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Monster Rain wrote:I see a pretty good mix around these parts.

I don't know where all these 100% mech gaming stores and clubs are, but it must be brutal.

Same here. Other than Speed Freek Orks (and I only know one player that fields this) I don't really see any fully mech armies.

The one exception was when I watched a match between Airborne IG against Space Marines, and the IG were walloped pretty badly.

Cryonicleech wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:Infantry Guard armies would like to have a word with you.

As would Green Tide and Tyranids

And Deathwing, Logan Wing, Deffwing (kinda) and Templarwing. Or the Black Tide, but it's not overly competitive...

It's a local environment thing, especially if your local crew doesn't maintain the rulebook mission ratio. If you play less than 1/3 KP missions, and/or if your store defaults to 5 objectives rather than 3 or 4 or rolling, then mechanized MSU lists get more powerful.

If you maintain the ratios, foot/horde lists tend to be reasonably-well represented, and even when the ratio is skewed, as long as there's at least one KP mission per tournament, a well-built horde list like Straken IG will be very powerful and abuse most mech armies. IMO the bigger factor causing you to see more mech lists is that they paint and play faster than lists full of infantry.

5th did see the GW design pendulum swing hard, though, with transports getting more forgiving rules and lower point costs at the same time. The same pendulum swing in the opposite direction in 4th, with units losing the ability to drive up in a non-open-topped transport, hop out, and still assault like they could in 3rd, and nastier damage tables; plus the Entangled rule. 3rd edition was even more full of mech armies than 5th is, as there was no KP so there was literally no downside to it.

I love your sig on Lady Average.

Do I miss non-mech armies?

Guard- Rarely :p i have soo many pieplates I can't miss..
Marines- Ditto, with less pieplates, and more bolter/missle spam
Eldar- Nightspinner- MY orks hate these...

In all seriousness, no.

I run Necrons (who really can't mech much (and even if you do take 3 Monoliths for some wierd reason you can't hide troops inside them).

I also run Orks, in several flavors. Meched up loses in favour of dreadbash, which loses in favor of green tide

It would be nice to see a nicely painted CSM/Marine/Guard army where they are all on the board, not in a tray off to the side, but t doesn't bother me too much.

Personally? I started the game with a mechanized army, back when mechanized IG were one of the great laughing stocks of 40k, not the unholy face crusher many see them as now. I've always liked the look and feel of mechanized armies, and it makes sense that many armies in this game universe would routinely be mechanized. Mechanized armies look very cool and intimidating.

Mechanization also adds a nice double-layer to the game, requiring players to have more balanced army lists that can't just load up on one type of weapon or another, you need to be able to deal with tanks *AND* infantry. It also means that, as an IG player, I can't just shoot the piss out of an enemy army from the beginning, I have to deal with the transports first, making gameplay more challenging and a little less straightforward.

Are footslogging armies perhaps for some factions a bit too penalized? possibly. However the only thing I'd like to see done to transports currently is make Explodes results more dangerous for everything involved (both unembarked and outside). Make explosions scary, maybe something like an Init test or be killed or something. Aside from that, I'd rather see unembarked units be more able to interact with the battlefield (e.g. digging in, preparing minefields, standing to repel, etc) than see transports nerfed.

Vaktathi wrote: (e.g. digging in, preparing minefields, standing to repel, etc) than see transports nerfed.

Stand and shoot?

I agree with you about the explosions though. They need to be more punishing (higher strength/force every model to take an armour save ect), especially from the units inside. 10 Marines shouldn't just walk out of a Rhino that's been blown into shrapnel.

'Make explosions scary, maybe something like an Init test or be killed or something'

No thanks! My orks would get out of vehicles like the spartans on Halo. You hear a missile launch from the other side of the map, hit the exit vehicle button with five seconds before the missile hits, from an open-topped buggy..

AAAnd the missile blows you sky high before you jump free :(


Whereas Marines and Mork forbid Eldar of either stripe would waltz out of the wreckage barely touched.

Perhaps base ther boom on the armour of the vehicle, with modifyyers for open topped vs not, skimmer vs not etc...

I don't think the vehichle explosions should ignore Armour saves (otherwise Termies in Land Raider simply become a walking catastrophie waiting to happen), but there should definitely be a bigger impact than taking a strength 4 hit. It's not like the vehichle has crashed or anything, it's exploded into a fountain of debris.

I agree EF. So many marines just walking out of their exploded metal boxes without even a scratch on their armour. Should be S4 on the outside as well.

ChrisWWII wrote:Mech Spam? I run infantry swarm IG, and, in all honesty, yeah I spam tanks...but that's cause I am a total threadhead. Tanks tanks tanks tanks....and, you know what? My tanks don't do that well, simply because, since everyone is meched out, everyone has hordes of AT weapons.

I always try to run what I call 'classsic Guard', infantry platoons mixed with heavy armor in support. It's a very nice army to look at, it's fluffy, and it's decently competitive....what more could a player ask for?

Ditto. Classic Guard; nicely put, sir. Nicely put.

n0t_u wrote:I agree EF. So many marines just walking out of their exploded metal boxes without even a scratch on their armour. Should be S4 on the outside as well.

I'm starting to think it should be S6 AP6. You transport just exploded with you in it. Should be more devastating.

I agree. More devastating. However, remember, the vehicle destroyed result (5, not the 6 that mean its been utterly destroyed) might not nessarily mean that its been blown to kingdom come.

It might just have sustained enough damage to make the vehicle/tank 'combat ineffective'...but to work that out, we'd have to make the vehicle damage sequence more complicated, and slow the game down.

Heck, lets just mutiny GW, and all go back to 2nd Ed. Whos with me???

The vehicle damage chart seems pretty balanced to me. Besides, doesn't the infantry just take damage when it explodes, and not wrecked?

Yes, but the damage from the explosion is fairly pathetic and almost non-existent against marines and their equivalents.

If it was something like S5 inside, but everyone has to take an armour save (in order for it to take into account not only bulky armour but the more lightly armoured guys diving out at the last second) and S4 on the outside it would probably be a bit better. Even that is being a little generous as it should probably be S6 inside, S5 outside.

n0t_u wrote:Yes, but the damage from the explosion is fairly pathetic and almost non-existent against marines and their equivalents.

If it was something like S5 inside, but everyone has to take an armour save (in order for it to take into account not only bulky armour but the more lightly armoured guys diving out at the last second) and S4 on the outside it would probably be a bit better. Even that is being a little generous as it should probably be S6 inside, S5 outside.

Yeah that sounds better IMO. I like the way GW has made the game more fluid since 2nd Ed., but in the process, I think that it has gotten a little 'idiot proof'.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
...And a prime example of this is the way vehicles work.

I just think they swung the pendulum for transports a bit too far when they went from 4th to 5th.

At least Daemons don't have transports. Of course, they just deepstrike out the ass.

I do wish that my FWs had some use besides making DF a scoring tank, and I have so many of them just being useless.

I loved the idea that it was all infantry fighting from cover, and moving round through cover n stuff so they dont get shot up. Sadly when I tried thtis with my friend and my nearly all infantry army, He just sat 70'' and shelled me into oblivion

That's sort of the problem with footslogging armies. Tends to devolve into trench warfare and the like. My personal opinion on the matter is that transports good and all, but there should be a greater risk involved.

My Chaos army is a foot slogging one, whilst I might not win a lot because i'm still learning, I really enjoy it the way it is. I haven't come across many mech armies myself personally. There seems to be more balanced than anything else. I only tend to play at my flgs though, so maybe that's why.

I play traditional footslogging orks, there will be vehicles in my army, but these will consist of killa kanz and a looted wagon with boomgun (read walking artillery spider tank thing). I have every game except one but I don't care!

I love big units of boyz, running behind big units of stormboyz, ignore the objectives, ignore the terrain, just pulverise the enemy with boots and choppas!

It is a shame that everyone plays mechanised lists now, I want variety! not 'keep my pk safe unit charge range' that I now have to do every game...

Most of the people I play with use footsloggers alot. I tend to use mechanized squads mostly as a "flanking" force, usually dedicated to close combat and some fast attack backup.

I think the only "mechanized" lists I have a real problem with are the bland, spammy lists where you see 7+ of the same kind of dedicated transport, at the expense of everything else in the list, to the point of bare bones squads and HQs. Below that point, I think most armies can bring enough anti-tank firepower to the table where a moderately mechanized army isn't an issue.

Besides, non-mechanized armies are making a comback, at least somewhat. It is my experience that DoA armies are the most popular from the Blood Angels codex. This build achieves mobility from large of Jump Infantry.

Also, Tyranids, despite not actually having any transports (excepting the Mycetic Spore), seem to do fairly well with their Monstrous Creature lists.

Perhaps bringing back a modified version of the 'Vehicle Annhilated' result would also be good? Just stack it on top of the standard vehicle damage chart, so if you roll a 6 with a melta gun or other AP1 weapon the explosion becomes something like S6 AP3. Seriously, as long as the explosion is not AP3, Marines are going to continue to hop out of their Rhinos unscathe. Then again, you could argue that this makes sense......but yeah, explosions should at least be AP5. As a Guard player this hurts me, but I don't think my Guardsmen should just be waltzing away from an explosion.

I'm not sure if it was completely 5th Edition's fault everyone went Mech.

The Lash of Submission seemed to single handedly make everyone at my local gaming store put all of their units into vehicles. I imagine that the same is true in a lot of places.

Probably, my first game of 40k was against Chaos Marines, and after the Lash tore apart my firing line, my first thought was 'I need some Chimeras...'

I've always been a fan of massive amounts of infantry and walkers.

Hence why I play Kan Wall

But I've never known non mech lists as I started in 5th edition.

Nothing wrong with mech.

Also, I'd argue that two of the most powerful lists in the game are non-mech: SM biker and IG horde. Yes, you can't make a good army out of just tac, assault, and dev marines... get over it.