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Wuestenfux: Dont forget that BA assault's can drop thier packs and get a 35 point discount on a dedicated transport

That tournament didn't use KP's.

Sure, lists like this can be very competitive even with KP's, but when you exchange KP's with VP's, which also benefits MSU armies, it's no wonder that MSU lists dominated the tournament.

i think mech guard is awesome personally but as it is a predictable tourney choice its easy to build a list to combat it (melta heavy, deep striking, reserve everything)
what would the original photo deployment do against a couple of drop pod'd melta heavy dreads, combined with some ordital bombardments? or 3 vendettas firing 9 twin linked lascannons while a manticore fires off it strength 10 payloads? or how about a couple of stormravens firing 8 missiles while dante and sanguinary guard deepstrike within 2 inches with meltas at the ready.

NovaCon was not played mainly with kill points.
I wonder if those high-ranked mech armies (SW and BA Razorback spam) played at NovaCon would have looked differently if KP would have played a main role.
Lots of cheap and paper-thin steel coffins.

Transports, tanks and monstrous creatures add strategy to the game by forcing opponents to prepare lists that don't just focus on killing infantry so I support them. The people at my FLGS that seem to complain about 5th ed mech the most have armies that were awesome in 4th ed and don't want to spend any more money. All I can say to that is its foolish to expect that most powerful lists will survive an edition change as one of the main reasons why GW does them is to force you to buy new models. I'm sure when 6th ed comes out there will be plenty of new things for every army to buy to stay competitive and many things we rely on now will be underpowered and need to be dropped from our lists or have there weapons load outs change.

cromwest wrote:Transports, tanks and monstrous creatures add strategy to the game by forcing opponents to prepare lists that don't just focus on killing infantry so I support them.

I agree in principle, but right now, you've got the opposite problem - lists need to be prepared basically with killing mech in mind. There should be a happy medium somewhere.

personally i think the happy medium is here now. once you have cracked open the metal coffin, something usually comes out..... usually a squad with a melta or 2 or a powerfist to return the favour. lets be honest if it was real world troops would not be walking across a battlefield so plenty of cheap transports is only right, and again if you look at todays wars a good shot from a rocket launcher and the troops have are down one transport... if anything to be more realistic we should perhaps see more troops wounded in 40k from the damage taken to the transport.

yeah embarked troops should have to take wounds on the strength of the weapon that exploded it.
or
take away armour saves from the guys inside.

That is pretty much how anyone plays marines these days.

Does a Drop Pod army count as Infantry or Mechanized?

Nurglitch wrote:Does a Drop Pod army count as Infantry or Mechanized?

I'd say Infantry. Sure, you'll precisely land your guys where you want them to be but you'll be on foot for the rest of the game.

skkipper wrote:yeah embarked troops should have to take wounds on the strength of the weapon that exploded it.
or
take away armour saves from the guys inside.

The problem with this idea is that mechanized non-space marines will be even worse off than they are now when their vehicle is wrecked. "Death trap" troop transports are, thankfully, a thing of the past for the most part, but are still quite dangerous to non-MEQ models inside, which is probably about how it should be.

I agree with fox40. There is currently a "happy medium" in 40k currently.

SW foot-and-cav does quite well.

BA jump-infantry-with-FNP-and-FC does really well.

IG Blobs do well, at least one some roles.

Nids do well, and cannot be mech.

Daemons do well and cannot be mech.

SM bikes-as-troops is a very viable way to play them and are not mech.

In addition to these army types, the mechanized versions of the armies that are capable of running them do well too.

I play Eldar. Mech is, sadly, our only tourney-level competitive list (unless you're Blackmoor).

I disagree. I've been very successful with a hybrid 1850 Eldar list for the past 6 months. 3 foot squads and 4 mounted squads (3 of which are in falcons which act as long range anti tank). Out of 16 players through 5 LGS tournaments I've not placed worse than 4th in addition to doing well in games that were not part of the tournaments (you can argue that all my opponents are poor, sure, but I'll get some experience in a new city soon to counter that).

There is one problem that mech Eldar has. Though, yes, their transports are resilient, if they die the player is in a lot of trouble due to the necessary nature of most Eldar squads (hard to lose a dragon squad when you only have 2, or 1 in my case).

Though mech is powerful, I don't think it is as strong as people think. It starts to lack numbers and ability to kill hordes (my LGS owner plays horde orks quite well), along with elite troops (termies and the like). In a heavily meched army (marine or Iguard) you start to rely solely on meltas and las cannons. While powerful, they again lack number of shots and ability to focus fire (tanks eventually start getting in your way). Also it isn't quite fun to play as or against because it's so straightforward and repetitive.

Well, my main army right now is necrons. So I don't have transports. But when I play my SW, I use transports so I can get closer to the enemies, not so I can sit back the whole game.

Razor spam, sure you won. But did ANYONE actually have fun?

Something that I've found is that it's much harder to shut down the firepower of infantry units, whereas even a Shaken result will stop a vehicle from shooting, and stop its passengers from shooting until they pop their heads up and expose themselves. Immobilize them and you hit them automatically (or one WSvsWS if Walkers). Stun them, and you get both, so they're sitting ducks. It's really the Weapon Destroyed that you don't want because the bloody things are often loaded down with weapons. In fact if you want your vehicle to survive better, it's often a good idea to hang a stormbolter or what-have-you off the side. It kind of strange to me that you can wear a vehicle down with Immobilized and Weapon Destroyed results in this edition, and yet people keep closing to use Melta Guns on Rhinos

I think that the internet meta-game has gone ape-poop for vehicles because it's correlated anti-tank weapons such as the Melta Gun with vehicle destruction at the expense of traditional light anti-vehicle weapons like Plasma Guns, Autocannons, Heavy Bolters, and so on.

and yet people keep closing to use Melta Guns on Rhinos

2 reasons. 1, no one has any patience, so when they attack it must kill something or it wasn't worth it. 2, many people are overawed by AP1. Yes it's great, but you really don't need it, especially when the main weapons that have it require you to be within 12" of your target.

Now heavy bolters are one weapon that I wouldn't recommend for light anti tank duty (even light AV10 vehicles). It just isn't reliable enough, especially considering its cost and relative lack of anti infantry ability. Plasma and Autocannons I think should be used more though (especially plasma. I like plasma).

I agree that Plasma Guns and Autocannons are better, particularly Autocannons, but Space Marine Tactical Squads can't have those, I've been trying to play WYSIWIG and put my Heavy Bolters to some use while my Missile Launchers are mainly in my Devastator squads.

Usually I think of AV10-AV11 as "anti-vehicle", AV12 as "light-anti-tank" and AV13-14 as "anti-tank".

The reason why people want to melta gun rhinos is that among all weapons melta weapons are the *most reliable* so it makes planning the actions you'll take on your own turn more reliable.

Though, yes, more reliable, they are easier to stop. Also most squads have 1-2 meltas at most, and with a 3+ to hit I don't define that as reliable. The advantage of missiles and las cannons is that they get multiple turns of fire against enemy vehicles to stop them and do not need to put themselves in harms way of enemy short ranged shooting. On devastators and the like it also means that they are unable to be stunned/shaken.

I really think that foot lists are viable (mobility is something to be overcome, but this can be done so through drop pods, jump infantry, bikes and so on), except less so for Eldar. Limited ranged anti-tank is further limited when you limit to an infantry based army (guardians and reapers are the only infantry that can take ranged anti tank guns).

Ail-Shan wrote:Though, yes, more reliable, they are easier to stop. Also most squads have 1-2 meltas at most, and with a 3+ to hit I don't define that as reliable. The advantage of missiles and las cannons is that they get multiple turns of fire against enemy vehicles to stop them and do not need to put themselves in harms way of enemy short ranged shooting. On devastators and the like it also means that they are unable to be stunned/shaken.

I really think that foot lists are viable (mobility is something to be overcome, but this can be done so through drop pods, jump infantry, bikes and so on), except less so for Eldar. Limited ranged anti-tank is further limited when you limit to an infantry based army (guardians and reapers are the only infantry that can take ranged anti tank guns).

Fire Dragons, melta vets, stern guard with combi meltas, chaos terminators with combi meltas, CSM squads with 2 meltas and a combi melta, BA assault squads with two melta guns and an inferno pistol, chosen, BA honor guard, SM bike squadrons, there are really lots of units in the game with both melta weapons, and with 3+ melta weapons per unit. Hell, with Vulkan in a marine army 2 melta weapons (melta gun and a combi-melta in a tac squad) become pretty damned reliable.

Trust me, I like long-ranged anti-tank support as much as the next guy, but when the BA player has driven rhinos full of death company 18" straight at your doorstep, well, to be honest melta guns don't work so hot there either, but your lascannons have even less of a chance.

Combi meltas are one shot. Yes they are still melta guns, but if there's more than one vehicle you can't just rely on combi meltas.

More of the point is that being short ranged it is easier to avoid. If your opponent only has 3 squads with melta guns, and you have 5 tanks, each of those meltas not only has to kill a tank, but has to survive. Now the way people get around this is having more units with meltas, and so we are back at the point where you are opening rhinos with meltas because they are so reliable.

I am in no way doubting or down playing the ability of the melta gun. It is a very powerful weapon. However when that is all (or virtually all) you have for anti-tank you start running into trouble when your opponent can get away from you (Eldar mainly). Against MCs it also is not an ideal choice because if you are in range to hit the MC, you better kill it or your squad probably dies next turn. The melta is a good weapon, but making it your sole anti-tank weapon is a poor decision. That's why at 1850 I only run 1 squad of dragons and Fuegan for a total of 6 meltas. Mech has been my easiest opponent.

Nurglitch wrote:

I think that the internet meta-game has gone ape-poop for vehicles because it's correlated anti-tank weapons such as the Melta Gun with vehicle destruction at the expense of traditional light anti-vehicle weapons like Plasma Guns, Autocannons, Heavy Bolters, and so on.

Yeah most people who rely solely on melta to deal with anti tank have a tough time dealing with my mech marines because there are simply too many things to shoot at and i have a massive range advantage plus mobility. I have enough auto-cannons, missile launchers and lascannons to demech anyone who tries to speed up in a rihno to melta me. My buddy who plays SW recently started going heavy on the long fangs instead of relying on several rhinos with two meltas each and our games have gotten much closer. Melta maybe the answer to a couple of AV 14 in a list with few tanks but when some one spams lightly or medium armored tanks melta falls short and traditional anti-vehicle weapons start to shine.

I play hybrid mech/gunline for my tau. 3 Fusion/Melta in whole army, plus shadowsun at 3k.

But I agree Melta does what it does but is a poor choice for transports, because what ever gets out eats the squad with meltas.

I spam Missile pods 15, plus one Ion Cannon , 3 Broadsides, and one rail head. plus some random plasma tossed in, shuts down the mech before it hits my lines. Longer range fire vs shorter range allows non assault based armies to win.

I've been looking at my BA building, I'm mainly going Dread spam + DC, with some Land speeders or attack bikes for Long range anti tank.

Well... that depends. If your Grey Hunters melta gun a rhino, they're going to be quite resilient to whatever comes out of the rhino.

If some guardsmen melta gun a rhino, then they're likely to get eaten by the unit that comes out, if the rest of your army can't kill it.

Well, guardsmen are cheap!

I don't think losing a few is gonna hurt in the grand scheme of things.

I miss entanglement.... it actually put vehicles on a balance. There should be a balance but it's been thrown out the window 5th ed. Mech is like playing in Carebear mode IMO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Esp. if the reaction to a rhino dying is: "even Better", "cool, 4+ cover", "new Bottle neck", "oh look, it dead and I still get essentailly 3" extra move out of it.", etc. etc.

There is no down side, costs have actually gone down as well, Escalation is gone and its replacement (dawn of war) is pretty rhino friendly, and as said the loss of Entanglement.

It has solved GW's issue of, how do we make more money...ans: boost mech.

Sanctjud, you're right about the GW's shift to significantly improve mech lists.
I guess the next incarnation of the game will see a shift into another direction for money issues.