Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Here was a good battle report featuring assault vs. shooty at Vallhalla. My bud was running his Orks allied with a kid learning the game vs two Eldar players.
What happened to the Wraithknights is amusing and shows that assault can work if played right. They started videoing at the start of turn 2. The first turn involved Orks blasting forward.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd9yJEFqkME

 labmouse42 wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:
My point still stands though. Assault isn't dead, "old builds" are dead. Old books can't outshoot Tau, they can't out assault Daemons, and they can't out anything Eldar. The synergies of those three books (along with CSM and DE, tagging along) get ridiculous. Codex: Prescience may shake it up though. Now crazy combos are available for everyone!

Agreed

Except my Nids...

Relapse wrote:
Is GW purposly trying to destroy any enjoyment of 40K?

Welcome to 6th ed. competitive 40k, where its basically rock paper scissors with added Boltguns- ... sorry marker lighted guide.

To the OP, imo, if you want to play a competitive game don't pick up 40k, not trying to be nasty or horrible but as someone else has posted up on this thread the competitive scene is really bland atm with a more solid attitude in the form of rock paper scissors than former editions, my best advise would be to play it with stuff you just want to use, instead of trying to win every game or think of mean combos because they have all been found and there not very creative either just an even more cemented attitude of spamming certain units with a few pieces of wargear here and there.

If you want to test your mind in strategy, then tbh there will be other games that you will get your moneys worth out of, 40k is now just a game of random rolling dice..

Hope this helps

I don't know. I really am of a split opinion on this. I've been in some games where all it felt like was dice rolling, but I've been in others where it became fairly tactical based on where you moved and who you chose to attack and in what order. Choosing who to use as a draw and what kind of counter attackyou use, etc. I run mainly Dark Eldar and Necrons without allies, so the games can get interesting.
My bud, Rich, plays Orks with that old codex and does a very good job with them by being tactical. The last link I posted of his game against the Eldar force running the Wraithknights is a good illustration of what a tactical player can do with what is widely considered an inferior codex, and using mainly assault at that.

I feel like the Eldar player could have prevented that from happening, though. Assault seems to rely heavily on your opponent making critical movement mistakes. What if these mistakes never come?

In contrast, Taudar don't need BA to make mistakes. They just need to point and tell me which models go back in the case. See the difference?

Martel732 wrote:
I feel like the Eldar player could have prevented that from happening, though. Assault seems to rely heavily on your opponent making critical movement mistakes. What if these mistakes never come?

In contrast, Taudar don't need BA to make mistakes. They just need to point and tell me which models go back in the case. See the difference?

This is true to a good extent since most people rarely play a flawless game, The thing with Rich and players of his caliber that run asault armies is that they can immediatly capitalize on mistakes, while minimizing their own and be all over their opponent. The Orks were taking a solid beating in the first turns of the game, but they kept coming on, looking for the mistakes you talked about. That is the hallmark of a high caliber player who can make things work in the current, or any edition of this game.

The problem is eventually in a tourney you run into someone who doesn't make those mistakes. Or just shoots you off the table, giving you no chance to exploit anything. I guess that's hard to do to boyz.

Let's say I Rich is a world class player, its certainly possible. The problem is, he's not alone. And for the most part, good players run good lists (at least in the tournament scene). Rich isn't beating Andrew Gonyo, Bill Kim, Kurt Clauss, Jim Yeh, Reece Robbins, whatever, when they're running a high level list and he's running what isn't even a good Ork list.

That said, while I am on record saying the game is horribly imbalanced right now, and I stand by it. It's also the most tactical and rewarding it's ever been. If you are playing at the top of the power curve, the games are awesome. Directional combat, force multipliers, raw speed, and a bunch of other changes in 6ED have created an awesome gaming experience. My GT games with my broken ass FMC build are waaaay more fun than bringing Missile Wolves was in 5ED. And when I adjust my list at the FLGS, and run less powerful nonsense, the game is awesome.

When played between relatively even Armies, the game has never been better. I actually love the 6ED rule set, I just hate the codex balancing in the game right now.

"When played between relatively even Armies, the game has never been better."

I actually completely agree with this. But getting the relatively even armies is very difficult in general. Maybe tournaments should hand out pregenerated lists as well as tables.

Martel732 wrote:
"When played between relatively even Armies, the game has never been better."

I actually completely agree with this. But getting the relatively even armies is very difficult in general. Maybe tournaments should hand out pregenerated lists as well as tables.

Shrug. When I play with friends we tend to match Armies. When I play in a tournament I mollywhomp my first opponent and then play a bunch of great games.

Martel732 wrote:
The problem is eventually in a tourney you run into someone who doesn't make those mistakes. Or just shoots you off the table, giving you no chance to exploit anything. I guess that's hard to do to boyz.

Yep it's a good point you present and I can't argue that it never happens, but I'll say it's not every tournament do you find people that make zero mistakes. A lot of top players speak of games that they might have played differently.

Relapse wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The problem is eventually in a tourney you run into someone who doesn't make those mistakes. Or just shoots you off the table, giving you no chance to exploit anything. I guess that's hard to do to boyz.

Yep it's a good point you present and I can't argue that it never happens, but I'll say it's not every tournament do you find people that make zero mistakes. A lot of top players speak of games that they might have played differently.

I'm assuming the assault list makes a few mistakes as well. Shooting lists are more forgiving in that a wrong move might mean some lost shooting, but a wrong move with assault means you eat another entire TURN of shooting.

 anonymou5 wrote:
Let's say I Rich is a world class player, its certainly possible. The problem is, he's not alone. And for the most part, good players run good lists (at least in the tournament scene). Rich isn't beating Andrew Gonyo, Bill Kim, Kurt Clauss, Jim Yeh, Reece Robbins, whatever, when they're running a high level list and he's running what isn't even a good Ork list.

That said, while I am on record saying the game is horribly imbalanced right now, and I stand by it. It's also the most tactical and rewarding it's ever been. If you are playing at the top of the power curve, the games are awesome. Directional combat, force multipliers, raw speed, and a bunch of other changes in 6ED have created an awesome gaming experience. My GT games with my broken ass FMC build are waaaay more fun than bringing Missile Wolves was in 5ED. And when I adjust my list at the FLGS, and run less powerful nonsense, the game is awesome.

When played between relatively even Armies, the game has never been better. I actually love the 6ED rule set, I just hate the codex balancing in the game right now.

I'll just say that the Ork lists he runs on these videos are his sit back and have some fun type lists, not destroy his opponent ones like he would take to a tournament if family and work responsibilities allowed him to still play in them.
Even with what is called an inferior Ork list, he took on an Eldar army with three Wraith Knights and beat it. He gets his butt handed to him from time to time, but using his assault army he is far more in the win column.
It will be interesting if the game swings back to favoring assault more in the next edition and what a new Ork codex will bring to get them in line with what is going on now.

I actually wish I could take on Eldar with three wraithknights. They're something Mephiston can still kill.

Martel732 wrote:
I actually wish I could take on Eldar with three wraithknights. They're something Mephiston can still kill.

There's an exalt in here somewhere.

Seriously, I was chasing around wave serpents with Mephy and ASM getting shot to pieces until I dumped them and started using them as counts-as-marines, but I lack a ton of vanilla models. So I'm kinda stuck in a $350 abyss. It's just not worth it to me right now.

I'd like to weigh one little subject in from my own experience; Mech in general is a lot weaker than it used to be, but I find AV14 heavy armies do quite well.

I often run Forgeworld's Armoured battlegroup allied to my guard, but similar levels of armour are available otherwise. While Daemons eat tanks for breakfast due to insane movement, good invulns for everyone, can't be broken by shooting, the warp storm and low points costs, the competitive Tau and Eldar lists I've fought on occassion (my own group is not very competetitive, outside of a few players) just get plastered by tanks.

When people think of AV 14, they often think of the Land Raider, which is not a good unit at present; most of the top tier armies have fantastic close-range AT weapons; melta, haywire, etc. Land Raiders, in their role as transports, want to get close, and thus rarely survive games in my experience. The Leman Russ Battletank, however, is in its prime right now. The only armies I tend to lose them to are Daemons and Tyranids (oddly enough); everyone else tends to flail and die under massed armoured firepower, unable to bring their guns into range to reliably kill of my tanks. Usually a fire dragon or two might get close enough to pop one, but in the mean time, the Serpents are dead, their infantry are hiding in cover or dead, and their forces scattered.

I've had great success with tank-centric Guard against most TAC style lists.

Interesting. I've often wondered why the IG aren't doing better in a shooty edition.

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. I've often wondered why the IG aren't doing better in a shooty edition.

It comes down to force composition; most people are still hung up on 5th edition lists, which were awesome then, and good for a while in 6th, but mechvets/aircav really doesn't hold up against the top tier armies very well anymore. I've seen some pretty unconventional lists do rather well, my own Leman Russ Road Party being one of them. Hell, I've seen power axe blobs do quite well; a lot of these top tier armies excel at killing small, elite units, but neither Eldar nor Tau excel at volume of fire or blast templates. A blob backed by some heavy hitters firing from beyond their range can knock out the most dangerous units to that blob, and if properly supported (particularly by using some allied characters) it can really mulch those armies at close range.

 MajorStoffer wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. I've often wondered why the IG aren't doing better in a shooty edition.

but neither Eldar nor Tau excel at volume of fire

… Lost me there. A bog standard Serpeant list is dropping roughly 80 wounds a turn. Assuming your blob has DA support (4++), that's 40 Guardsmen before you leave your deployment zone

I could see AV14 Leman Russ wall working against Tau, for sure, although I'm not sure how you're killing the Riptides before they punch your tanks in the face. But good Eldar lists have plenty of tools for AV14. And as you said yourself, Daemons are going to munch a Leman Russ wall.

Now a power blob with Tiggy and an Inquisitor? I could see that working. 4++ and deep striking onto a servo skull. Rad Grenades to make those flash lights really hurt. Psycho grenades to ensure you kill anything you touch.