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Well, I noticed that the new style of winning big in 40k is to go mech with lots of cheap transports and tanks.
Deployment is just castle up and playing defensely sniping at the enemy to bring him forward eventually.
The game often ends soon such that there is not much damage inflicted since steel coffins are rather resilient these days.

Do you like this play style? See Stelek's deployment at the Wiskey challenge (sorry, picture borrowed).

Stelek has Moobs! "The truth hurts"...lol

I have grown bored with the mech (since my Khorne and IG are) and am trying out BAs with Pods and lots of Jumpers.

Although my IG was mech a long time before it was cool. Now they're just better at it.

I don't care too much for it.
I run bikers or the traditional CSM list.

So... I won't have as many metal bowxes and I don't personally like so much mech. But it wins, can't deny that.

Indeed, Stelek is over there with Rhinos in front and Razorbacks behind at the corner.

I understand that this style of play is what 5th ed supports, but I don't enjoy it nearly as much as more infantry-based games. I like assault, and when you're hitting a 35 point box on a 6+ and not even killing it, it's kind of disheartening.

I wouldnt call this style new and 8 tanks is hardly very many. Look at last year's dominant IG armies and count the tanks.

It is the new style, I think to the point of stifling creativity in list-building. IG can be built as either extreme mech or an infantry horde, but mech is probably stronger overall - same for orks - for SM variants especially, there is really no good reason NOT to include dirt-cheap rhinos or razorbacks, they give an extremely important layer of protection to your lads, provide mobility, make good assaults a lot harder for your opponent to pull off, etc.

Transports have definitely gone from 'a mobility/protection upgrade for units who need to get somewhere safe/fast' to a no-brainer upgrade for all sorts of units. Hard to think of any cheap, fire-point boasting transport that's not a good buy for units that aren't purely heavy weapons.

Personally I use transports as much as I can due to most of my units either being slow or stupid (I'm looking at you DC).

Though except for a few lists that will rip me a new one in CC, I always advance and very rarely hang back with my transports.

I use transports because if I didn't my firewarriors would trip over a tree root and die in some bizarre, horrid way.

BA list:

Troop: 6 5 man units all with razbacks.
Fast: 3 baals.
heavy: 3 preds.

Thats 12 vehicles as it is.
If and when points permit, its easily possible to take honour guard units with a cheap HQ and a razback to boost it even more.
Can even take 3 5 man sternguard units in razbacks.

Easily possible to break the 15 mark in vehicles with BA.





However, i play daemons now, so im limited to only 3 vehicles, which i dont take as i prefer princes.

I'm a big fan of mech, in fact played heavy mech even in the flaming coffins of doom days of 4th ed. That being said, my current project is a daemon army... so yeah, not a great choice for the current edition. (deamons don't like metal boxes)

Eh, depending on how ballsy you are, you won't need transports.

I will have to agree as well. I am not really a fan of everything needs to be in a transport of GTFO.

۞ Jack ۞ wrote:BA list:

Troop: 6 5 man units all with razbacks.
Fast: 3 baals.
heavy: 3 preds.

Thats 12 vehicles as it is.
If and when points permit, its easily possible to take honour guard units with a cheap HQ and a razback to boost it even more.
Can even take 3 5 man sternguard units in razbacks.

Easily possible to break the 15 mark in vehicles with BA.

Well, when comparing mech armies of BA and SW,
BA has the advantage of having fast tanks so that Predators can move 6'' and can still fire all their weapons,
while SW have advantage in the troop department since GH are better in cc when they are receiving the charge.

I play Eldar. Mech is, sadly, our only tourney-level competitive list (unless you're Blackmoor). Foot Eldar lists just aren't cutting it these days.

Once I've got a solid 2500 of my Eldar painted, I'm all in for a SW foot list or a BA flying circus list.

Ignore this post

Once I've got a solid 2500 of my Eldar painted, I'm all in for a SW foot list or a BA flying circus list.

SW lists seem to work best when based on Razorbacks, see the result at NovaCon.
How about a BA flying circus list? All based on jump packers?

I have a list that is 2x8 meganobs in fancy battlewagons, 3x20 boyz in cheap battlewagons and the rest goes to rokkit deffkoptas that works pretty good. I would never castle up and make the enemy come to me, because of the terrible Ork shooting. I would rather saturate the enemy lines, grind them down with powerklaws, deffrollers and rokkits. It's way more fun than just circle-jerking in your deployment zone. Of course, some people have to try such tricks. I put it down to low testosterone.

Savnock wrote:I play Eldar. Mech is, sadly, our only tourney-level competitive list (unless you're Blackmoor). Foot Eldar lists just aren't cutting it these days.

Once I've got a solid 2500 of my Eldar painted, I'm all in for a SW foot list or a BA flying circus list.

Amen to this. I own 4 wave serpents and a couple of vypers. I've realised after long experiences that against well-built, modern armies (ie full of transports) the Eldar foot units are too vulnerable, they get hung up for a turn killing a rhino, then the contents waste them. I've got to buy 5 more tanks in order to compete against my regular opponents.

There are very few of the "famous" tournament lists that revolve around infantry on foot and they usually require a very specific set up/ deployment to work. There are only three lists that come to mind.

1) Tyranids- simply because they do not have vehicles so any short ranged (zoanthropes mostly) go in their imitation transport: the mycetic spore.

2) Footdar- basically because you can not see Harlequins at a distance to shoot them and they give the people behind them cover.

3) Kan wall- you get 9 vehicles with a cover save giving a cover save to the people behind them.

Even though 2-3 are "foot" lists they will use vehicles (mostly cheep walkers ie Kans or War Walkers). With the current damage table even light vehicles can take some fire and come out on the other side okay. Also, there are a lot of upgrades that gives vehicles cover saves to improve their survivability.

I personnaly love mech, especially how it looks all together and painted. The playstyle is also very fun IMO though others dont think so, and winning is just a bonus

The only races that can do foot lists are Orks, IG & Nidds (..guess Tau and necrons technically could/do but i don't really count ether as competitive). They can do foot lists simply because they can loose vast numbers of model and simply not care about it.

Should mention that Space Marines can do foot lists problem is just that they find it hard to counter every enemy army; Foot marines make much easier pickings for any fast moving or long ranged army. Eldar too can do a foot army but just even more then SM they lack the means to counter every one.

Umm. I'm pretty sure this is nothing new, as previous replies have indicated.

Mech has been strong since 5th started. Most high end lists in 5th take advantage of the mobility and protection that Mech provides.

Stelek's tactics are nothing new. In fact he's been talking about those same things for years now.

The biggest change is the new vehicle damage charts making cheap vehicles a no-brainer choice.

You want to assault? Take LRs otherwise a resilient list for SM, SM variants and CSM includes rhinos/predators. Chimeras are fine at now reduced costs.

Only ones that suffer are eldar and tau with too-high cost vehicles for what they carry. Still vehicles give their low toughness or ineffect CC units survivability.

3rd Ed suffered from Rhino-rush
4th Ed suffered from insta-pin vehicle death.
5th Ed IMO, suffers from too resilient vehicles clogging the playing field.

There have always been reasons to play vehicle based lists but it gets pretty easy when my choice is to spend a few extra points on a rhino instead of 2 extra ablative marine casualties-to-be or field a 5-man squad in a razorback that never fire themselves and just let the razorback do the dirty work.

My hope is that 6th ed. will restore some punch to non-melta weapons. Perhaps a 2d6 chart with bonuses to AP2 and AP3 weapons with minuses for AP5,6 and - weapons.

There have always been reasons to play vehicle based lists but it gets pretty easy when my choice is to spend a few extra points on a rhino instead of 2 extra ablative marine casualties-to-be or field a 5-man squad in a razorback that never fire themselves and just let the razorback do the dirty work.

That's a very good point.

Moreover, 5-men BA Assault squads or GHs have access to one special weapon, while Tacticals have not.

Those Mech lists are fine.......but if those guns arent working vs a melee based army the mech heavy armies usually have a hard time. Now that doesnt mean the melee armies have an easy time cracking transports, but usually those transport heavy armies are no threat in melee. Stelek was playing at NOVAcon and none of the missions were KP. Without KP people are encouraged to run the lots of small units in transports. Even with KP in play at many other tournaments...lots of small point transport units can be tough to beat if they are shooting well.

Mech can defend itself vs melee very well. Using <1"-gaps between vehicles as gun slits go more than 6" with vehicles, but stuff out, open fire, vehicles are only hit on 6s, embark , then drive back. Esp BA can do this without losing a single gun because their razor wall will shoot after cruising...

I use something similar: I take a couple of transport for my high-value units but nothing like transport-spam.

I put everything in rhinos. This play style is good against most armies, not sure how it would be against IG or tau.

I got 4 squads. x2 ten man tactical marines, an x5 man tactical marine squad, and an x5 CCW scout squad.

All are mounted. everything else is heavy armor.

Most people have a hard time cracking me as a result.