatbikes and Riptide that can run away indefinitely until they run out of board. Also, there is an absurdly low number of assault transports in the game, making open topped a DESIRABLE vehicle trait.

I personally think that the IG are much better in the current meta than BA, even if they are technically on the same tier, or only half a tier above BA.

IG certainly aren't placing any better than BA's in most tournaments, at least on any meaningful level. Both are mostly relegated to being "allies" used to plug gaps in capabilities or take advantage of ability synergies for more powerful armies.

That said, as someone who has IG, CSM, GK, Tau, Eldar, Sisters, and Tyranid armies, that there's potentially some truth both ways. The game has never had assault units as powerful, resilient, and fast as exist now. A large number of top level tournament lists routinely are built around close combat. TWC's/Bikers/Wraiths are all very popular and extremely powerful and popular, while the killing power and resiliency of units like Flayed Ones would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.

The issue is that your more traditional CC units, like Genestealers or mechanized MEQ's and Assault Marines and the like, isn't one of these things that's showing up in these armies. They're too easy to prevent from getting to grips properly. For these, allowing them to assault out of stationary transports or walk on reserve would do a lot to restore utility.

By the same token however, we're also not seeing most armies get much use out of many "mundane" shooting units either like Guardsmen or DE Warriors and the like.

However, assault from Deep Strike isn't going to help many of the units that do need help them, and in the cases where it will, it likely will make them absurdly overcapable.

Martel732 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Right now assault is far too powerful as it is. "

That is an absurd statement.

". Right now both Assault and Deepstrike are too powerful."

Nope. You to be doing something wrong in list construction because I can cripple deep striking GK with BA's crappy firepower. You only need to kill around 15-20 models and their army falls apart.

Really? Because, you know, I had around 30 plus a tank in their DZ. And I lost all of them in a single turn.

Rather than telling me I am absurd try telling me where I have gone wrong and making a logical and factual arguement. Except you cant because you know I am right.

30 what? And a tank? In the GK DZ? What are you talking about?

First off, when you see GK alpha strike you have to set up a certain way. That way is dependent upon the board, but the point is to protect the units that you most care about and offer up plenty of chaff to get shot at and then assaulted. Units not being able to consolidate into another combat gives shooty lists a plethora of regular firing opportunities on top of overwatch. Use this to your advantage. GK are playing a lot of points to kill units that aren't worth very much. And then getting shot in the face more with melta/plasma. That's basically the worst possible scenario for them ever.

I'm calling your statement absurd because assault has never been weaker in the history of 40K. Ever. It's difficult to get enough units into CC and then there are units like Scatbikes and Riptide that can run away indefinitely until they run out of board. Also, there is an absurdly low number of assault transports in the game, making open topped a DESIRABLE vehicle trait.

I personally think that the IG are much better in the current meta than BA, even if they are technically on the same tier, or only half a tier above BA.

Martel, you may really want to stop before you show yourself up any more than you just have done so.
I had 30 Veterans in the right tile of my deployment zone plus a tank. The Grey Knights (with the exception of the Dreadknight) dropped in there and killed them. All of them. No bloody exceptions. Bear in mind that this was turn one and I only just moved some stuff a little (6") forwards to go after the objective. He dropped in to my deployment area and killed me. And in case you didnt know DZ means Drop Zone.

I was set up in the classic "well, dont let them get close, now bubble wrap the important stuff" Imperial Guard line - no way in hell was anything moving closer than needed.

The chaff units ate stupidly powerful flames and died without saves. Then the assaulty stuff moved in and chipchopped the pricey stuff. My tanks where hammered and grenaded. There was NOTHING I could do.

Overwatch. Dont make me laugh. Overwatching with lasguns has never as far as I know caused a wound. Ever. Melta guns lack the firerate to hit anything on overwatch and plasma is an overpriced joke that kills its user.
Melta is great. At three per unit shooting into a psyker buffed GK unit with 4+ invuns and the like. Really powerful you know (hope your hearing the sarcasm here) and those massive blasts are so powerful.... If they hit anything and wound it and get through its armour/invun.

Your calling my statement absurd? Go look at the top contenders in most tournaments. Look good and hard and tell me how many CC armies you see. A hell of a lot of them. Assault is stupidly easy. There is no downside, overwatch is an utter joke and being in CC effectively negates your opponents shooting in regards to that unit and makes your unit immune to his shooting too. Assault is in no way weak and with dickery like invisibility it is only going from strength to strength.

Not everyone has scatbikes and Tau jumpsuits. In fact only two armies do. Stop trying to lump us all together.

IG are weaker than BA? Have you been venturing into my deepest fetish laden depraved dreams about 40K? Because that is the only place whee BA do not roflstomp Imperial Guard in to the ground.

I thought you meant you were in their deployment zone.

Again, assault is the weakest it has ever been in 40K. There are a few special snowflake units with stat lines that make them a problem. By problem, I mean that they are capable of reaching CC being before shot to tiny little giblets by 7th ed firepower lists. That does not make assault strong. That makes those units strong. There is a difference. Those same units would be strong if they were shooting units as well. They'd probably be better.

If you can't beat BA with IG at around a 55% rate in 7th ed, I don't know what to tell you. This is literally the worst the BA have been arguably since 2nd ed or MAYBE the WD codex. It's an awful codex full of builds that look different, but all achieve terrible (on average) results on the table.

I think around half the BA players consider this codex a NERF from the Warddex that was two editions old. We have no special snowflake units of any importance.

The amount of AP 2 fire that can come from a good guard list is just withering. GK can't stand against it, because they can't stand against the AP 2 fire from a BA list usually.

" Stop trying to lump us all together. "

But you all get an overpowered shooting phase. Some are just more overpowered than others.

 master of ordinance wrote:
(seriously, even with overwatch my Veterans will rarely put more than a single wound on a Tactical Squad).

Amongst everything else, this statement comes across as totally absurd. Veterans have access to 3 special weapons per squad of 10. That's 3 flamers, 3 plasma guns, 3 melta guns... Flamers will let you put a load of wounds on enemies and force armor saves, plasma guns will kill everything they point at, and melta guns... eh, sub par against marines, I guess. That's going to smoke a unit of Grey Knights (as it has to me, many times. My opponent being a Veteran heavy Guard player).

Veterans have way more than enough tools to absolutely punish an enemy deep striking into their midst. I'm only calling this out because you mention it as something currently happening with you, and not something that will happen should assaulting from deep strike be a thing that is implemented. Obviously if you ONLY have overwatch, you're going to kill a lot fewer MEQs, but "even with" overwatch you should be scoring plenty of wounds.

(Someone earlier was going on about how an IG Veteran Section can kill an entire squad in one turn of shooting - someone whom was obviously talking out of their ass and has never faced IG before - even Melta vets will struggle to kill three MEQ's)

3 Plasma guns will annihilate the common Grey Knight squads. Do you... do you take Veteran squads with only lasguns? You keep bringing up lasguns as if they're the only weapons you've got... That's gonna really skew your idea of relative durability of various units...

Deepstriking and assaulting should have its risks. Stop whining and in all honesty deal with it.

Risk of not entering the board
Risk of mishap
Risk of scattering too far from your target

Risk of failing the charge
Risk of dying to overwatch
Risk of killing your target too fast/too slow (too fast and you're in the enemy deployment zone surrounded by their army, too slow and their countercharge units join the fray or their tarpits pile on)

Combing the two... only increases the risks!

I think it's just the case where he has to be given the assault list to really understand.

Vets are not chaff, especially with 3x Plasmas and Carapace. That's a 120pt unit, even before a transport!

Bubble-wrapping with 30 Conscripts would have saved you 250pts and about 2KPs, Bullgryns with T5/3+ and a FNP source might have weathered the flamer assault, and Forewarning/TK Dome/Invis might have helped your Vets hold up longer.

This isn't an assault scenario though. Just T1 drop pods (which is a whole other topic)

 master of ordinance wrote:
Stop whining and in all honesty deal with it.

In fairness, couldn't the same argument be used in response to your feelings about how assault and deep strike are too powerful? I'm not unsympathetic to your plight, but if we're being fair, here...

I don't understand why people say assault isn't powerful in 7th. It's plenty powerful; no other phase of the game lets you destroy entire units with one roll, ignores an entire type of save, and keeps you from being targeted by enemy shooting attacks. Assault is plenty powerful. The problem is how difficult it is to get into assault. There's a reason why most of the assault units people do take tend to be fast and tough; they have to be in order to run across the board and survive multiple waves of shooting. Literally no other method is really effective due to the inability to assault from Infiltrate, table edges, or from most vehicles. Assault from Deep-Strike solves none of these issues, and just makes the game even more imbalanced in favor of units that can assault in that manner vs. units that can't.

I think Assault is powerful, and that it should be mitigated somewhat, but I do think that there needs to be a way for units that do assault *exclusively* to be better able to make it to assault so they can make more of an impact without dying in droves before they even get to do what they're designed to do. Be that wound mitigation by higher toughness, or some other rule such as a special, improved cover save to save for being particularly dodgy/hard to hit, whatever the case may be. (A-la jink).

i also think that certain non-pure close combat squads could have this kind of rule if they are particularly adept at that kind of attacking.

A perfect example would be Vanguard Veterans in previous editions. You paid extra points for them because they had a slightly better stat line in their attack profile, and that they had the glorious intervention rule.

I think that certain elite (and ONLY elite) infantry types should be allowed the opportunity to charge in on the turn they land if they have the following: Jump Packs (not Drop Pods) or equivalent movement increasing equipment, and pass a leadership or initiative test once they successfully land.

Make it somewhat variable, such as they are treated as charging through difficult terrain on the turn they land/arrive from deep strike reserves (so -2 inches to the charge distance) and that they cannot benefit from Hammer of Wrath attacks on the same turn they arrive. Also, add another -1 inch to their charge distance if they roll an arrow on the scatter dice (distance scattered doesn't matter, just that they were off-target).

That would allow people to still field drop troops that could *in theory* land and charge, but the odds are against it being an easy place-then-charge.

Again, I reiterate, it would be a select few units that could accomplish this kind of assault on the same turn they land, not every fast-mover under the sun. Standard Marine Assault Squads, or Bike Squads, etc. need not apply. Call it Glorious Intervention and tie it to the Elite slot unit having some form of enhanced movement, be it jetbikes, or jump packs, or whatever mode of locomotion you want beyond walking/running.

I also agree that when a squad or unit comes in off of outflank or scout moves, they shouldn't charge in that same turn. At least not without some other similar rule that requires them to have some penalty (Again, I like -3 inches, but for Outflank you could even say -6 inches and keep it fair) to their charge and only if they make a leadership/initiative test to be able to even attempt that charge in the first place.

Just my opinions on that. I do want to see Assault be more common personally, but I suppose time will tell what we'll see in the near future. Take it easy for now folks.

-Red__Thirst-

Bubble-wrapping with 30 Conscripts would have saved you 250pts and about 2KPs, Bullgryns with T5/3+ and a FNP source might have weathered the flamer assault, and Forewarning/TK Dome/Invis might have helped your Vets hold up longer.

Ill add those bullgryns as soon as they become 0pts and I can fit them in to an IG list and there is no dome invisibility if the GK player goes first, plus you need to have a caster witht he spell not get stoped from casting it, by a GK player who will probably roll 12+dice to stop it.

Call it Glorious Intervention and tie it to the Elite slot unit having some form of enhanced movement, be it jetbikes, or jump packs, or whatever mode of locomotion you want beyond walking/running.

The problem with this is that, even if you make it elite, but the tech works, people will just take dual or triple CADs or formations like the BA one and spam the elite unit. So armies are going to be some msu scouts and a 5 or 6 units of the elite units charging the whole opposing army turn 1.

You can't Deep strike with Jump Packs on turn 1 though. And you have very few options to allow a re-roll of the reserve roll, and only a couple of ways I can think of that modify it in any way. (And one of those can be used to effect your opponents rolls in a negative way when rolling reserves.)

Point being, you're not guaranteed to get your entire force on the table on turn 2, plus you've got to deal with scattering (unless you've got locator beacons, which have to be on the table the turn before the deep strikers land, so blast the drop pods that arrive turn 1/scout squads in cover) and potential deepstrike mishaps as well. It's a very high risk tactic to spam a bunch of these kinds of units in my view.

Let me put it a different way.

What difference is there if you drop a squad of Sternguard in a drop pod and erase an enemy unit with combiweapon fire, versus dropping an identical points value of Vanguard that can charge the turn they land (with reasonable restrictions) and erase the same enemy unit with close combat attacks? Why is one accepted as being ok, and the other decried as being overpowered?

I for one would like both Sternguad & Vanguard to be equally viable and effective instead of Sternguard being head and shoulders better, using marines as an example here.

Hopefully that makes my point a little clearer. Take it easy for now everyone.

-Red__Thirst-

 Red__Thirst wrote:
What difference is there if you drop a squad of Sternguard in a drop pod and erase an enemy unit with combiweapon fire, versus dropping an identical points value of Vanguard that can charge the turn they l

Because Close Combat and Shooting is completely different

Shooting does one basic thing
- Deals damage to a single unit

And shooting erasing a unit isn't unique to deep strike. I can do the same thing by shooting Lascannons at a vehicle or shoot a couple barrages at a squad from a wyvern. Deep strike isn't actually making shooting more powerful it just lets you use different weapons to max efficiency. Shooting already kills units without recourse deep strike doesn't give it anything new.

Close combat on the other hand is way more powerful.
- Can't be shot at while locked in combat
- Can attack in both player's turns
- Forces opponent to attack that unit with melee
- Prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting,
- Can sweeping advance even off a single wound
- Can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging

Assault is way more powerful. Even just multi-charging multiple units and locking them up in close combat is immensely powerful because it effectively removes multiple units from the game for what could be several turns. The counter balance to assault is that it's difficult to engage. Its huge risk to huge reward. Yes in 7ed a lot of assault units don't work because the risk is too great for the reward to pay off. But deep striking assaults isn't an appropriate way to fix CC because it removes almost all of the risk while still maintaining such a huge reward.

What difference is there if you drop a squad of Sternguard in a drop pod and erase an enemy unit with combiweapon fire, versus dropping an identical points value of Vanguard that can charge the turn they land (with reasonable restrictions) and erase the same enemy unit with close combat attacks? Why is one accepted as being ok, and the other decried as being overpowered?

Against sternguard I can use cover, vs an army that charges me am fighting with str 3 t3 verus str4 t4 with +3sv. I can place my plasma or melta in a such a way that at least in theory it should die last. melee doesn't care about that. I can try to wipe out a combat squaded sternguard unit with shoting, if a melee unit is killing my IG dudes, then I can't realy do anything about it. IG doesn't have melee units and we can't shot in to melee.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Red__Thirst wrote:
What difference is there if you drop a squad of Sternguard in a drop pod and erase an enemy unit with combiweapon fire, versus dropping an identical points value of Vanguard that can charge the turn they l

Because Close Combat and Shooting is completely different

Shooting does one basic thing
- Deals damage to a single unit

And shooting erasing a unit isn't unique to deep strike. I can do the same thing by shooting Lascannons at a vehicle or shoot a couple barrages at a squad from a wyvern. Deep strike isn't actually making shooting more powerful it just lets you use different weapons to max efficiency. Shooting already kills units without recourse deep strike doesn't give it anything new.

Close combat on the other hand is way more powerful.
- Can't be shot at while locked in combat
- Can attack in both player's turns
- Forces opponent to attack that unit with melee
- Prevents enemy unit from moving or shooting,
- Can sweeping advance even off a single wound
- Can do all of this to multiple enemy units with multi-charging

Don't forget automatically attacking tanks on rear armor and at never worst than a 3+ to hit

I'm sure you didn't need those Leman Russ anyway.

 vipoid wrote:
I'm sure you didn't need those Leman Russ anyway.

Nah, not at all, totally expendable

Rihgu wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
(seriously, even with overwatch my Veterans will rarely put more than a single wound on a Tactical Squad).

Amongst everything else, this statement comes across as totally absurd. Veterans have access to 3 special weapons per squad of 10. That's 3 flamers, 3 plasma guns, 3 melta guns... Flamers will let you put a load of wounds on enemies and force armor saves, plasma guns will kill everything they point at, and melta guns... eh, sub par against marines, I guess. That's going to smoke a unit of Grey Knights (as it has to me, many times. My opponent being a Veteran heavy Guard player).

Veterans have way more than enough tools to absolutely punish an enemy deep striking into their midst. I'm only calling this out because you mention it as something currently happening with you, and not something that will happen should assaulting from deep strike be a thing that is implemented. Obviously if you ONLY have overwatch, you're going to kill a lot fewer MEQs, but "even with" overwatch you should be scoring plenty of wounds.

Three special weapons firing overwatch. Three Meltas will rarely inflict a single wound owing to lacking the number of shots, three Plasma Guns will inflict 1 casualty on the assaulting player and will also kill off one Veteran. Flamers are the only way to go for counter assault choices. You will inflict on average 6 hits of which three will wound and, on your average MEQ, one will fail his save and die. Not much bang for your buck IMHO.

(Someone earlier was going on about how an IG Veteran Section can kill an entire squad in one turn of shooting - someone whom was obviously talking out of their ass and has never faced IG before - even Melta vets will struggle to kill three MEQ's)

3 Plasma guns will annihilate the common Grey Knight squads. Do you... do you take Veteran squads with only lasguns? You keep bringing up lasguns as if they're the only weapons you've got... That's gonna really skew your idea of relative durability of various units...

Not at all, once again people forget the psychic dickery that GK can get up too which include such lovelies as invulnerable save buffs. I will kill on average three basic GK's without Invun, Cover or FNP at 12" and also lose a Veteran. That is I will lose a 21 point model owing to overheating.
Lasguns are, for the most part, the only weapons that I have in my Veterans. Sure there are special weapons but those three special snowflakes cost a bomb each and they are only a small part of the overall section. The rest have Lasguns and trust me on this: Lasguns will not be killing GK's much.

Deepstriking and assaulting should have its risks. Stop whining and in all honesty deal with it.

Risk of not entering the board
Risk of mishap
Risk of scattering too far from your target

Risk of failing the charge
Risk of dying to overwatch
Risk of killing your target too fast/too slow (too fast and you're in the enemy deployment zone surrounded by their army, too slow and their countercharge units join the fray or their tarpits pile on)

Combing the two... only increases the risks!

I am going to be frank here: I have only twice in the last year seen a Deepstrike mishap and that was down to the player being an idiot. Not entering the board never happens and scattering is so easily mitigated that it might as well not exist.

The risks of failing the charge is a fair one but if you are dropping in that close then it is vastly reduced.

Dying to Overwatch? When was the last time Overwatch inflicted even a single wound before saves?

Killing them too fast still leaves you close to invulnerable to large blasts unless the enemy was spaced out and the risk is all together dropped by having several DS assault units. Countercharge is rarely if ever a risk.


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 Vaktathi wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I'm sure you didn't need those Leman Russ anyway.

Nah, not at all, totally expendable

Aye, and a damn good bargain at 150 points plus upgrades too!

Honestly, I can't help but try to imagine what kind of game are people playing where "assault is too stronk"? A dedicated shooting army will decimate a dedicated assault army 11 times out of 10. There is no single statline more beneficial to a unit than range, period. A shooting unit strikes without caring for retaliation. There is nothing else that needs to be said, if people can't understand how dealing damage without taking damage back is BETTER than the alternative then it can't be helped any longer. I am not even considering the fact that shooting units are useful from the first round of the game whilst assault units are useful from the third round if they are lucky enough to even arrive.

There is a reason the tournament lists are filled with scatbikes and not wraithblades, sternguards and not vanguards, . Necrons are the only army that can do assault decently and that's because wraiths are silly. KDK maybe but depends greatly on their getting their blood tithes up. That's it for assault. BA suck at it, Tyranids suck at it, Orks suck at it. Armies that are supposed to be good at assault completely suck at assault.

I use Skyhammer Annihilation Force. I already do

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Honestly, I can't help but try to imagine what kind of game are people playing where "assault is too stronk"? A dedicated shooting army will decimate a dedicated assault army 11 times out of 10. There is no single statline more beneficial to a unit than range, period. A shooting unit strikes without caring for retaliation. There is nothing else that needs to be said, if people can't understand how dealing damage without taking damage back is BETTER than the alternative then it can't be helped any longer. I am not even considering the fact that shooting units are useful from the first round of the game whilst assault units are useful from the third round if they are lucky enough to even arrive.

There is a reason the tournament lists are filled with scatbikes and not wraithblades, sternguards and not vanguards, . Necrons are the only army that can do assault decently and that's because wraiths are silly. KDK maybe but depends greatly on their getting their blood tithes up. That's it for assault. BA suck at it, Tyranids suck at it, Orks suck at it. Armies that are supposed to be good at assault completely suck at assault.

Spoken like a player whom has never gakked bricks and prayed to the dice gods for lucky rolls when facing down an assault army.
Also look at the tournament listings. There are a lot of higher tier assault armies at the top.

Makumba wrote:
Ill add those bullgryns as soon as they become 0pts and I can fit them in to an IG list and there is no dome invisibility if the GK player goes first, plus you need to have a caster witht he spell not get stoped from casting it, by a GK player who will probably roll 12+dice to stop it.

Alright.

Conscripts? You didn't mention them so I guess that has potential.

Psykers? If the entire GK army is Null Deployed, those dice aren't in play to deny. You will still face issues if the GK army gets the first turn, so you probably want something to disrupt reserves and manipulate seize rolls.

Bullgryns? They're definitely not a hot meta unit but people ocassionally use them. In fact, I've even read an anecdote where one guy killed a WK using Maulgryns backed by a Priest and Hammerhand.

Either way, I think we can establish that Vets don't tank Heavy Flamers too well solo. And once the bubblewrap is gone, that LR tank isn't too hot in assault against a Dreadknight either.

IG's issues in tournaments go above and beyone alpha strike pods but I'm sure there's a way to tailor to beat this strat.

This guy gets it.

Go take a look at the army list section, or better yet, go take a look at any major tournament participant's list and tell me how many dedicated close combat units you find. I'm talking units that are designed to do the majority of their damage in melee and then compare that to units that are designed by-and-large to shoot and do their damage output via ranged weapon attacks.

Compare those numbers, and then tell me assault is broken and doesn't deserve some kind of buff/aid to allow some semblance, or even a slight increase, in effectiveness versus shooting.

I'm not saying we go whole-hog in the opposite direction, far from it. I play Guard for crying out loud and have been a staunch guard player for more than 5 years now. That said, I want to see close combat units have more than a dim, distant hope that they'll actually be able to make it to assault with *at least* half of their starting strength, or a little more. I'd like to see useful assault elements in armies.

For example. The lowly space marine assault squad. Let's try this out as a thought experiment.

Jump Pack Expertise: Space Marines are trained to fire the jump packs in rapid blasts as they land to both cushion their landing and to kick up a large cloud of dust and debris to give them temporary cover and obscure them from enemy fire. These marines are also adept at using their jump packs to close on enemies quickly, allowing them to break through enemy lines with swift and vicious effect.

-On the turn an Assault Squad that is equipped with jump packs arrives from deep strike, the squad is considered to have the Stealth and Shrouding Universal Special Rules on the turn they arrive (4+ cover save in the open). On any following turns after this unit arrives from deep strike, these two Universal Special Rules are no longer in effect.

-In addition, space marines that use their jump packs in the movement phase may choose to jink, and follow all the rules for jinking if they do so. Note: This means the marines may not choose to jink if they use their jump packs in the assault phase instead of the movement phase. (Gives Raven Guard a nice additional buff since their CT allows for using the JP in both the movement and assault phases)

There. That gives assault marines some added oomph to survive the turn they land, or start on the board and be able to weather some shooting while they advance with jink saves giving them a save when their armor might not be enough. So what if they snap fire only, they're mostly armed with pistols anyway and jinking doesn't effect close combat, so why not give them the opportunity to do what they're supposed to do a little more effectively?

Just thoughts to ponder upon. Take it easy everyone.

-Red__Thirst-

I know what you're saying but I like the idea that cover saves could be supplied by cover.

If every unit needs to have a Jink save to stand some small chance of survival, isn't that an indication of something?

Every unit doesn't need a jink save to gain a chance of survival.

Assault marines don't necessarily *need* it, but if bikes get Jink, and Relentless, in addition to the +1 toughness for being on a bike, it stands to reason that a guy with a rocket pack strapped to him would be trained enough to do some even more haggard mid-air shenanigans/maneuvers to help avoid incoming fire than a guy on an armored motorcycle could pull, yes?

I look at it like this, lets give some incentive to play more than one choice in a force organization slot. Fast Attack, in this instance.

Bikes cost more per model, but they get +1 toughness, are relentless, and also gain the jink option when taking fire.

For what you pay for assault marines, giving them access to jink at the very least seems fairly reasonable, especially if you specify it can only be used if they used their jump packs in the movement phase the previous turn (To include the turn they land from deepstrike, to make things simple versus trying to give them stealth and shrouding the turn they land. Same net effect, but simpler).

That way cover saves are supplied by cover, as you mention, but they still gain a little something extra against incoming fire while they close in on their target and line up the charge.

Just thinking out loud. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

I support thought! But look at it this way. There's at least 5 discrete methods of assault to balance.

- Bikes
- Jump unit
- Infantry w/DS
- Regular Transport
- Assault Transport

Jump is now going to be better when measured against bikes, but how does that now affect the relative balance against the other methods above? Like Terminators, or anything in a transport, or whatever.

Meanwhile, how does the addition of yet more multi-save units affect the value of high AP weapons? S6-S7 spam is going to be relatively more useful, while something like an S8 AP3 blast will be less so. You can always adjust costing to achieve "balance", but the greater question is your vision of how you want the game to play out on the tabletop.

I'd rather see more interaction with terrain, than units like bikes and skimmers simply dragging their special rules around with them on the table. If you look at the list above, I personally think the issue is that bikes give out too many benefits when compared to the other choices. Of course, opinions may differ, and I just have my own.

 master of ordinance wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Honestly, I can't help but try to imagine what kind of game are people playing where "assault is too stronk"? A dedicated shooting army will decimate a dedicated assault army 11 times out of 10. There is no single statline more beneficial to a unit than range, period. A shooting unit strikes without caring for retaliation. There is nothing else that needs to be said, if people can't understand how dealing damage without taking damage back is BETTER than the alternative then it can't be helped any longer. I am not even considering the fact that shooting units are useful from the first round of the game whilst assault units are useful from the third round if they are lucky enough to even arrive.

There is a reason the tournament lists are filled with scatbikes and not wraithblades, sternguards and not vanguards, . Necrons are the only army that can do assault decently and that's because wraiths are silly. KDK maybe but depends greatly on their getting their blood tithes up. That's it for assault. BA suck at it, Tyranids suck at it, Orks suck at it. Armies that are supposed to be good at assault completely suck at assault.

Spoken like a player whom has never gakked bricks and prayed to the dice gods for lucky rolls when facing down an assault army.
Also look at the tournament listings. There are a lot of higher tier assault armies at the top.

Go try to play an assault list and after getting zero vp for three or four games, then we can talk. I'm sorry you are having trouble but BA are embarrassingly bad at assault.


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Sounds like with gk maybe you should wall off with tanks not guardsmen. I personally use rhinos for that a lot.

You know, it's starting to get really irritating how detractors of the idea are just talking about how broken it would be without acknowledging any of the restrictions and limitations you can put on it. I made a huge post with all sorts of thing I'm perfectly willing to discuss and refine that apparently only Vipoid could be bothered to read, and I'm not the only one to suggest them either. I KNOW that Assault from DS doesn't HAVE to be broken. Want to know how I know? Because if you piled on every single restriction to it that's been suggesting it would end up embarrassingly risky and unreliable and would probably be a generally weak tactic as a result.

I'm trying to meet the other side halfway by coming up with ways to balance it, but apparently that's not good enough, if you don't join in with the choir then nothing's good enough. That, or these people just want DS armies and numerous units to suck, being completely unable to do the thing they're supposed to do.

Only GW isn't know for their restrictions when they deal with eldar or sm, and those factions deep strike the most. Also even if it had restriction and was a buff to some units, why should people accept it, when their armies will never use it anyway, as GW did not give them any good deep striking units that could do melee.
SM and eldar are good enough with out those things, they don't need another buff and another different way to play their army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Go try to play an assault list and after getting zero vp for three or four games, then we can talk. I'm sorry you are having trouble but BA are embarrassingly bad at assault.

But were they ever ment for that? I don't know about the 3ed and times before it. I started in 5th, BAs were always tank walls and msu razorspams that did used melee only as support or int he form of a super killer HQ like mefistor.

Makumba wrote:
Only GW isn't know for their restrictions when they deal with eldar or sm, and those factions deep strike the most.

So what if GW doesn't? We aren't talking about GW, since we're already in the realm of changing rules, that's a completely invalid line or reasoning.

Makumba wrote:
Also even if it had restriction and was a buff to some units, why should people accept it, when their armies will never use it anyway, as GW did not give them any good deep striking units that could do melee.

Same reason a Space Marine or Eldar player should accept a buff to underpowered units from other factions.

Makumba wrote:
Only GW isn't know for their restrictions when they deal with eldar or sm, and those factions deep strike the most. Also even if it had restriction and was a buff to some units, why should people accept it, when their armies will never use it anyway, as GW did not give them any good deep striking units that could do melee.
SM and eldar are good enough with out those things, they don't need another buff and another different way to play their army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Go try to play an assault list and after getting zero vp for three or four games, then we can talk. I'm sorry you are having trouble but BA are embarrassingly bad at assault.

But were they ever ment for that? I don't know about the 3ed and times before it. I started in 5th, BAs were always tank walls and msu razorspams that did used melee only as support or int he form of a super killer HQ like mefistor.

SM and Eldar are not the only armies that want to deep strike. You are just aware of them because they do function while other assault armies do not. I do want to deepstrike my Trygons, that's what they are made for anyways. Only when I do I am left to look at my 200 pt monster being shot to pieces by practically any unit in the game and be unable to do anything about it. Way to go, Trygon. Assault is way OP, sure.

Also I don't get the "why should people accept it, when their armies will never use it anyway" argument. People should accept it because other armies also want to play the game. Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies have 48" shots and ap2/3 shooting while they don't? Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies can have 2+ armor saves while they cannot? Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies have invulnerable saves while they do not? Yet these things happen and it is very very easy to miss this if you are playing any other army, because you are on the receiving end of the buff. And then you want Tyranids not be able to have good stuff because if they do then Tau won't be able to use them? What kind of logic is that?

" I started in 5th, BAs were always tank walls and msu razorspams that did used melee only as support or int he form of a super killer HQ like Mephiston."

That is not what BA are supposed to be. BA players (like me) were just working the systems laid out in 5th. BA are designed to be a fast meq assault army. They haven't been able to do that for some time now.

The main problem is the fact assaulting after they enter is pretty much a deth blow to many different armies. Tau and Guard for example would be pretty much hammered and forced out of competitive lists.

As someone else said earlier, make deep-striking risky again. land on difficult terrain? Have to risk loosing your squad, obviously never heard termie fluff regarding landing on diff terrain and even real life para's have been annihilated doing so. However I am all for giving unit's buffs for surviving a deepstrike once they landed. Such as a +1 cover save for jet troopers or nids to represent the amount of dust, dirt kicked up or the fact they have just jumped out of a hole in the ground etc.

Nothing too OP, just something to help deepstriking units survive a lil bit more in their opponents phase, but making deepstriking inherently risky again, especially near cover or enemy units. I don't actually think you need to make them capable of assaulting the turn they arrive to make them better.

Also I don't get the "why should people accept it, when their armies will never use it anyway" argument. People should accept it because other armies also want to play the game. Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies have 48" shots and ap2/3 shooting while they don't? Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies can have 2+ armor saves while they cannot? Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies have invulnerable saves while they do not? Yet these things happen and it is very very easy to miss this if you are playing any other army, because you are on the receiving end of the buff. And then you want Tyranids not be able to have good stuff because if they do then Tau won't be able to use them? What kind of logic is that

But they already can play the game. We realy want to give swooping hawks the option to drop from the sky, haywire something on the go, then scater and then charge another unit. Or 2-3 trygons poping out and multicharging a whole army. What am I suppose to do against that, giving deep strike a charge option, even for limited units would just mean that more faction are like skyhammer and that is probably the stupidest formation ever created. also what are you talking about not having 48" treat range on tyranids, all dakka tyrants have it. Plus your missing the point the lack of invs does not make nids unplayable, charging out of deep strike would make my faction unplayable even more and it already sucks.
Just tell me lets say you get a limited deep strike charge option. Trygon tunel lets units charge out of it or something like that. How do you imagine an IG army is suppose to counter that? Even If I somehow down 2-3 trygons and don't get blow to bits by dakka tyrants, next turn your chargin out of the tunels and I can't be out of range of them because you have a too long charge range and most important your tunels probably poped up on objectives, so If I move away am giving you free points.

Same reason a Space Marine or Eldar player should accept a buff to underpowered units from other factions.

And as we say it here "and the groundhog just sits there and rolls them up in silver foil". People don't even let others use special character their armies had, but no longer do thanks to GW.

BA are designed to be a fast meq assault army.

Where does it say that in the rules. Because in the codex I read, they are supposed to be the same as ultramarine with a few different tanks and DC.

YES, dear god yes things should be able to assault from deep strike, any other kind of reserve scout or infiltrate. Bring back the glory days of out-flankers and other nasty quick combat trick.
It forces gun lines and other shooty armies to use screeners and other tactics aside from move back and shoot again.

Makumba wrote:

Also I don't get the "why should people accept it, when their armies will never use it anyway" argument. People should accept it because other armies also want to play the game. Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies have 48" shots and ap2/3 shooting while they don't? Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies can have 2+ armor saves while they cannot? Why should Tyranid players accept that other armies have invulnerable saves while they do not? Yet these things happen and it is very very easy to miss this if you are playing any other army, because you are on the receiving end of the buff. And then you want Tyranids not be able to have good stuff because if they do then Tau won't be able to use them? What kind of logic is that

But they already can play the game. We realy want to give swooping hawks the option to drop from the sky, haywire something on the go, then scater and then charge another unit. Or 2-3 trygons poping out and multicharging a whole army. What am I suppose to do against that, giving deep strike a charge option, even for limited units would just mean that more faction are like skyhammer and that is probably the stupidest formation ever created. also what are you talking about not having 48" treat range on tyranids, all dakka tyrants have it. Plus your missing the point the lack of invs does not make nids unplayable, charging out of deep strike would make my faction unplayable even more and it already sucks.
Just tell me lets say you get a limited deep strike charge option. Trygon tunel lets units charge out of it or something like that. How do you imagine an IG army is suppose to counter that? Even If I somehow down 2-3 trygons and don't get blow to bits by dakka tyrants, next turn your chargin out of the tunels and I can't be out of range of them because you have a too long charge range and most important your tunels probably poped up on objectives, so If I move away am giving you free points.

Same reason a Space Marine or Eldar player should accept a buff to underpowered units from other factions.

And as we say it here "and the groundhog just sits there and rolls them up in silver foil". People don't even let others use special character their armies had, but no longer do thanks to GW.

BA are designed to be a fast meq assault army.

Where does it say that in the rules. Because in the codex I read, they are supposed to be the same as ultramarine with a few different tanks and DC.

You can't multiassault with a single model, that proves you know NOTHING about the current state of the game and armies
Oh and FYI Trygon's Tunnel SUCKS

I think some units should definitely have it, and I think a lot of people overestimate the impact it would have. Vanguard Veterans used to have it, how many games were decided by Vanguard Veterans assaulting from deep strike? Blood Angels currently have a formation that allows it, Blood Angels are still a bottom tier army. The scale is so far in shooting's favor right now, having some specialist units be able to assault from deep strike would not even come close to breaking the game.

" Because in the codex I read, they are supposed to be the same as ultramarine with a few different tanks and DC."

Then why don't they get any of the UM's good units? Sure, you can look at them as UM minus all the good stuff. Because that's basically what they are at this point.

The 2nd ed, 3rd ed and 5th ed codices certainly gave me the impression they were supposed to be more assaulty than UM.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

You can't multiassault with a single model, that proves you know NOTHING about the current state of the game and armies
Oh and FYI Trygon's Tunnel SUCKS

No it doesn't. It totally makes it worth the 230 points base.

 Orblivion wrote:
I think some units should definitely have it, and I think a lot of people overestimate the impact it would have. Vanguard Veterans used to have it, how many games were decided by Vanguard Veterans assaulting from deep strike? Blood Angels currently have a formation that allows it, Blood Angels are still a bottom tier army. The scale is so far in shooting's favor right now, having some specialist units be able to assault from deep strike would not even come close to breaking the game.

What bothers me is that Loyalist Assault Marines CAN assault from deepstrike from Skyhammer, and Vanguard Veterans don't have any way of doing so.

Mostly for fluff reasons though.

I could see assault from deepstrike for everyone else MAYBE be ok if the unit being charged at got a full bs overwatch.

Makumba wrote:
But they already can play the game. We realy want to give swooping hawks the option to drop from the sky, haywire something on the go, then scater and then charge another unit. Or 2-3 trygons poping out and multicharging a whole army. What am I suppose to do against that, giving deep strike a charge option, even for limited units would just mean that more faction are like skyhammer and that is probably the stupidest formation ever created. also what are you talking about not having 48" treat range on tyranids, all dakka tyrants have it. Plus your missing the point the lack of invs does not make nids unplayable, charging out of deep strike would make my faction unplayable even more and it already sucks.
Just tell me lets say you get a limited deep strike charge option. Trygon tunel lets units charge out of it or something like that. How do you imagine an IG army is suppose to counter that? Even If I somehow down 2-3 trygons and don't get blow to bits by dakka tyrants, next turn your chargin out of the tunels and I can't be out of range of them because you have a too long charge range and most important your tunels probably poped up on objectives, so If I move away am giving you free points.

Fair enough, even though you miss the point that a Trygon costs more than a Tank commander and just sits there eating bullets while your tank commander with its 29 attacks can wreck my day from first turn with ease. But there are a lot of stuff one can do to make sure this will actually fly. On your imperial guard, you can always blitzkrieg and have said trygon only charge conscripts (it will only be able to kill 5 conscripts at most). But anyways, there can be a lot of mechanics changes that can help with that.

Example 1: Allow charging from deep striking but models that entered the game via deep strike this turn halve their charge range rolled.

Example 2: The deep striking unit pinpoints the point of the deepstrike on the first turn at an empty location, but only deepstrikes on the second turn on said point. If an enemy unit (A) moves onto the pinpointed location to cause a mishap and the deep strike unit rolls a hit, it does not mishap. Instead it emerges locked in combat with unit A. This will give gunline armies one turn advantage to clear the way or place conscripts and other chaff in place to protect their juicy stuff. If assault armies have to include cannon fodder units to make their army viable, I can see gunline armies having to include choppa fodder units to make their shooting viable.

Example 3: Deep striking units cannot assault, but nearby enemy units within 12" of the deep strike point become "shaken" and can only fire against the deep strike unit with a -2 BS. Or easier, deep strike units get shrouded on the turn they appear on the table.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Example 3: Deep striking units cannot assault, but nearby enemy units within 12" of the deep strike point become "shaken" and can only fire against the deep strike unit with a -2 BS. Or easier, deep strike units get shrouded on the turn they appear on the table.

Well, Warp Talons force a Blind Test, so this mechanic wouldn't be entirely unprecedented.

Either way there's one core problem. Shooting DS is an alpha strike. Assault DS is a positioning method. We want to buff one while not affecting the other.

Maybe we can allow any DS unit that foregoes shooting to recieve some kind of bonus. Like, a "Precision Deep Strike" USR that reduces or eliminates Scatter.

- Sternguard Vets Deep Strike normally, scatter mildly into open, fire Combi-weapons. End turn. Business as usual.
- Vanguard Vets Precision Strike into open, use run to achieve better spacing and enter 4+ cover safely. End turn.
- Warp Talons Precision Strike onto Necron Destroyers to force a Blind test. Warp Talons can't shoot anyway!
- TH/SS Terminators Precision Strike into the best position possible. With a 2+/3++ and no guns, who needs cover or shooting?
- Seraphim (with Inferno Pistols) Precision Strike behind LOS-blocking terrain. Their 3" Melta range makes regular scatter too risky anyway.
- A DE Venom uses Precision Strike to enter the enemy backfield. Wyches disembark into cover. The Raider then moves onto a backfield objective. Nobody gets to shoot.

Obviously you'd still have issues in assault against lists that go "if I shoot, I win"'. That might be a different issue though.

Assaulting from deepstrike is a nono but I would not mind seeing some units - notably the squishier ones - gaining a slight cover save boost on the turn that they come in.

There's another issue, in that Assault units need a high degree of coordination to break through. Coming in piecemeal has far higher consequences, since they can get picked off one-by-one rather than tying up the defenders.

Survival mechanics are good but it's probably better established on a unit-by-unit basis.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
(seriously, even with overwatch my Veterans will rarely put more than a single wound on a Tactical Squad).

Amongst everything else, this statement comes across as totally absurd. Veterans have access to 3 special weapons per squad of 10. That's 3 flamers, 3 plasma guns, 3 melta guns... Flamers will let you put a load of wounds on enemies and force armor saves, plasma guns will kill everything they point at, and melta guns... eh, sub par against marines, I guess. That's going to smoke a unit of Grey Knights (as it has to me, many times. My opponent being a Veteran heavy Guard player).

Veterans have way more than enough tools to absolutely punish an enemy deep striking into their midst. I'm only calling this out because you mention it as something currently happening with you, and not something that will happen should assaulting from deep strike be a thing that is implemented. Obviously if you ONLY have overwatch, you're going to kill a lot fewer MEQs, but "even with" overwatch you should be scoring plenty of wounds.

Three special weapons firing overwatch. Three Meltas will rarely inflict a single wound owing to lacking the number of shots, three Plasma Guns will inflict 1 casualty on the assaulting player and will also kill off one Veteran. Flamers are the only way to go for counter assault choices. You will inflict on average 6 hits of which three will wound and, on your average MEQ, one will fail his save and die. Not much bang for your buck IMHO.

Just want to make sure I understand here. When you say "even with overwatch", do you mean shooting phase + overwatch or overwatch+close combat attacks? I'm guessing the latter at this point since you didn't mention the damage you would do in the shooting phase (nor did you mention the damage done in the subsequent cc attacks, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt).

(Someone earlier was going on about how an IG Veteran Section can kill an entire squad in one turn of shooting - someone whom was obviously talking out of their ass and has never faced IG before - even Melta vets will struggle to kill three MEQ's)

3 Plasma guns will annihilate the common Grey Knight squads. Do you... do you take Veteran squads with only lasguns? You keep bringing up lasguns as if they're the only weapons you've got... That's gonna really skew your idea of relative durability of various units...

Not at all, once again people forget the psychic dickery that GK can get up too which include such lovelies as invulnerable save buffs. I will kill on average three basic GK's without Invun, Cover or FNP at 12" and also lose a Veteran. That is I will lose a 21 point model owing to overheating.
Lasguns are, for the most part, the only weapons that I have in my Veterans. Sure there are special weapons but those three special snowflakes cost a bomb each and they are only a small part of the overall section. The rest have Lasguns and trust me on this: Lasguns will not be killing GK's much.

I assure you, I do not forget the psychic "dickery" that GK can get up to. Killing on average, a minimum of 60pts of GKs at the cost of 21pts of your own models seems like a really good trade, considering that GK unit will likely kill, assuming 4 storm bolters and a psycannon, 4-5 Veterans (a whopping 28-35pts. So Grey Knights: 49-56. Imperial Guard: 60.)
Generally, only one unit is going to have FnP in the army, IF they take it, and it's falling out of favor these days with the advent of Centurions who do the same job but better. The majority of the psychic dickery focuses around close combat. Hammerhand isn't going to do anything to you the turn the Deep Strike. Banishment is never, ever going to do anything to you. Cover is unlikely in a Deep Strike scenario and is basically uncontrollable on the player's part. if you deployed close enough to the cover (without being in the cover), it's kind of your fault for giving them that avenue.
I will acknowledge that if a DraigoStar drops into your back field WITH the army's supporting units, you'll probably only be able to kill the supporting units and take a doozy of a beating from the Star. If it's just a couple of strike squads landing in your zone... they're toast.

Deepstriking and assaulting should have its risks. Stop whining and in all honesty deal with it.

Risk of not entering the board
Risk of mishap
Risk of scattering too far from your target

Risk of failing the charge
Risk of dying to overwatch
Risk of killing your target too fast/too slow (too fast and you're in the enemy deployment zone surrounded by their army, too slow and their countercharge units join the fray or their tarpits pile on)

Combing the two... only increases the risks!

I am going to be frank here: I have only twice in the last year seen a Deepstrike mishap and that was down to the player being an idiot. Not entering the board never happens and scattering is so easily mitigated that it might as well not exist.

I've suffered Deep Strike mishaps 3x in one game. It's rare that I go a game without suffering it. Not entering the board DOES happen, actually. If I get tabled on turn 3 cause 75% of my army decided to stay back in reserves, those units never come in. Scattering does exist, so let's talk about it. You can't just write it off as negligible, because it is a big factor in Deep Striking.

The riss of failing the charge is a fair one but if you are dropping in that close then it is vastly reduced.

It is still there, though. I failed a 3" charge the other day. It happens.

Dying to Overwatch? When was the last time Overwatch inflicted even a single wound before saves?

Oh boy, not only do I die from overwatch, my Eversor Assassin has NEVER reached combat, although he has declared charges. I've played him in 5 games, and the only one he didn't declare a charge in was the one where a scouting land speeder hit him with a multi-melta turn one.
Another story: A Kastelan robot declared a charge against a lone Paladin with a single wound left (the rest of his squad had just been wiped out by a different unit of Kastelans). I declare Overwatch, scoring 1 hit with my storm bolter. That hit is then saved by the Kastelan's shield... which bounces it back... which kills the Paladin.
Not only do I die to Overwatch... I die to my own Overwatch.

Killing them too fast still leaves you close to invulnerable to large blasts unless the enemy was spaced out and the risk is all together dropped by having several DS assault units. Countercharge is rarely if ever a risk.

Agree that it makes you less susceptible to large blasts. Disagree that countercharge is rarely if ever a risk.

Rihgu -- you can probably imagine the carnage if Cleansing Flame (9" range) hits 3x Vet units at once and you roll high.

It's the best Nova power in the game and it's the perfect counter to T3/4+ bubblewrap. 2D6 hits per unit, wounds on 2's, and Vets get no saves of course. Throw in Heavy Flamers to clean up and that's that.

You can lose games in deployment and I'm guessing that's what happened -- hoping your opponent gets unlucky on scatter isn't a strategy.

 Baldeagle91 wrote:
The main problem is the fact assaulting after they enter is pretty much a deth blow to many different armies. Tau and Guard for example would be pretty much hammered and forced out of competitive lists.

As someone else said earlier, make deep-striking risky again. land on difficult terrain? Have to risk loosing your squad, obviously never heard termie fluff regarding landing on diff terrain and even real life para's have been annihilated doing so. However I am all for giving unit's buffs for surviving a deepstrike once they landed. Such as a +1 cover save for jet troopers or nids to represent the amount of dust, dirt kicked up or the fact they have just jumped out of a hole in the ground etc.

Nothing too OP, just something to help deepstriking units survive a lil bit more in their opponents phase, but making deepstriking inherently risky again, especially near cover or enemy units. I don't actually think you need to make them capable of assaulting the turn they arrive to make them better.

Or better yet, you could give them these difficulties, along with boosts to the defending unit and then they could Deep Strike into Assault and all would be well. I made a big list of things but it could boil down to a few things easily enough:
1) They have to choose between Shooting and Assault, not both. Maybe there could be an option to do nothing and get the bonuses people suggested, but not sure.
2) If they choose Assault, they arrive on a 4+ or 5+ instead of a 3+ and maybe also scatter 3D6 with any mishap wiping the unit?
NB: Not sure what stuff that would normally help like Teleport Homers would do to this. Same effect? Less effect? No effect?
3) They can't do it from a transport (like a Drop Pod)
4) Upon landing the assailants only charge 1D6 (potentially as if they're going through Dfficult or Dangerous Terrain?) into only one unit and the defenders are treated as having the charge for purposes of +1 Attack, Furious Charge, Hammer of Wrath and so on, as well as getting the option to disengage at the end of this particular Assault like an auto-pass Hit & Run.
5) The defending unit gets to make an Interceptor attack (even without Interceptor, and without locking out the gun used to do it!) and/or get to Overwatch at full BS with Blasts allowed (maybe with no scatter?) and Templates the same, even if they're Slow and Purposeful or a Vehicle (the latter being treated as stationary for what weapons they can fire)
NB: I figure either one of those should be able to give Tau and IG a fighting chance, both of those at once would have them begging for a Deep Strike charge! I could see a few exceptions like squishy weak units (this would be an expensive and risky way to take them out, so that's nothing much to worry about. If they're putting those many points at that much risk to take out your Convicts or Pathfinders, you're probably not going to have that many problems with them all things considered! Though I suppose that's still something to consider, but with how much cost and risk I'd say that if it's good way that works out and makes a difference it's probably just a legitimate counter), choppy units (who would probably be happy the fight is coming to them and they get to count as having the charge!) and just plain bad units (No offense but I'm getting the idea that this might be the real root of some of the IG complaints. In any case the issue is more that it's just a bad unit that needs to be fixed, rather than much of anything to do with choppy Deep Strikes).
That's kind of a refinement of my earlier thoughts, mixed with some new ideas and some clarification, I think that would solve the main issues with the idea (too easy/reliable, defending unit can't fight back, shooting and charging from Deep Strike, locking up the defending unit with no escape and Assault Drop Pods). I'm certainly open to feedback and I'm actually trying to balance the idea. Some units absolutely need it (Assault Marines, Vanguard Veterans, Stormboyz, Warp Talons and all or nearly all Terminators just to name a few) but I'm not completely closed to the idea that just allowing it with no restrictions might cause some problems. I'm just getting sick of "NO THAT WOULD BE OP" with no discussion or acknowledgement of potential restrictions.

Terminators should be able to. I would bring them into the "usefull unit" category.

I say everyone DSs with full bs overwatch . Id love to see people make big DS armys. Giant piles of DSing units trying to drop into their opponents deployment zone. A zone so crowded that their constantly misshaping. It would be hilarious. One third of the DS'ers not showing up. Comedy.

Unless of course your army's supposed to be a DS heavy army. Then maybe you should be able to pull it off....

Yoyoyo wrote:
Rihgu -- you can probably imagine the carnage if Cleansing Flame (9" range) hits 3x Vet units at once and you roll high.

It's the best Nova power in the game and it's the perfect counter to T3/4+ bubblewrap. 2D6 hits per unit, wounds on 2's, and Vets get no saves of course. Throw in Heavy Flamers to clean up and that's that.

You can lose games in deployment and I'm guessing that's what happened -- hoping your opponent gets unlucky on scatter isn't a strategy.

Yes, I can imagine that, but that requires you to either ally to take drop pods for Purifiers or roll the power on a Librarian to actually do.
Also, fairly easy to Deny the Witch on that one, unless they're sacrificing their psychic phase elsewhere.

As far as strategies:
Bring Psyker defense
Bring Interceptor
Bring Coteaz
Keep your plasma toting vets more than 9" of eachother but the units closer so that the nova can only possibly wound 1 unit's plasmas, meaning there are still 2 units' worth of plasma left alive (assuming 1 deep striker with Cleansing Flame, kind of harder to pull off when there is more - I will give that)
Put your Veterans in Chimeras

There's a lot you can do to mitigate the issue there, and none of it involves praying...

You can't multiassault with a single model, that proves you know NOTHING about the current state of the game and armies
Oh and FYI Trygon's Tunnel SUCKS

Only if people got to option to charge with a trygon after deep strike or out of a trygon tunel, the lists would not be one trygon and something . The lists would be 3-4 trygons which means for an IG army the whole army getting charged on the turn they go out of tunels.

Bring Psyker defense
Bring Interceptor
Bring Coteaz

Aka to play IG you need to play other armies. Why play IG at all then, why not take the same units with interceptor and coteaz and something like marines.

Fair enough, even though you miss the point that a Trygon costs more than a Tank commander and just sits there eating bullets while your tank commander with its 29 attacks can wreck my day from first turn with ease. But there are a lot of stuff one can do to make sure this will actually fly. On your imperial guard, you can always blitzkrieg and have said trygon only charge conscripts (it will only be able to kill 5 conscripts at most). But anyways, there can be a lot of mechanics changes that can help with that.

Only there are already charge after assault rules in the game right now, and nothing points out at GW wanting to change their charge range or limit the charge in anyway.
Tank commanders suck. Bad orders you need to take another LR tank with them and they die to grav and give up slay the warlord on turn 1.

Yes, but limited to only a small handful of units. Warp Talons would be one as being able to assault on the same turn as their blind attack would be immensely good.

Maybe if terminators could we would see a lot more people using them. Perhaps just Chaos terminators. In fact, make everything in Chaos Space Marines able to assault from deep strike and it will even the playing field for them against most other armies

Back in 3rd Ed Deamons could assault the turn they where summoned, it was strong sure, but it was not the thing that made you win games.

Now i could see a new rule or unit type allowing assault after DSing, like Elite Assault unit or something.

You DS like usual, scatter, mishap and all, IF you decide to assault in the same turn, you DON'T shoot in the same turn.

As a general notion, no.

There are a few units however, whose design and fluff should make it possible for them. I'm thinking mostly about Warp Talons, their fluff clearly states they're precisely the kind of unit which appears from nowhere and strikes before the enemy can even react. Plus they're currently useless.

I think it's a similar situation to what happens with "no assault after disembark unless you have an assault vehicle". As a general rule it's ok, but there are some units out there that should be able to assault from any kind of vehicle: Khorne Berzerkers, veteran Chaos Marines with CC weapons, etc.

 Korinov wrote:
As a general notion, no.

There are a few units however, whose design and fluff should make it possible for them. I'm thinking mostly about Warp Talons, their fluff clearly states they're precisely the kind of unit which appears from nowhere and strikes before the enemy can even react. Plus they're currently useless.

I think it's a similar situation to what happens with "no assault after disembark unless you have an assault vehicle". As a general rule it's ok, but there are some units out there that should be able to assault from any kind of vehicle: Khorne Berzerkers, veteran Chaos Marines with CC weapons, etc.

I agree completely with it being a general no.

However it would need something to stop it being fairly OP. People keep stating termies, even with full BS over-watch most units aren't going to do much against them.

I'm quite happy with the suggestion, a 3d6 scatter and give the defending unit all the charging buffs plus a chance to disengage afterwards. Also give it to specific units as some kind of upgrade option, not a general all round rule every unit as a general DS rule.

Maybe call it 'forced charge' or something, also give it rules to help those units such as Khorne Berzerkers coming out of transports?

 master of ordinance wrote:

Right now assault is far too powerful as it is.

How to immediately lose all credibility in discussing 7th ed 40k... what?! and you play guard to boot.

I've played quiet a few games, even outside the box ones like facing down 30k World Eaters with an IG gun/tank line (with and without a primarch)... it wasn't even fair, and it wasn't the assault armies that died on the vine. Seriously, how are you losing to assault armies as an IG/AM player (one loss once isn't what I'm talking about, if you're making bold statements like "assault is too powerful" I'm assuming this is a repeated trend you've observed... if not, your ignorance grows as your credibility diminishes)? Are you sure your group is playing the rules correctly? Have you gone to tournaments? What gives?!

Wow, just wow... moving on

5th ed was not that very long ago. Having played since the RT days, doing several mid to low level tourneys, and owning just about every type of army (not every codex, just every type ie: horde, elite, assault, gunline, 30k legion, etc), I agree that reserves and assault need some help. I'd think that a few restrictions could allow more assaults out reserves into the game

1) if moving on to your table edge from reserve, assault as normal (seriously have no clue why this isn't in the game already)
2) if outflanking, limited assaults... maybe only disordered charges against single units (or maybe limit the charge distance to d6 or the like)
3) no deep strike assaults... that's just unbalancing, or only allow it like vanguard vets used to have it in older additions (and trust me, no one was winning competitive games with heroic intervention back in the day) and only on a very small number of units (say 1 per codex)

I mean seriously, we have formations now that allow full BS overwatch on entire lists... there's Tau/IG/Eldar, no way assaults are OP. And those top tourney lists that allegedly are using "assault units" to win. Those would be mobile units that are grabbing objectives and denying board control... they're not largely winning on the top tables by ROFLstomping in assaults.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW, the assertion that assault armies are winning tourneys... here's the top 20 armies and their secondaries from the BAO. I don't see an overwhelming presence of assault codices here.

Daemons
Chaos Space Marines x2
Eldar x2
Skitarii
Cult mechanicus
Blood Angels
Space Marines x4
Tau x4
Orks x2
Imperial Knights x2
Imperial Guard x2
Tyranids
Space Wolves
Necrons

 Lobukia wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Right now assault is far too powerful as it is.

How to immediately lose all credibility in discussing 7th ed 40k... what?! and you play guard to boot.

I've played quiet a few games, even outside the box ones like facing down 30k World Eaters with an IG gun/tank line (with and without a primarch)... it wasn't even fair, and it wasn't the assault armies that died on the vine. Seriously, how are you losing to assault armies as an IG/AM player (one loss once isn't what I'm talking about, if you're making bold statements like "assault is too powerful" I'm assuming this is a repeated trend you've observed... if not, your ignorance grows as your credibility diminishes)? Are you sure your group is playing the rules correctly? Have you gone to tournaments? What gives?!

Allow me to elaborate: from the point o view of an Imperial Guard player the Assault phase feels too powerful. I accept that this may not be the general consensus but for me that is how it feels.
Assault based armies are not what give me the headache, I have faced down things like multiple DS units that would then assault me no matter what if I did not kill them outright. I have faced down multiple transport assault units.

For me the problem is not so much assault armies as the phase itself. I know that if anything hits my army in assault then whatever they hit is gone.




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That and dedicated assault armies gak all over me if they get close.... Say by Deep Striking or using fast transports.

Master, did you ever change your list in the way that was suggested? It might help out a lot with the assault elements of the enemy.

 Lobukia wrote:
How to immediately lose all credibility in discussing 7th ed 40k... what?! and you play guard to boot.

I've played quiet a few games, even outside the box ones like facing down 30k World Eaters with an IG gun/tank line (with and without a primarch)... it wasn't even fair, and it wasn't the assault armies that died on the vine. Seriously, how are you losing to assault armies as an IG/AM player (one loss once isn't what I'm talking about, if you're making bold statements like "assault is too powerful" I'm assuming this is a repeated trend you've observed... if not, your ignorance grows as your credibility diminishes)? Are you sure your group is playing the rules correctly? Have you gone to tournaments? What gives?!

I generally find with the right use of terrain, DS and not charging into the open in a desperate bid to close the gap, when I have to secure the objective or get a line of sight anyway, enables assault armies to do quite well. If you're complaining about gunline armies and still charge into the open then you're not using them right.

Obviously you have the issue of barrage weapons in guard, especially wvyerns, but that's why it's always clever to have a DS tank killer or MC in your army.

 Lobukia wrote:

How to immediately lose all credibility in discussing 7th ed 40k... what?!

Why?

 Lobukia wrote:
and you play guard to boot.

Guard haven't been strong since 5th, what's your point exactly?

Here's the thing, assault as a mechanic *is* powerful. Assault:
- Denies cover
- Always hits vehicles on their rear armour
- Prevents the assaulted unit(s) from shooting in the enemy turn
- Prevents the assaulting unit from being shot in the enemy turn
- Can lock down multiple units as above
- Can immediately destroy any unit without Fearless/ATSKNF

Now, obviously, there are downsides to assault, compared to shooting:
- Short range
- Random charge length
- Overwatch
- etc.

The trouble is, these "downsides" often fail to balance assault. Instead, we have several assault units that are far too strong (TWC, Wraiths, WKs, DKs etc.), and many others that are bad to the point of being unusable (wyches, warp talons, possessed, genestealers, bloodbrides, some terminators, hellions etc.). My point is, the downsides to assault don't balance it - they just polarise assault units. Many units are punished far too much, whilst others barely notice the supposed downsides. e.g. compare the effect of overwatch against wyches (with their T3 and 6+ saves), to overwatch against Wraiths or TWC (T5, 3+ saves). Likewise, not being able to assault out of a transport hurts a lot of Chaos units, but again stuff like TWC, Wraiths, WKs and other units with 12" moves don't notice because they don't need transports in the first place. Finally, TWC and Wraiths are less likely to be bothered by random charge lengths because they both have 12" moves, ignore terrain penalties and have fleet to reroll one or both dice. In contrast, infantry with 6" moves and no fleet is much more likely to fluff a charge. And, whilst wyches have fleet, they can still be pushed back by overwatch and are basically dead if they fail the charge.

Basically, *if* you have the right units, assault is very strong indeed. If your army has stuff like genestealers, then the assault rules seem way too harsh. But, if you're against an army that uses one or more of the 'good' assault units, assault seems incredibly powerful.

Akiasura wrote:
Master, did you ever change your list in the way that was suggested? It might help out a lot with the assault elements of the enemy.

Yes I did and in all honesty there is feck all that Guard have that can deal with assaults. Unless that is you are willing to pay vast sums for some mediocre units.

Guard deal with assaults by shooting units that cant consolidate into another combat.

Martel732 wrote:
Guard deal with assaults by shooting units that cant consolidate into another combat.

And what happens if you have nothing left that can effectively shoot the target because you just lost half of it to the fisting that is assault?

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Guard deal with assaults by shooting units that cant consolidate into another combat.

And what happens if you have nothing left that can effectively shoot the target because you just lost half of it to the fisting that is assault?

You beg and plead with the God Emperor and ask him for an explanation of how such an unlikely turn of events happened.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Guard deal with assaults by shooting units that cant consolidate into another combat.

And what happens if you have nothing left that can effectively shoot the target because you just lost half of it to the fisting that is assault?

You beg and plead with the God Emperor and ask him for an explanation of how such an unlikely turn of events happened.

No need, it was either a Nemesis formation of the Sauce Marines used lots of transports.

I don't see what free transports have to do with you losing half your models to the assault phase. Especially since those units aren't assault vehicles.

Also Nemesis strike force is strong because of deepstriking shooty and psychic units.

They can't even assault til turn 2.

The problem with guard is not that they get out-assaulted by assaulty armies. Its that they get out-shot by non-shooty armies.

 Lobukia wrote:

BTW, the assertion that assault armies are winning tourneys... here's the top 20 armies and their secondaries from the BAO. I don't see an overwhelming presence of assault codices here.

Daemons
Chaos Space Marines x2
Eldar x2
Skitarii
Cult mechanicus
Blood Angels
Space Marines x4
Tau x4
Orks x2
Imperial Knights x2
Imperial Guard x2
Tyranids
Space Wolves
Necrons

One will notice if you actually look at the armies themselves, the highest placing army with IG as a primary detachment (i.e. not a meatshield allied contingent) placed like 67th. At Adepticon I think the highest ranked one was 46th in qualifiers and there were none in the top 32 that went to championships.

However, as I've noted earlier in this thread, if you look at winning lists, you'll see CC many built around a core of very strong close combat. TWC/Biker deathstars, Wraithspam, etc.

While I won't hop in on the side that "assault is too powerful", assault units and assault centric armies are performing very well at high levels, while the ostensibly heavy shooting IG are...not

Another thing that needs doing is the removal of the "Units assaulting vehicles always strike the rear armour" nonsense.

You assaulted the front of my MBT. How the hell are you sticking your grenades on my rear armour (and please do not give me this 'It represents hitting the weak points BS - unless a vehicle is immobilised and not shooting at you boarding it or having enough time to wedge a grenade into a weak point are things that are impossible).

 master of ordinance wrote:
Another thing that needs doing is the removal of the "Units assaulting vehicles always strike the rear armour" nonsense.

You assaulted the front of my MBT. How the hell are you sticking your grenades on my rear armour (and please do not give me this 'It represents hitting the weak points BS - unless a vehicle is immobilised and not shooting at you boarding it or having enough time to wedge a grenade into a weak point are things that are impossible).

It's because the Assault Phase actually represents several minutes of real time (like every other Phase), and the assaulting infantry spread out and surround the vehicle. It's always going to have its "weak spots" pointed at someone.

 Psienesis wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Another thing that needs doing is the removal of the "Units assaulting vehicles always strike the rear armour" nonsense.

You assaulted the front of my MBT. How the hell are you sticking your grenades on my rear armour (and please do not give me this 'It represents hitting the weak points BS - unless a vehicle is immobilised and not shooting at you boarding it or having enough time to wedge a grenade into a weak point are things that are impossible).

It's because the Assault Phase actually represents several minutes of real time (like every other Phase), and the assaulting infantry spread out and surround the vehicle. It's always going to have its "weak spots" pointed at someone.

Not really because if you spend several minutes assaulting a vehicle supporting Infantry tend to blow you off. What you are describing would only really work against a crippled vehicle without support.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Guard deal with assaults by shooting units that cant consolidate into another combat.

And what happens if you have nothing left that can effectively shoot the target because you just lost half of it to the fisting that is assault?

Then you positioned your units incorrectly. Unlike with a shooting army who chooses the targets independent of opponent input, an assault list MUST assault what is offered up as viable targets. Look, if I can do this with meqs, then you can do this with guardsmen. This is necessarily true due to the cost/wound differential.

I wouldn't be so adamant here but I've done exactly what I'm telling you to do with AN INFERIOR LIST. BA are not configured for shooting at all, yet I was able to rope-a-dope the GK with shooting and sacrificial squads. Because even BA have more squads than GK. Keep in mind that BA are *arguably* the WORST CODEX IN THE GAME.


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 master of ordinance wrote:
Another thing that needs doing is the removal of the "Units assaulting vehicles always strike the rear armour" nonsense.

You assaulted the front of my MBT. How the hell are you sticking your grenades on my rear armour (and please do not give me this 'It represents hitting the weak points BS - unless a vehicle is immobilised and not shooting at you boarding it or having enough time to wedge a grenade into a weak point are things that are impossible).

No, that rule is fine. Krak grenades are already practically worthless, since marines don't live to get to assault the vehicle typically. MCs are the real assault threat, and they don't care about rear armor since they magically get two dice.

 Vaktathi wrote:

One will notice if you actually look at the armies themselves, the highest placing army with IG as a primary detachment (i.e. not a meatshield allied contingent) placed like 67th. At Adepticon I think the highest ranked one was 46th in qualifiers and there were none in the top 32 that went to championships.

11th actually. If you look at battlepoints, they were 11th (I don't think painting scores are relevant to this discussion). And Adepticon promotes a play style very hostile to the guard players, so it'd be an outlier not a good frame of reference (and its hardly at the ITC levels of balancing... I love Adepticon, but this past year's mission packet was a blast from the past)

Martel732 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Guard deal with assaults by shooting units that cant consolidate into another combat.

And what happens if you have nothing left that can effectively shoot the target because you just lost half of it to the fisting that is assault?

Then you positioned your units incorrectly. Unlike with a shooting army who chooses the targets independent of opponent input, an assault list MUST assault what is offered up as viable targets. Look, if I can do this with meqs, then you can do this with guardsmen. This is necessarily true due to the cost/wound differential.

I wouldn't be so adamant here but I've done exactly what I'm telling you to do with AN INFERIOR LIST. BA are not configured for shooting at all, yet I was able to rope-a-dope the GK with shooting and sacrificial squads. Because even BA have more squads than GK. Keep in mind that BA are *arguably* the WORST CODEX IN THE GAME.

Given that BA can actually out shoot IG I am not quite as surprised as one would expect.
The problem with having sacrificial units is that they buy you time to kill the enemy in your next turn which is great until.... Lasguns. Oh wow, such scary lasguns.... 20 shots to cause 3 wounds all of which where saved. Rinse and repeat. Oh look I cause a wou-oh wait sorry, he passed his FNP check.
I would also like to point out that piont for point you are getting a lot more from your MEQ's than I am from my Guardsmen.
Also offering up viable targets is rather hard when the enemy DS'd in to your flank, killed everything there and then forced you to reposition your rather static (Guard are THE most static army going) army to shoot the enemy. Throw away squads do nothing against Strength 7 flamers and Psycannons.

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 master of ordinance wrote:
Another thing that needs doing is the removal of the "Units assaulting vehicles always strike the rear armour" nonsense.

You assaulted the front of my MBT. How the hell are you sticking your grenades on my rear armour (and please do not give me this 'It represents hitting the weak points BS - unless a vehicle is immobilised and not shooting at you boarding it or having enough time to wedge a grenade into a weak point are things that are impossible).

No, that rule is fine. Krak grenades are already practically worthless, since marines don't live to get to assault the vehicle typically. MCs are the real assault threat, and they don't care about rear armor since they magically get two dice.

Practically worthless? Your not even paying for them, unlike the Imperial Guard whom actually have to pay for the privileged of being able to carry them. That and given that under the current, sensless and pointless, rules you are glancing most vehicles on 4's. Vehicles suffer enough as it is, stop trying to make it more so.

"Given that BA can actually out shoot IG I am not quite as surprised as one would expect. "

Not even close. Either you don't know the BA codex at all, or you don't know your own.

". Lasguns. Oh wow, such scary lasguns.... 20 shots to cause 3 wounds all of which where saved. Rinse and repeat. Oh look I cause a wou-oh wait sorry, he passed his FNP check."

You shoot them with plasma, melta, and flamers. And, yes, lasguns.

"I would also like to point out that piont for point you are getting a lot more from your MEQ's than I am from my Guardsmen. "

No, I'm not. Especially against the ever-popular scatterlaser. Marines pay for a lot of assault twiddly bits that either a) don't get used or b) don't help against real assault units.

"Practically worthless? "

Yeah, I've been using them since 1994. And they rarely come up post 2nd ed

" enemy DS'd in to your flank, killed everything there and then forced you to reposition your rather static"

Set up better. If flamers worry you, wrap with tanks, not infantry. Kinda like I do. Go figure.

What is a lasgun?
4+ to hit, 5+ to wound?
So that's .16 wounds per shot assuming a marine?
A bolter wound be a
3+ to hit, 4+ to wound?
So that's roughly a .33?

So about twice as effective for more than two times the cost. Certain commands will help, and Ig benefit more from divination than marines do.

I'd need point costs to run vets with plasma guns (AFB) but is it really that much less?

Honestly outside of deathstars I'm having a hard time seeing guard lose to assault armies. Deep strike...if you are tank heavy and deploy poorly, or if they list tailor (all flamer or melta DS) I suppose.

Akiasura wrote:
What is a lasgun?
4+ to hit, 5+ to wound?
So that's .16 wounds per shot assuming a marine?
A bolter wound be a
3+ to hit, 4+ to wound?
So that's roughly a .33?

So about twice as effective for more than two times the cost. Certain commands will help, and Ig benefit more from divination than marines do.

I'd need point costs to run vets with plasma guns (AFB) but is it really that much less?

Honestly outside of deathstars I'm having a hard time seeing guard lose to assault armies. Deep strike...if you are tank heavy and deploy poorly, or if they list tailor (all flamer or melta DS) I suppose.

Bolters hit IG on a 3+ and wound on a 3+. Might want to redo your maths there.

It doesn't matter. The real damage is coming from plasma/melta/flamer. And surviving tanks.

Pack your troops in tightly where he physically can't reach with a flamer.

Did you play 5th? If not, that will explain why you haven't undergone the SW drop pod trial by fire. We lost so many games against SW drop pod until we figured out how to neuter it.

Martel732 wrote:
It doesn't matter. The real damage is coming from plasma/melta/flamer. And surviving tanks.

Pack your troops in tightly where he physically can't reach with a flamer.

Did you play 5th? If not, that will explain why you haven't undergone the SW drop pod trial by fire. We lost so many games against SW drop pod until we figured out how to neuter it.

I played 5th without any tanks and won. I know how to neuter the crap fest that is a drop army but the lack of firepower in the IG is what hurts it the most. I can not physically put enough firepower down range or reposition fast enough to deal with it.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
What is a lasgun?
4+ to hit, 5+ to wound?
So that's .16 wounds per shot assuming a marine?
A bolter wound be a
3+ to hit, 4+ to wound?
So that's roughly a .33?

So about twice as effective for more than two times the cost. Certain commands will help, and Ig benefit more from divination than marines do.

I'd need point costs to run vets with plasma guns (AFB) but is it really that much less?

Honestly outside of deathstars I'm having a hard time seeing guard lose to assault armies. Deep strike...if you are tank heavy and deploy poorly, or if they list tailor (all flamer or melta DS) I suppose.

Bolters hit IG on a 3+ and wound on a 3+. Might want to redo your maths there.

I was comparing both to firing at a marine. Which I stated, but could have made more clear.
When comparing the effectiveness of a units firepower we assume the same target.

If we want to compare toughness things get dramatically more complex. Against plasma, scatter lasers, and other strong weapons, guardsmen are better if both have cover. Against small arms fire, guard do worse. It's hard to judge who is tougher.

We could run an analysis similar to what happened with dire avengers, where we take a similar point value of each with their typical load out and see how they do.
I'd need someone to make the units since I'm away from book at the moment.

" I can not physically put enough firepower down range or reposition fast enough to deal with it."

Yes, you can. Because BA can, and IG out shoot BA on a per point basis by a pretty wide margin.

If you knew how to neuter a drop list, you would be winning against GK, because GK aren't even that good in 7th. Far too many pts/wound in that list. And that's the only real tactic GK have: alpha strike and pray.

"I played 5th without any tanks and won."

You would have won even more with Chimeras in play. Granted, Chimeras are serviceable at best now, but with clever placement, you can present an AV 12 wall to most of the table. That's bad for GK.

I also find it almost impossible to believe that you were beating 5th ed SW with no tanks, but can't take on 7th ed GK with the entire IG codex. Especially considering most GK special rules are TOTALLY WASTED against the IG.

"I was comparing both to firing at a marine"

GK are even more vulnerable than marines, since they have the same defense, but cost more pts/wound.

Lasguns are supposed to be fired en masse with orders and psyker support to become better than bolters could ever hope to be.

FRFSRFing a blob within rapid fire range and rending will generally erase whatever scary assault unit is coming. Barring that use your artillery. Or Punisher Pask. Or use vets with special weapons in chimeras. Or cobscript blobs with priests.

There are options for IG to do well. They just aren't as apparent as other codexes because they require synergy.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
Lasguns are supposed to be fired en masse with orders and psyker support to become better than bolters could ever hope to be.

FRFSRFing a blob within rapid fire range and rending will generally erase whatever scary assault unit is coming. Barring that use your artillery. Or Punisher Pask. Or use vets with special weapons in chimeras. Or cobscript blobs with priests.

There are options for IG to do well. They just aren't as apparent as other codexes because they require synergy.

A single medusa shot can cost the GK hundreds and hundreds of points. Nice paladins, bro!

"They just aren't as apparent as other codexes because they require synergy."

Synergy. That thing that the BA have virtually none of, since our priests got put in HQ. I knew there was something we were missing.

DoomShakaLaka wrote:Lasguns are supposed to be fired en masse with orders and psyker support to become better than bolters could ever hope to be.

FRFSRFing a blob within rapid fire range and rending will generally erase whatever scary assault unit is coming. Barring that use your artillery. Or Punisher Pask. Or use vets with special weapons in chimeras. Or cobscript blobs with priests.

There are options for IG to do well. They just aren't as apparent as other codexes because they require synergy.

That works well until DS GK units murder your command sections and psykers.

Martel732 wrote:" I can not physically put enough firepower down range or reposition fast enough to deal with it."

Yes, you can. Because BA can, and IG out shoot BA on a per point basis by a pretty wide margin.

If you knew how to neuter a drop list, you would be winning against GK, because GK aren't even that good in 7th. Far too many pts/wound in that list. And that's the only real tactic GK have: alpha strike and pray.

"I played 5th without any tanks and won."

You would have won even more with Chimeras in play. Granted, Chimeras are serviceable at best now, but with clever placement, you can present an AV 12 wall to most of the table. That's bad for GK.

I also find it almost impossible to believe that you were beating 5th ed SW with no tanks, but can't take on 7th ed GK with the entire IG codex. Especially considering most GK special rules are TOTALLY WASTED against the IG.

"I was comparing both to firing at a marine"

GK are even more vulnerable than marines, since they have the same defense, but cost more pts/wound.

Despite the masses of evidence otherwise? IG have struggled to even equal the firepower of MEQ codex's for a long time now.

I couldnt afford tanks at the time but I did get two Chimeras towards the end of it. They greatly improved my army. My trick was to dig in to cover and let them come to me.

GK are insanely tough if they get their psychic powers off first.

"GK are insanely tough if they get their psychic powers off first. "

No, they aren't. Their invuln gets one better. Yippee! Unless they get some lucky rolls on biomancy, that's it afaik. Just shoot them a little more to compensate.

"Despite the masses of evidence otherwise?"

How many IG players are disagreeing with your assessment at this point? Volunteering your best stuff for slaughter does not make your codex bad. Or as bad as you are making it out to be.

"That works well until DS GK units murder your command sections and psykers. "

Don't let them. It's literally that simple. If you really did well in 5th you would know that already. IG can force drop pods and deep strikers into some frustrating situations. Oh, and outflankers? Did I mention there are units covering my table edges making it illegal for you to enter the board? Also, don't forget drop pod traps. Those are hilarious.

Maybe he is referring to invisibility?

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Another thing that needs doing is the removal of the "Units assaulting vehicles always strike the rear armour" nonsense.

You assaulted the front of my MBT. How the hell are you sticking your grenades on my rear armour (and please do not give me this 'It represents hitting the weak points BS - unless a vehicle is immobilised and not shooting at you boarding it or having enough time to wedge a grenade into a weak point are things that are impossible).

It's because the Assault Phase actually represents several minutes of real time (like every other Phase), and the assaulting infantry spread out and surround the vehicle. It's always going to have its "weak spots" pointed at someone.

Not really because if you spend several minutes assaulting a vehicle supporting Infantry tend to blow you off. What you are describing would only really work against a crippled vehicle without support.

You somehow think 40K is supposed to be realistic in some way, shape, or form.

That's cute.

 Lobukia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

One will notice if you actually look at the armies themselves, the highest placing army with IG as a primary detachment (i.e. not a meatshield allied contingent) placed like 67th. At Adepticon I think the highest ranked one was 46th in qualifiers and there were none in the top 32 that went to championships.

11th actually. If you look at battlepoints, they were 11th (I don't think painting scores are relevant to this discussion). And Adepticon promotes a play style very hostile to the guard players, so it'd be an outlier not a good frame of reference (and its hardly at the ITC levels of balancing... I love Adepticon, but this past year's mission packet was a blast from the past)

Looking at the LVO's battle points for the 2015 championship, I'm seeing a Dark Angels army in 11th place with an IG meatshield ally, not an army with IG as the primary detachment.

The highest placed army with IG as the primary detachment, by Battlepoints, was like 81st place (well, tied with several others, but waaaaaaaayyyy down there). The highest IG army with a secondary detachment that is at least another IG army (Tempestus allies) was like 123rd, and the highest IG army with no allies was 197th.


At Adepticon, looking just at battle points, in the qualifiers, the highest placed army with IG as the primary detachment was 56th, and there were none at all present in the finals.

 vipoid wrote:

The trouble is, these "downsides" often fail to balance assault. Instead, we have several assault units that are far too strong (TWC, Wraiths, WKs, DKs etc.), and many others that are bad to the point of being unusable (wyches, warp talons, possessed, genestealers, bloodbrides, some terminators, hellions etc.). My point is, the downsides to assault don't balance it - they just polarise assault units. Many units are punished far too much, whilst others barely notice the supposed downsides. e.g. compare the effect of overwatch against wyches (with their T3 and 6+ saves), to overwatch against Wraiths or TWC (T5, 3+ saves). Likewise, not being able to assault out of a transport hurts a lot of Chaos units, but again stuff like TWC, Wraiths, WKs and other units with 12" moves don't notice because they don't need transports in the first place. Finally, TWC and Wraiths are less likely to be bothered by random charge lengths because they both have 12" moves, ignore terrain penalties and have fleet to reroll one or both dice. In contrast, infantry with 6" moves and no fleet is much more likely to fluff a charge. And, whilst wyches have fleet, they can still be pushed back by overwatch and are basically dead if they fail the charge.

Basically, *if* you have the right units, assault is very strong indeed. If your army has stuff like genestealers, then the assault rules seem way too harsh. But, if you're against an army that uses one or more of the 'good' assault units, assault seems incredibly powerful.

I think this is really the issue that is dividing people so strongly. There are units that can practically assault every turn without any sort of drawbacks while still having a high expectation of winning those assaults. On the other side of the coin, we've got units which the fluff would describe as "assault" units, but on the actual table serve as little more than impotent scarecrows. As vipoid says, the trade-offs for having an assault focus does effectively nothing to balance such units - instead, it just divides them into "fantastic" and "glued to the shelf." To the former, allowing assault from deep strike would obviously be terrible, but for the latter, it might actually allow them to see some real use, competitively speaking (i.e. Assault Marines).

As I said before, I certainly wouldn't be upset about allowing more assault from deep strike, but what's more important is to give assault-focused units some more consistency across the board so that all assault units can feel like they have a role, not just a select few capable of dancing around the board like Hong Kong wire-fighting martial artists.

The funny thing is DS assault IS currently allowed and its still the weakest part of that formation by far. Unfortunately it's selectively allowed.

I wasn't that long ago that BA vanguard vets could still assault from reserves, wasn't all that good then and wouldn't be now.

For those arguing that assault is more powerful I agree it can be however, there are strategies that defeat assault that dont work against ranged attacks such as bubble wrapping whether it be fodder or dirt cheap transports.
Then take into account scatter and failed charge attempts. Ranged units don't need to roll for range or forfeit their shots.

Then consider an assault unit can assault 3 times a game if they're lucky. Ranged units shoot every turn from turn 1 usually hitting on 3s or better often with s6+ and even ap2. How do assault units compare? The vast majority doesn't. The ones that do are already decent and most off those can't ds anyway.

I suspect I play more assault units than many people and I do well with it, on terrain dense boards against balanced lists but let's be real assault can't compete with high end shooting lists and and a one time deep strike assault per unit isn't going to fix that. But it might bring a little more diversity or at least make some units half assed viable.

Before any changes to DS assault, I'd like to see a baseline re-established where players are content to field basic troops. They're the most iconic units in the game, they ought to be a 'safe' choice rather than a tax or trap.

DS assault won't help with this. It just makes core troops lacking utility even weaker, since many are already outperformed in every category except chaff to bubblewrap more valuable units.

Basically, get the Tacs and Termagaunts up to speed before we look at Jump Marines and Gargoyles.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Before any changes to DS assault, I'd like to see a baseline re-established where players are content to field basic troops. They're the most iconic units in the game, they ought to be a 'safe' choice rather than a tax or trap

I think this is the bigger issue in general.

When literally the only purpose for units like guardsmen is as body-blocking material and who's basic gun requires triple digits worth of shots to kill something like an RP Wraith or FNP'd TWC, units like Wyches are absolutely incapable against the elite units they were once designed to fight, and many similar issues, the game has a fundamental problem that goes away beyond "assault vs shooting". There's a major problem with the scales the game is played at.

The ever increasing scale of firepower, creation of high-T multiwound multiple-save fast units like TWC's and the asinine buffing of Necron Wraiths, inclusion of SH/GC units into just any game (and the odd inverse granularity of detail the game has with them) is causing an increasing number of issues.


There was a time when an S8 AP3 Large Blast Leman Russ Battlecannon was considered an extremely powerful and scary weapon that, at worst, you'd face 3 of (usually only 1 or 2). There was a time when a Carnifex was one of the biggest and scariest unit you'd ever see. There was a time when Lasguns weren't considered extraneous dice rolling. There was a time when a 3+ invul was almost nonexistent except on a couple of SC's and the game had a single 2+ invul save (that failed permanently once failed) and the idea of a 2++ rerollable save was purely the realm of internet hyperbole. The game really need to split at this point, and have normal 40k go back to the above paradigms, and an "Epic" version that's more unit based rather than individual model based.

Why not make a special rule that allows a unit to assault from deep strike/reserves/infiltration? Like "Surprise Attack" or something, and only give it to the units such as Lictors and Genestealers, so that they can be scary to opponents. Maybe even for 1st turn allow overwatch on full BS to make it feel more fair.

Agreed, a USR for this would be nice. My wolf scouts have yet to see play, but in 5th I ran two squads decked out for CC. They were really good at destroying tanks and backfield firepower units when you could assault from outflank.

 evildrspock wrote:
Why not make a special rule that allows a unit to assault from deep strike/reserves/infiltration? Like "Surprise Attack" or something, and only give it to the units such as Lictors and Genestealers, so that they can be scary to opponents. Maybe even for 1st turn allow overwatch on full BS to make it feel more fair.

There very moment you dot hat those units will get spamed and armies like IG, become even more horrible to play. As much as I feel for people wanting to make this or that unit good, charge out of deep strike makes at least one faction automaticly unplayable.

This debate is another case where lack of granularity in 40K has ruined everything. Weapons like the scatter laser are intended (I guess) to have superior strength and ROF to a heavy bolter, but the problem is that on a D6, this means it wounds almost all infantry on a 2! This is why assault lists are melting before they get to do anything. Too many shots, with too high of STR, coming from too cheap of units that are mobile on top of it.

This makes the situation very bimodal: most assault units are in CC and okay and alive or they are not and they are shot to death. And that's why this poll is running 50/50, because many (I voted no) are sick of setting up and knowing they will lose before the first model is moved. At this point, IG might be acceptable losses to many players.

Martel, I agree that moving to a 2d6 system and having stats be from 1 to 20 would be a lot better for the game. I just can't see it happening, which is a shame.

Have marines with a bs of 8 but a Def 14, eldar with a bs of 7 but Def 15, and guard bs 6 but Def 12-13 would allow a better adherence to the fluff while still allowing for a balanced game.

Akiasura wrote:
Martel, I agree that moving to a 2d6 system and having stats be from 1 to 20 would be a lot better for the game. I just can't see it happening, which is a shame.

Have marines with a bs of 8 but a Def 14, eldar with a bs of 7 but Def 15, and guard bs 6 but Def 12-13 would allow a better adherence to the fluff while still allowing for a balanced game.

Remember Warzone? It had very good mechanics and very crappy models.

It makes sense to be able to assualt out of deep strike, fluff wise..you know the stone cold space marines flying in on drop pods to attack the filthy xenos head on...but i think they don't allow it for balance reasons.

I try not to use fluff for the justification for anything rules-wise.

Crimson Heretic wrote:
It makes sense to be able to assualt out of deep strike, fluff wise..you know the stone cold space marines flying in on drop pods to attack the filthy xenos head on...but i think they don't allow it for balance reasons.

Ok then I want the 2-3 days non stop artilery barrages, before combat starts. It is a standard IG tactic. I would even settle for two or three hours preliminary bombardment.

Makumba wrote:

Crimson Heretic wrote:
It makes sense to be able to assualt out of deep strike, fluff wise..you know the stone cold space marines flying in on drop pods to attack the filthy xenos head on...but i think they don't allow it for balance reasons.

Ok then I want the 2-3 days non stop artilery barrages, before combat starts. It is a standard IG tactic. I would even settle for two or three hours preliminary bombardment.

To be fair, the rulebook's reasoning for why assaulting out of deep strike isn't allowed is fluff. Bad fluff at that.

That's why its best to ignore all fluff. Because none of it makes sense and is inconsistent from edition to edition.

Me and my friends actually have this for a house rule, and from experience it is not a point-and-click win or too OP. These are just a brief skeleton of the rules we use:

Any unit arriving from DS may assault in the turn it does so. They must pass an Initiative test to do so. (I play daemonettes so theoretically very nasty, in actuality, NOT.)
Units may not assault from DS if they are equipped with ANY unwieldy weapons.
Units may not assault from DS if they disembarked from a vehicle (this includes Drop pods so no DP-SM spam)
Also, units assaulting in the turn they arrive may not shoot in the same turn (mitigates the nastiness they can throw out) but the enemy may still fire overwatch at them normally.

And there you have it. No fuss, simple and easy - not too OP and never really a game winner but it allows assault units a chance to make back their points if used cannily. With this system, they first have to pass an I test, and then roll to see whether they can charge the full distance, so depending on how close you are this may or may not be so useful.

I will accept assault from DS when my army can throw out Tau levels of Interceptor.... Or even actually has any Interceptor available.

Assault from DS will essentially be a massive fisting for almost any Guard player and seeing as we are almost unplayable at the present time I say no.

What's interesting is that vanguard could do this in 5th, but it was terrible because they cost so much.

 Drakeslayer wrote:
Me and my friends actually have this for a house rule, and from experience it is not a point-and-click win or too OP. These are just a brief skeleton of the rules we use:

Any unit arriving from DS may assault in the turn it does so. They must pass an Initiative test to do so. (I play daemonettes so theoretically very nasty, in actuality, NOT.)
Units may not assault from DS if they are equipped with ANY unwieldy weapons.
Units may not assault from DS if they disembarked from a vehicle (this includes Drop pods so no DP-SM spam)
Also, units assaulting in the turn they arrive may not shoot in the same turn (mitigates the nastiness they can throw out) but the enemy may still fire overwatch at them normally.

And there you have it. No fuss, simple and easy - not too OP and never really a game winner but it allows assault units a chance to make back their points if used cannily. With this system, they first have to pass an I test, and then roll to see whether they can charge the full distance, so depending on how close you are this may or may not be so useful.

How many people play IG among your friends?

Makumba wrote:

 Drakeslayer wrote:
Me and my friends actually have this for a house rule, and from experience it is not a point-and-click win or too OP. These are just a brief skeleton of the rules we use:

Any unit arriving from DS may assault in the turn it does so. They must pass an Initiative test to do so. (I play daemonettes so theoretically very nasty, in actuality, NOT.)
Units may not assault from DS if they are equipped with ANY unwieldy weapons.
Units may not assault from DS if they disembarked from a vehicle (this includes Drop pods so no DP-SM spam)
Also, units assaulting in the turn they arrive may not shoot in the same turn (mitigates the nastiness they can throw out) but the enemy may still fire overwatch at them normally.

And there you have it. No fuss, simple and easy - not too OP and never really a game winner but it allows assault units a chance to make back their points if used cannily. With this system, they first have to pass an I test, and then roll to see whether they can charge the full distance, so depending on how close you are this may or may not be so useful.

How many people play IG among your friends?

Coincidently, all his friends stopped playing IG around the same time.

 vipoid wrote:

Makumba wrote:

 Drakeslayer wrote:
Me and my friends actually have this for a house rule, and from experience it is not a point-and-click win or too OP. These are just a brief skeleton of the rules we use:

Any unit arriving from DS may assault in the turn it does so. They must pass an Initiative test to do so. (I play daemonettes so theoretically very nasty, in actuality, NOT.)
Units may not assault from DS if they are equipped with ANY unwieldy weapons.
Units may not assault from DS if they disembarked from a vehicle (this includes Drop pods so no DP-SM spam)
Also, units assaulting in the turn they arrive may not shoot in the same turn (mitigates the nastiness they can throw out) but the enemy may still fire overwatch at them normally.

And there you have it. No fuss, simple and easy - not too OP and never really a game winner but it allows assault units a chance to make back their points if used cannily. With this system, they first have to pass an I test, and then roll to see whether they can charge the full distance, so depending on how close you are this may or may not be so useful.

How many people play IG among your friends?

Coincidently, all his friends stopped playing IG around the same time.

I wonder why

I say that the majority of units should not assault after deep striking, however a few units should like the vanguard vets because fluff wide they were dropped off by thunder hawks so they could see what to engage with straight after land fall. But for units like termie they do not know what to expect right in front of them so they wouldn't know what do to do straight away as they would have to access things before engaging.

So my answer is no but certain elite and carefully selected units fluff wise should be allowed to assault as mentioned above.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
Before any changes to DS assault, I'd like to see a baseline re-established where players are content to field basic troops. They're the most iconic units in the game, they ought to be a 'safe' choice rather than a tax or trap

I think this is the bigger issue in general.

When literally the only purpose for units like guardsmen is as body-blocking material and who's basic gun requires triple digits worth of shots to kill something like an RP Wraith or FNP'd TWC, units like Wyches are absolutely incapable against the elite units they were once designed to fight, and many similar issues, the game has a fundamental problem that goes away beyond "assault vs shooting". There's a major problem with the scales the game is played at.

The ever increasing scale of firepower, creation of high-T multiwound multiple-save fast units like TWC's and the asinine buffing of Necron Wraiths, inclusion of SH/GC units into just any game (and the odd inverse granularity of detail the game has with them) is causing an increasing number of issues.


There was a time when an S8 AP3 Large Blast Leman Russ Battlecannon was considered an extremely powerful and scary weapon that, at worst, you'd face 3 of (usually only 1 or 2). There was a time when a Carnifex was one of the biggest and scariest unit you'd ever see. There was a time when Lasguns weren't considered extraneous dice rolling. There was a time when a 3+ invul was almost nonexistent except on a couple of SC's and the game had a single 2+ invul save (that failed permanently once failed) and the idea of a 2++ rerollable save was purely the realm of internet hyperbole. The game really need to split at this point, and have normal 40k go back to the above paradigms, and an "Epic" version that's more unit based rather than individual model based.

Agreed.

Incidentally, I was remembering back in 5th - when the Psyfulman Dreadnought was considered the pinnacle of long-range anti-tank. How long ago that feels...

Holy crap the polls are tied! The no's were pulling ahead for a while there. What happened?

The way I see it, assaulting from deep strike is the logical answer to overwatch. Your opponent always gets a chance to shoot at you before you can attack.

Having to sit around for a round and get shot up nerfs too many units.

 techsoldaten wrote:
The way I see it, assaulting from deep strike is the logical answer to overwatch. Your opponent always gets a chance to shoot at you before you can attack.

Having to sit around for a round and get shot up nerfs too many units.

Eh. Overwatch isn't that strong.


You'd have to make overwatch at full bs to make it scary enough for REAL cc threats.