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Greetings and salutations Dakkanauts!

I've got to the stage in my life when I can afford to buy more stuff and have a little more free time to paint/model. With Christmas coming up I thought it would be a good time start a new army, ya know, New Year New Stuff Syndrome!

Anyways, I've always thought that the DKoK stuff is fantastic, I like the fluff but more importantly the minis themselves are just awesome. So full of character and grit. So, I'm gonna buy myself a couple of 10 man squads and the Command squad for Christmas. This seems like a solid start and because they will be more of a 'show' army, they will take me 4-6 months to model up and paint to the best of my ability. However, I will want to game with them eventually, and this is the problem I have. I still haven't played a game of 6th and although I have the rule book I still haven't read it....

So my question is this, can DKoK be competitive and if they can what's the best build to go for? I know this sounds like a noobish question, and I'm far from a noob, but as stated, 6th is still a mystery to me!

Thanks for any help you can bring to the party Dakka!

* edited twice because of fething predictive text on my stupid iPhone...

Well, I certainly think that any army in the right hands can be competitive. But if you are having troubles, then you can run them as vanilla guard. As for a decent Dkok list, just play them with lots of artillery and engineers. Unfortunately if you are playing for competitiveness, then you may not be able to use your favourite models. For example the Quatermaster simply is no longer worth it in 6th. But as a fellow Death Korp player, good luck with your army!

-orange

Cheers orange, just the sort of stuff I was looking for! It's a shame about the Quatermaster, it's such a nice mini, although I'll probably buy one just for show. So lots of Artillery is the way to go huh?
Im also going to model a WW1 style table with lots of trenches and redoubts..

Definitely... For some great inspiration, I would seriously recommend having a look at this.

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?251322-Death-Korps-of-Krieg-Muddy-Times

That is a great plog, seriously inspirational! Thanks orange, big help. I'll be posting my exploits here on Dakka when the minis arrive! Thanks again orange....

Unfortunately the actual DKoK list is pretty weak now that 6th killed assault blobs, but you can always use the models with the standard Codex:IG list and have a powerful army. And while you might not get all of the special DKoK units, the best ones (drills, artillery) are also available to codex armies.

I don't know, I think that DKOK assault blobs are actually still viable.They all get stubborn (sort of) and have higher base WS. I'm not saying it is great, just that if any Guard army can manage to do assault blobs it is the DKOK.

largely the currently strengths of the DKoK army list is the artillery. Lots of T7 W2 3+sv guns spitting out S6 AP4 Ordnance Blasts and W4 Earthshaker platforms is going to be rather difficult for many armies to deal with.

However, unfortunately many of the more interesting units are (and even more unfortunately, always have been) rather poor, such as Death Riders, Grenadiers, etc.

 Trickstick wrote:
I don't know, I think that DKOK assault blobs are actually still viable.They all get stubborn (sort of) and have higher base WS. I'm not saying it is great, just that if any Guard army can manage to do assault blobs it is the DKOK.

The problem is that they used to be awesome because of hidden powerfists. You got a codex assault blob, except with WS 4 and your sergeants got power fists instead of just power weapons (no drawback when you're only I3 anyway). You had some pretty good killing power, and 20-40 meatshield wounds that had to die before your opponent could even attempt to stop the power fists from swinging.

All of that is just gone in 6th thanks to the new wound allocation rules. You take shooting casualties from the front, then in the assault phase you have to choose between putting the fists up front and getting them killed immediately, or put them safely in the back where they don't get to attack. End result: the blob loses a lot of its killing power, and is no longer a viable strategy.

 Vaktathi wrote:
largely the currently strengths of the DKoK army list is the artillery. Lots of T7 W2 3+sv guns spitting out S6 AP4 Ordnance Blasts and W4 Earthshaker platforms is going to be rather difficult for many armies to deal with.

Of course since you can take those exact same units (well, except for meaningless WS 4 on the crew) in a Codex:IG list that's not a very impressive strength. The only unique DKoK units that other IG armies don't also get are the terrible ones.

They probably can, as long as they are allowed...

 sarpedons-right-hand wrote:
Im also going to model a WW1 style table with lots of trenches and redoubts..

In that case, check out this blog. Awesome for WWI trench boards.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
They probably can, as long as they are allowed...

This^ which varies. I don't know any tournaments in my area (im assuming you mean tourney play when you say competitive) That allow FW rules, so you can have the models as long as they fit the IG codex. I also don't know of any GTs that do either. There are discussions, but thats another thread.

FW inclusion in tournaments is increasing, but largely depends on your local scene. A lot of US west coast and southern events are allowing FW stuff now to varying degrees, especially larger events, but east coast and UK events (at least, from what I can tell) are being slower on the uptake.

 Peregrine wrote:

The problem is that they used to be awesome because of hidden powerfists. You got a codex assault blob, except with WS 4 and your sergeants got power fists instead of just power weapons (no drawback when you're only I3 anyway). You had some pretty good killing power, and 20-40 meatshield wounds that had to die before your opponent could even attempt to stop the power fists from swinging.

All of that is just gone in 6th thanks to the new wound allocation rules. You take shooting casualties from the front, then in the assault phase you have to choose between putting the fists up front and getting them killed immediately, or put them safely in the back where they don't get to attack. End result: the blob loses a lot of its killing power, and is no longer a viable strategy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the power fist move in at his initiative step? so would he pile in last, or the same as usual?

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the power fist move in at his initiative step? so would he pile in last, or the same as usual?

At I1. But that won't save the fist, since blob squads could easily take 10-20 casualties in a single round of combat, enough to reach the fists if they're within range to pile in. It only worked in 5th because you could take all of your casualties from the back of the unit, even from models that were not engaged in combat.