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Now I see lots of folks talking about the shooting phase, overwatch, assault is weak and that hasn't changed much since 6th dropped, but is it time that we looked at assault and it's meta game?

Assault Seems to be an afterthought now so would a full assault army change the game?
I speak as a chaos and demons user with an infiltration flamer list and I sense it's a real game changer.

By going for turn 2 and 3 assaults with most of my force it saves me from shooting, creates some line of sight blocking combats and cripples any list that has firepower as it's primary tactic.

As an example I use hurion to infiltrate up to 3 units, 2 FMC s and bikes along with any demons I opt to deep strike. This gives me a bunch of units to threaten with on turn 2.

So should we be looking at assault again?
I feel like shooting got better, but assault is still great and if your opponent can't deal with it, well I think you know the rest.

What does dakka think about playing to assault?

Assaults are still viable, overwatch isn't that great. The problem is with the missions you end up having to slit your force and leave some elements back to keep objectives and the assault bit is tamed by having to have troops role up behind to capture objectives. If you don't have enough troops the enemy focuses on them and you lose.

Huron is good, better if he is used to infiltrate meganobz in truks for a turn 2 assault (I keep forgetting infiltrated troops can't assault first turn). The trukk takes a units shooting before it gets knocked out and keeps the nobz safe. Ideally you could infiltrate two trukks of mega-nob allies and one of just ork allies! Infiltrating non-assault vehicles is a bit lame.

I see your point about objectives. I'll need to think aboutthat.

I was actually infiltrating chosen with flamers in a rhino for a 1st turn cover buster style unit.
If the dirge caster survives, all the better, if not it wasn't doing much and the chosen are still a threat. But ether way it's a nasty turn 1 threat that gives me some target saturation and can put a nasty dent in the front lines.
I'll call it a bonus if I get a chance to ram any light transports.

Good point about the flamers I tend to overlook them.
I do like the idea of a rhino (+dirge caster) rush with bikes / spawn / maulerfiends mixed into it so that the turn the contents are getting out and shooting the bikes/spawn/mauler is then assaulting in that turns phase. As I play orks and CSM I can throw cheap trukks into the mix to beef up any initial assault. I also play Huron in larger games and I do like chosen so I'm going to have a think about flamer rhinos.

Leaving a troop behing is not necessarily a problem, CSMs or troop noise marines manning a ADL and quadgun! At a push you can throw cultists into a rhino and hide it.

Shooting got better, which led to people overreacting and saying assault is altogether dead. Overwatch accounts for precious little (aside from a lucky shot here and there) and even my 30-man Guard blobs don't deter many (if any) charges with it. Some things did get worse for assault armies (Nobs/sergeants are no longer hidden thanks to challenges, casualties from the front, no assault out of outflank, etc.) and some builds (powerblobs) were hit pretty hard, but assault is by no stretch dead. It's just different, which terrifies some of the more overreaction-prone posters here and on other forums.

I like the idea of orks for some hoard threat so early on. But I can't help but love those khorne demons hitting a turn 2 assault and if the dark God's allow spawning more demons.
Which I would, almost ironically, use my pink horrors for just to increase the threat bubble even more.

Most of my force actually uses flamers, I figured having them was the best option since 6th feels quite "hide and shoot from cover". Negating that just seemed sensible for assault forces.

DonerStoom wrote:
creates some line of sight blocking combats

Who with the what now? Melee doesn't block LoS.

Assault is not weak. Its weaker than shooting, but its not weak.

Um, Orks...

Assault has not failed them yet, or rather, they have not failed to successfully assault anything yet.

My BikerBoss and his Nob Biker retinue carved a figure 8 through a BA armored company last week, end to end of the table incl 2 land raiders 2 assault squads and a librarian.

Meanwhile my BW's got blown to bits, but the remaining 10 Boyz in each unit managed to each destroy a Baal pred and Razorback on their own.

Really, casualties from the front, and units with a lot of template weapons have been the only hindrance to my Orks, but there's more than enough ways around that (directional casualties cuts both ways don't forget).

Well the list Im going to be playing most for the next few weeks is a mono-khorne daemon army so I think assault is still viable.

I just have to get to combat as fast as possible and I plan to do this with crushers and hounds, the troops can then ds in for backup.


If your going to go assault dont do it halfhearted otherwise you wont have enough guys to win combats, also helps to have several high threat targets to make target selection harder.

The short answer is yes.

Take Tau for instance, they've got some of the best guns in the game, and they expect to be able to use them. But they can't take out all the units in your army at once.
If you were to suddenly DS/infiltrate a crud-ton of melee units within assault range of them, they'd not be able to stop you.

One massacre later, chaos wins

Not quite sure where you're getting your info, but assault never died, it just wasn't the easy mode way to win that it was in 5th, now you can choose and still have the same chance of winning.

 juraigamer wrote:
Not quite sure where you're getting your info, but assault never died, it just wasn't the easy mode way to win that it was in 5th, now you can choose and still have the same chance of winning.

Even in 5.edition assault was inferior to shooting. In 6. it got even worse, especialy for armies which can neither rely on toughness nor numbers to save their day (especialy Eldar, Dark Eldar).

I run a khorne CSM/CD assault army, and I've been having a pretty good string of wins. High speed and high toughness/wounds units (bikes, spawn, khorne hounds, greater deamons, etc etc) all do a lot to negate the nerfs that assault took.

I think most of the crying about assault being dead comes from the fact that assaulting is more... specialized now. Assault specialized units are still really good, but versatile jack-of-all-trades units are less good at assault.
In 5th ed, a regular unit of tactical marines with a hidden power fist was not half bad at cracking some faces in combat. In 6th, that sort of generalist unit cant really pull the same moves.

KingDeath wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:
Not quite sure where you're getting your info, but assault never died, it just wasn't the easy mode way to win that it was in 5th, now you can choose and still have the same chance of winning.

Even in 5.edition assault was inferior to shooting. In 6. it got even worse, especialy for armies which can neither rely on toughness nor numbers to save their day (especialy Eldar, Dark Eldar).

This. Anyone who thinks shooting was worse in 5th is plain wrong. All the top armies were primarily shooting armies.