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So, I was just going back over my 6th ed guard reports, and I noticed that two thirds of them were against gunlines, almost all of them mech gunlines. Furthermore, if you take out the games from one particular opponent, it jumps to nearly 3/4 of the games I play. I've been noticing of late in my FLGS as it starts getting started back up for the fall. There's a henchmen mech gunline, and a guard russ gunline, and a waveserpent spam gunline, and so on and so forth.

And, of course, I'm hardly alone in this, I know. Greycrons is a mech gunline, and there's wave serpent spam elsewhere. Tau and tautau and taudar are all gunlines, in various states of being meched. It's pretty clear from a mere surface reading that however much people might have qued about hull points, mech lists still very much are the way to go. The only thing all that different is the addition of fliers, which do, to be fair, behave SORT of like a mech gunline, and, well, regular gunlines.

I've been trying to think about how to handle this of late, and I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the only answer to mech gunlines is... well... mech gunlines. Or regular gunlines. Of course, I'm not interested in playing 40k if I have to play a gunline to avoid getting tabled, so I've been crunching my brain over the past couple of months to try and figure out what exactly is going on.

The first thing I'm noticing about facing against mech gunlines is the problem with time. Because you can't kill the guys inside a transport until you've blown up the transport, you've got to break open the transports - more or less all of them - by about the end of turn 2, and really all of them by the end of turn 3. Because if it gets to turn 4 before you break open the transport, you may have exactly one turn to even attempt to hurt the guys inside. If you can't manage it until turn 5, there might not be the chance you can even engage them at all.

This is made all the worse by the fact that once you blow up the transport, the guys inside get a free 3+ cover save if they want it, or still a cover save if they don't. This means that the fact that they were in a transport will make it take longer to kill the guys inside than if they hadn't had a transport. Whatever casualties they may or may not take from a vehicle explosion are more than mitigated by this durability advantage.

So, if you need to kill those transports, and very quickly, that means shooting them with heavy weapons in a gunline. Or, of course, you can try something that's short ranged, but also very fast. The problem with this, of course, is one of force concentration. The real mobility advantage that 6th ed gives to transports means that anything that attacks a transport is very likely going to be attacking the entire army. There's no way you're going to win a force concentration game with fast units that way. The defensive advantage is just too great.

And this is made worse by the excellent defensive firepower that transports put out nowadays. Plasma mechvets can shoot 8 BS4 plasma shots and a BS4 lascannon when you get close to them. Wave serpent shooting is pretty good, and when you get close you have to deal with a bunch of rending guys getting out. Likewise for henchmen, and trueborn, and, to a lesser extent necron ark lists. And razorbacks. And a bunch of stuff.

Which brings the time issue back in. If your fast unit is going to be able to handle a unit in a transport, they're going to get shot at by the transport and the guys inside, likely a few times, and really not survive. This means, once again, that you've got to blow up the transport BEFORE your fast units get there. Which once again brings us to gunlines. Of course, it could mean things like fliers or deepstrikers, but once again, they show up late.

And to make this all just that much more difficult transports are pretty cheap (or they're expensive, but you get a LOT from them). There's pretty much no points-efficient way of blowing up transports, which means that the harder your opponent spams transports, the WORSE you are as you spam more anti-transport weapons. This leaves you even less able to spend points to handle the guys inside with, who are usually still a potent threat in their own.

The idea of "take something to kill the transport and another thing to kill the guys inside", therefore, doesn't really work. You're assuming that the transport killer kills its transport in time, thus not leaving the unit designated to kill the guys inside to twist. You're assuming that spending hundreds of points on killing a transport and the guys inside is going to work out when your opponent has to spend dozens of points to just take more mech spam. Leaving your opponent more resources, over all, to, say, kill those things you'll use to open up his transports.

So what you need is something that can kill transports quickly enough, AND be decent against the guys inside WITHOUT serious risk of counterattack by better force concentration of your opponents' defensive units.

As best I can tell, the only thing that has anything serious to say about this - the only things that can handle the timing issue and the force concentration issue, and the efficiency issue simultaneously - is guns that you can really only find in a gunline. Because anything that can't handle the concentration issue will see you getting dismantled as your opponent forms up in a C-shape and blows you off the table, while anything that can't handle the timing issue will see elite units being wasted peeling wrappers and getting annihilated by the stuff inside, and anything that can't handle the efficiency issue will get bludgeoned in by their opponent's offensive units while they're spending all their time and points just trying to handle the transports to the exclusion of everything else.

I mean, this is a problem I've been trying to deal with (in various, less-articulated forms) since 5th edition, and 6th ed has clearly seemed to make this problem worse. It doesn't seem to be a game of rock paper scissors, and more of rock scissors scissors. I've seen enough fast armies focused down, and enough horde armies ground down by weight of fire, and enough assault armies just never really getting to do much of anything in assault against mech gunlines. Is really the only way to beat them to join them?


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Or, to put this into a more TLDR version:

In short, mech armies give a big boost to force concentration. You always have to face their whole army at once. They also create a problem with time. You have to blow up the transports before you can hurt anyone inside, which means those transports need to die very quickly. It also has an efficiency problem. It's usually cheaper to spam more stuff in transports than it is to spend points on dedicated anti-transport and dedicated anti-stuff-in-transports.

As best I can tell, the only way of handling this problem is with gunlines. Heavy support slots have a good efficiency of killing power, and with range they start attacking right away to handle the time issue. The range also means you can concentrate your firepower to match your opponent's bunching up. Meanwhile, if you can't handle the efficiency problem, you get killed by whatever else your opponent brought that isn't a transport, if you can't handle the time problem, then you might not kill the guys inside at all, and if you can't handle the concentration problem, you just get focused down.

The question, then, is there a way to handle these three problems without also bringing a gunline? They can do it, but can anything else?

Maybe changing the list building culture? A meeting about how the game could be more interesting and diverse if everyone tried to test new things and abandon the "you shall not pass" doctrine could be arranged. When people get too tuned to one thing, it blends quite hard, turning it basically natural.

Of course, it'll depend on how friendly and 'listenful' (sp?) are the players of your FLGS. If they like to win more than anything, this change would be quite hard to apply.

What in the world is your definition of a gunline? You have listed both static lists and highly mobile lists as gunlines. You even went and threw in flyers which are required to move 18" min a turn... So if you consider all of these lists and then top it with "gunlines" on foot you have asked how to table 3/4 of all armies by turn 4?

If we contain this "gunline" to the traditional definition of a line of gunman and therefore something that will not close on you from all sides. Then your overall answer is positional dominance and containment of your opponent. Jy2 shows this really well in his battle reports. This allows you to apply the real answers to transports and their contents; positioning and special/melee/heavy weapons. Notice the transports have rear armour 10 and they are all doomed if they are hit with a meltagun (even waveserpents will die if they shot their shield). A more complete answer requires specifics like what codex you want to talk about.

A few big pieces of LOS blocking terrain on the center of the field?

From the battle reports I see on the internet most people hasn't resized their terrain to fit the new Riptide/Flyer/Dreadknight/Wraithknight meta. Without terrain that actually blocks LOS this game will quickly be reduced to the question "Who has the biggest guns?"...

I'm currently looking for a new project (taking a break from guard until there is a new codex, so I am a gunline player myself) and I think I may slowly be arriving at MSU SM or CSM (bikes + rhino rush + infiltrate + deep strike) for a change of pace. I'm thinking MSU will make it more likely that most of the army is intact and near/in the enemy deployment zone by turn 2. There is after all a limit to how many rhinos you can pop per turn. MSU also theoretically gives you more "actions" per turn making it more likely you can pop the transport and mop up the contents in a single turn.

I definitely agree the every table needs plenty of LOS-blocking terrain - one side (or both) sitting behind barricades and shooting all game is just boring.

I think I'm a little confused on what you mean by 'gunline' Ailaros. I always thought of gunline to mean units entrenched in static positions, blasting away across the board, hoping to do enough damage before their opponent gets to them to not get obliterated in assault. But you seem to be talking about highly mobile armies as well, including flyer-heavy armies, which makes me think we're defining 'gunline' differently.

You play Chaos, yes? (And guard, too?)

I'll be honest, I run a Salamanders drop pod army, and I'm pretty much always hoping for a mechanized list. Especially ones without Jink. Combat squadded Space Marines, properly done, make a royal mess of enemy transport vehicles (and the units inside, if need be).

I think assault heavy armies can do well here, if tactically sound strategies are used. You can still prevent an enemy unit from even emergency disembarking if you can get enough people around the tank, can't you? That tactic isn't one I've tried to use in this edition.

Another quick question, you mention units in destroyed transports getting a 3+ cover save. How is that happening? Am I wrong in thinking that craters give a 5+? And going to ground makes it a 4+? Am I missing something? Either way, I find the best way to deal with people in a crater is with flamers and hand to hand combat.

Units that are multipurpose (melta-heavy bike squads, sternguard) can really help out, too.

In any event, I hope this helps, at least a little bit.

So, the idea I'm trying to get across with mech gunlines is different from regular gunlines. Regular gunlines just sit there and, unless you're against tau, all you've got to do is get to them, at which point you can push the win button and be done with it. Fast units can get there quickly, as can deepstrikers, etc.

What I'm talking about here isn't that, though. On the one hand, it is a gunline in that it focuses heavily on long-range shooting, or, rather, longer range shooting than most stuff. Also, like a gunline, it could be content without really doing much by means of movement, and it generally doesn't care at all about getting into assault either.

What's different about a mech gunline, though, is that there is that little bit of mobility in there. The ability to back up to delay, and the ability to concentrate killing power better. Meanwhile, the transports give the you-can't-even-attack-the-guys durability, and when they wreck, they give cover, and when they explode, they create area terrain (which you get +2 to your cover save for going to ground in). And it comes at a very points-efficient cost.

Put another way, it's an army that plays like a gunline, where they have long range guns, pick the range to engage you at, and then do nothing but roll dice, but they're unlike gunlines in that customary anti-gunline stuff doesn't work right. Deepstrikers, for example, are up against a time problem that is caused by the troops being embarked, and, due to the strength of them, creates really asymmetric piece trades (drop pod sternguard, for example, has a terrible return rate against mechvets, for example, as sternguard killed by plasma vets are going to cost a LOT more than that chimera they destroyed).

I mean, everything I'm talking about is what made leafblower guard so good back in the day. The torch has passed to other armies, but the same principles are still there. An army that behaves like a gunline, but the transports do a good job of mitigating the weaknesses of gunlines.

Especially when we're talking about strong transports like chimeras and wave serpents that are good on offense with a bunch of ranged dakka AND very strong defensive capabilities of the guys inside. Getting close to longfangs likely means dead longfangs. Getting close to a leafblower means getting killed by plasma mechvets or getting close to those psyflemen means getting prescienced henchmen into oblivion.

And yeah, putting up big terrain pieces can help against gunlines... but they help less against mech gunlines, that can use real mobility to both make use of those same LOS blocking goodness while also being able to keep fire lanes open. It's especially so if we're talking about an army with MSM or skimmers. Without penalty of moving over terrain, they can use the durability advantages of terrain while at the same time being able to mobile gunline. Also, of course, you have units like artillery, which really want LOS blocking terrain for them to shoot over, thus making them a more invincible gunline.


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So to give an example of what I'm talking about. This is a contemporary example from the current eldar thread:


Autarch w/ jetbike

2x 5 Dire Avengers
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

2x 5 Fire Dragons
Serpents w/ holofield, scatterlaser, shuricannon

3 Warwalkers w/ dual scatterlasers.


... and people of course have seen like this before. Guard have the artillery+mechvet leafblower, or, to a slightly lesser extent, mechvets and russ spam. DE have whatever version of "the DE list". It may not be as popular, but razorspam was this way, and you can do GK henchmen this way, of course. I've also seen it done with BA fast preds/vindis with some razors or land raiders, and with necron ark/barge spam. Most armies can do some version of this

I don't know, I've faced eldar lists similar to the one you mention, but haven't had a problem.

Well, Ailaros, what sort of lists have you been running lately? Because I'm pretty sure saying 'Deepstrike an entire army of Hammernators' by his stuff' doesn't help you here. I know you play some form of footguard and then CSM (and I have no idea how you run them, other than that you have the Khorne symbol in your signature).

Are vehicles blasphemy to include in your IG list? If not then you could have some Hellhounds bolt from terrain feature to terrain feature lying in wait until it's time to charge forward and melt guys hiding in craters. Going to ground, while giving the blokes a bonus to their cover save, also nerfs their shooting with snap-shots until the end of their following turn--are plasma vets really hitting that much with only 6s? And my BRB says that vehicle wrecks/craters are only 5+ cover...how are they getting 3+?

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:
Well, Ailaros, what sort of lists have you been running lately? Because I'm pretty sure saying 'Deepstrike an entire army of Hammernators' by his stuff' doesn't help you here. I know you play some form of footguard and then CSM (and I have no idea how you run them, other than that you have the Khorne symbol in your signature).

Are vehicles blasphemy to include in your IG list? If not then you could have some Hellhounds bolt from terrain feature to terrain feature lying in wait until it's time to charge forward and melt guys hiding in craters. Going to ground, while giving the blokes a bonus to their cover save, also nerfs their shooting with snap-shots until the end of their following turn--are plasma vets really hitting that much with only 6s? And my BRB says that vehicle wrecks/craters are only 5+ cover...how are they getting 3+?

As the crater is area terrain, going to ground in it will grant you +2 to your cover save, rather than +1. This is under area terrain in the rulebook.

My standard answer is to push the opponent out of position with board control units and then DS something melta like next to the transport's rear. If the opponent stays to the back of the board you will win on objectives if they go forward you pop his tanks (usually with explosions to kill and pin people). The big thing is to occupy and control the board though so that if he shoots at the DS units he can not kill your real threat.

Can I assume that this discussion is related to your other discussion about popping transports? Are you making your opponent take those pinning tests for disembarking from a destroyed transport? Did you realize that a single waveserpent is 120 pts+? This means it is nearly the same price as 2 obliterators or a DS suicide storm troopers. It is true that they can be spammed more than these two options but with good positioning and additional threates on the board this should get you far.

 somerandomidiot wrote:

As the crater is area terrain, going to ground in it will grant you +2 to your cover save, rather than +1. This is under area terrain in the rulebook.

I stand corrected on that matter, then. Having to snap-shot after going to the ground still seems to be a major disadvantage to the unit in most cases. With them stuck in the same place and only hitting on 6's for a turn it seems like you'd be free to dismantled other parts of the gunline--more transports, fire support units, non-pinned squads, etc.--for that round of shooting. Their next turn the guys are stuck cowering in craters snap-shotting at stuff, and then on your next turn you can bring the hammer down on them.

I've found if you can get anything CC oriented into the mech gunline it will wreak havok, the hardest part is getting there.

I play frequently against a DA player and he loves dropping some terminators with thunderhammer/stormshield right next to my basilisk/behind my russes/next to my chimeras. Understandably, not every army can do that, especially the IG who lack the survivability of TEQ's.

As for a specifically IG solution, I definitely do not have a good one. My only semi-feasible idea is mass chimera/vendetta melta vets, although their survivability might not be great, it might be fun to start the game with 6 melta vet squads on the table!

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:Well, Ailaros, what sort of lists have you been running lately?

Well, I'm looking for something more general than specific army advice. It's an abstract problem that crosses most armies, so I'd hate for "play this army in this way" as being the answer.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:Are vehicles blasphemy to include in your IG list?

No. The problem here is a mech gunline, not merely a mech list. I mean, none of what I'm saying would be true about a trukk rush ork army, or a chimera/hellhound highland charge (I actually ran this for awhile), or a land raider rush.

Meanwhile, all of those things I just listed will get ruined by mech gunlines, so while they're not a problem, they're not a solution either.

ansacs wrote:My standard answer is to push the opponent out of position with board control units and then DS something melta like next to the transport's rear.

But how does board control answer the three problems? How does board control open up transports early enough to kill the guys inside? How does this fix the force concentration problem? Deepstrikers are hardly obliged to show up on time or on target, and meanwhile you're getting gunlined. How does this fix the efficiency problem?

ansacs wrote:Did you realize that a single waveserpent is 120 pts+? This means it is nearly the same price as 2 obliterators or a DS suicide storm troopers. It is true that they can be spammed more than these two options but with good positioning and additional threates on the board this should get you far.

Right, there's the spamming issue, but there's also the efficiency problem. A pair of melta stormies are NOT guaranteed to blow up a wave serpent, especially if it's stuck against glance-only shielding. The same is true for obliterators as well. And skimmers basically just have a 5+ (or 4+) cover save all the time. Counting on a pair of obliterators to wreck a wave serpent is risky, to put it best. Relying on deepstrikers, which don't fix the timing, concentrating, or efficiency issues is more likely than not a recipe for disaster.

eclipseoto wrote:I've found if you can get anything CC oriented into the mech gunline it will wreak havok, the hardest part is getting there.

Yeah, I've only rarely seen CC units survive the long-range gunfire and the short-range uber-defensive shooting that follows. Then they manage to blow up a transport or two, and are horribly butchered the next turn by more shooting.

CC doesn't answer the time problem (especially), or the force concentration problem (usually), and while the efficiency issue isn't SO bad, it has serious problems in the effectiveness camp. Spending 117 points on nine CSM to krak grenade a wave serpent doesn't seem that bad, except you're probably never getting 9 CSM into close combat with those wave serpents.

ansacs wrote:Can I assume that this discussion is related to your other discussion about popping transports? Are you making your opponent take those pinning tests for disembarking from a destroyed transport?

Yes, but pinning tests don't always work in my favor (especially if there's an IC in there), and pinning a single squad doesn't pin the entire rest of their army.

As for the other part, yes, it's all part of a long, rolling theory that's been slowly mulling over time. Killing being what's important, gunlines (especially mech gunlines) offering you more killing, gunlines offering you killing for little player skill, low player skill making the game more about luck than skill as skill (and copied netlist strength) becomes so similar it becomes a control variable, tournament players playing a dice game on easy mode, trying to give myself a challenge and a rewarding gaming experience to others. It's all sort of rolling around into a slowly developing systemic theory of 40k.

Last night, I played a game of 40k wherein if you looked at the two lists, you'd know exactly what would happen. It did go exactly as you would have guessed, it was just playing through the motions. It was, flatly, boring, like a lot of the 6th ed games I've played. After all of my thinking about it, I think this is the core of it. Has 40k become a game that's so heavily favored shooting, and long-range shooting at that, and mechanized armies relative to non-mech that you pretty much have the option of helplessly trying to do anything with your minis and play a real game, or adopting a (mech) gunline yourself?

Because if two players playing mech gunlines against each other is really nothing more than a really complicated game of candyland (the players put down their pieces, and do nothing much more than just roll dice and determine the winner), then there's really no point to 40k when I could play any other luck-based game that's more interesting and far less laborious to set up and actually play (like, say, Dominion). If any of the myriad ways I could make things more interesting just get comprehensively shut down by the most boring play style, then I don't know if it's worth it to spend hours setting things up and playing just for the chance of something more than two-player yahtzee with miniatures to happen.

This happens to be happening with my CSM at the moment, but the real tragedy of this for me has been with guard. After a year of playing in this edition, I basically had the option of getting tabled by mech gunlines, or playing a mech gunline myself, in which case I was perpetrating, not merely enabling such inanity.

Moreover if what I'm describing is just how 40k works - it really is just who brought the best mech gunline and rolled luckiest: the game - that it's how the game is supposed to work, then it's a game I don't actually like. It sounds a lot like Axis and Allies to me (hours of drudgery decided by a few dice rolls), which is another game I don't really play. At least that game doesn't have the pretense of meaningful choice.

The more I've been talking about things on dakka, the more I've been slowly driven to this as the problem. Is 40k a ultra-shallow luck game where either you bring one, no-player-skill-required kind of list and are lucky and win, or bring that list and are unlucky, or bring any other kind of list (regardless of player skill), and just lose in a tortured and boring way? Or is that just 6th (well, and 5th) edition? Or is that just what's going on right now? Or is that not what's going on at all?

It's all a rather existential question for a tactics forum, but here's where I think it will be solved.

Have you tried changing it up? Playing something off-the-wall? 40k isn't chess. The problem with formulaic when it comes to 40k is that it leaves you unable to deal with the truly unanticipated. If your local scene is as rote as you say, then a truly unusual list should throw a real monkey wrench into your opponents' plans. Surprise can certainly be a potent weapon, and if your consistent opponents are used to the same thing over and over again, it may be the advantage you need.

I play nurgle.....I enjoy playing against gunlines since most cant hurt me enough by the time im in their face.

Its army dependent.....space wolves and ba players are having issues because they arent adjusting well in sixth.

I know you play guard....al the outflanker? Send a platoon in from the side and split fire?

Its definantly different. Only csm, daemons, and sm seem to have any units that can pull it off.

Jimsolo wrote:Have you tried changing it up? Playing something off-the-wall?

Sure, but what? Playing something different for nothing but the novelty factor is just silly. Different isn't going to solve anything unless it actually solves the problem.

sfshilo wrote:I play nurgle.....I enjoy playing against gunlines since most cant hurt me enough by the time im in their face.

Our local nurgle player actually just stopped playing a month or two ago. The last game I saw him play, tau wiped his most dangerous units off the table right away, and the plague marines struggled to really do anything, only making into range in mid-game with a fraction of his points left, after it was way too late.

Plus, looking at things abstractly, which of the concentration, time, or efficiency problems do they solve? Not really any of them.

sfshilo wrote:I know you play guard....al the outflanker? Send a platoon in from the side and split fire?

Al'Rahem is actually a great example of how this doesn't work.

The guard player splits off a huge chunk of his points into a serious al'rahem threat. The gunliner wipes out half of what the guard player had on the table before al'rahem shows up. Then al'rahem shows up. The mech player (who likely was deploying towards the center of the board anyways), just backs up away from al'rahem and guns him down.

The guard player has squandered time with something in reserve. They have squandered concentration by splitting their army up. They haven't done anything with efficiency because they weren't very effective against such obvious countermeasures in the movement phase.

To give a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, here are two pictures taken a turn apart from one of my games in 5th ed.

Here the bad guys move forward:


And then Al'Rahem shows up and the mech list beads up and pulls away.


And now the BA player is able to focus their firepower on one part of my guard army, leaving al'rahem to do nothing useful this game, and because the BA's guns are longer range, and with better concentration, they're just going to roll up my entire army while I desperately hope to get any weapons in range.

Of course, this game went a little differently because it was BA and it was 5th ed, where you could actually assault stuff. Nowadays, this exact same thing would have happened, except I'd be tabled by shooting.

 Ailaros wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:Have you tried changing it up? Playing something off-the-wall?

Sure, but what? Playing something different for nothing but the novelty factor is just silly. Different isn't going to solve anything unless it actually solves the problem.

Why not try it for the random discovery factor? I'm just spitballing, but you could always stumble across something you hadn't thought would be viable before.

Certainly I've tried different things, but now that I'm slowly getting a clearer picture, I think it can be a bit less up to guess and check.

Plus, better is always different, but different is not always better. Doing random things for the purpose of being random, and thus confusing your opponent into making mistakes just isn't... real.

I mean, ctrl alt del said it best":

A "mech gunline" ...isn't a gunline. It seems like your actual problem is that you think foot armies without transports, Drop Pods, jump packs, or any other form of mobility enhancer should be able to outmaneuver armies that actually spent points on mobility. Why should that be the case?

If your plan is to get in close and come to grips with your opponent, and you don't have any special means of actually doing so, I wouldn't be surprised that you lose to a mobile opponent. In fact, that seems to be basically working as intended to me.

 Clang wrote:
I definitely agree the every table needs plenty of LOS-blocking terrain - one side (or both) sitting behind barricades and shooting all game is just boring.

I disagree, my patented House of Pain was great fun to play.

Kingsley wrote:A "mech gunline" ...isn't a gunline. It seems like your actual problem is that you think foot armies without transports, Drop Pods, jump packs, or any other form of mobility enhancer should be able to outmaneuver armies that actually spent points on mobility. Why should that be the case?

It isn't.

It's the marriage of gunline to the ability to not get completely pinned down thanks to a little bit of mobility that's the problem. Plus, the efficiency problems, timing problems, and concentration problems that this kind of list creates. It's the gunline without gunline drawbacks that's the problem, to put it another way.

Maneuvering so that your short ranged guns can strike hard somewhere is interesting. Maneuvering so that your opponent doesn't get to play the game unless they've got long-ranged guns just more or less sitting there isn't.

The fact that mech gunlines can so easily dismantle other armies with speed, for reasons already stated makes speed itself not a solution to this problem. I've seen plenty of asymmetric piece trades involving deepstrikers against transports and enough bike armies just thrown off the table due to efficiency problems to put much faith in them. Meanwhile, attempting to play a deepstriker or bike army but not really being able to because you just got tabled doesn't really sound like a game to me, much less all that fun of a one.

 Ailaros wrote:
The more I've been talking about things on dakka, the more I've been slowly driven to this as the problem. Is 40k a ultra-shallow luck game where either you bring one, no-player-skill-required kind of list and are lucky and win, or bring that list and are unlucky, or bring any other kind of list (regardless of player skill), and just lose in a tortured and boring way? Or is that just 6th (well, and 5th) edition? Or is that just what's going on right now? Or is that not what's going on at all?

Serious question here: why do you keep playing this game? You've been complaining for months about how 40k is "just a dice game" with no depth, how everyone but you is "playing on easy mode", etc. So why don't you just give up and move on to something else?

I'm not really sure how to respond to this tbh. "Mech gunlines' (aka good mech lists) as you call them have been the strongest armies in the game for multiple editions, the combination of force concentration, firepower (to kill stuff), durability and mobility (to actually win games) has always made them the strongest armies around. Running an infantry based assault list against a decent opponent with a mech list I would have expected to lose almost every game in 5th, 6th has just reinforced this with both changes to the core rules (casualties from the front hurts) and a string of powerful codices.

The classic answer to gunline has always been some sort of disruption. The edition has swung away from that and hth and moved back towards basic units that are shooty.

A large part of that is units can no longer assault after coming in from outflank, limitations to what you can put in reserve (no more all drop armies), and units can no longer assault on the first turn.

No more space wolf scouts charging devastator squads when they come in, no more scout bikes swooping in and busting stationary tanks on the first turn, etc etc.

I think that there are still viable disruption strategies in the game that can be gamebreaking, but I feel like it's easier to just go with the flow and do what everybody else is doing. Why not when there are so many units that are ap2/3 and bypass cover? Why work so hard?

Edit: Yngarl Genestealers...Take 2/3 units. When they show up they can charge out of the terrain piece they showed up in. Add in some hth support and watch how effective it is.

"Mech Gunlines" as you describe them seem like a perfectly logical extension of the rules to me, and personally, I like this idea.

It's not because I'm a fun-sucking TFG but because I prefer to do random things just to see how they work. That being said you can base your army around a tactically sound concept (like these "Mech Gunlines" which are basically how tanks and infantry are used on the modern battlefield) and from there have some extra space for a joker unit. Something different that will throw off your opponent while your own units roll over them.

There are some things you are misinterpreting about these lists.

1) You do not have to break all of them open turn 1. You need to break ~2 of them open each turn so your anti infantry can work on them each turn. If you could do as you suggest that is called tabling by turn 2.

2) Models have to get out of transports to claim or contest objectives. This means if you can swoop in turn 5 with effective melee or anti infantry units you can kill the troops without killing transports. This is the great benefit of bike and flyer armies.

3) Transports are weak to melee. If you can occupy the board properly you can still contain a mechanized army and remove their maneuverability. This is important in a 1-2 punch where your positional dominance units are capable of killing a transport if it gets within 12" of them but are really either durable enough to take the beating (plague marines w/midline ADL, Azzy/tiggy power blobbs) or fast enough to push them into a corner (flesh hounds, spawn, Chaos Daemons Daemon Princes, wraithknight). The second part of the punch is the hard hitters in the form of long range fire support or DS bombs. The long range option is relatively obvious and you said your not interested. The important part of a DS option is that the DSers have to be plentiful enough to cause a major blow, tough enough to not be immediately wiped out, and your positional dominance units need to be something the opponent will loose the game if they do not deal with it.

Some of the ways I do this is to drop 3x3 oblits into the opponent rear or sides after occupying the midboard with ~30 plague marines behind and ADL or terrain. My plague marines have double melta and grenades so getting within 12" of them is death for vehicles meaning the effective area for a mech gunline becomes basically a quarter of the board. I have thus robbed the opponent of maneuverability and I get the first punch. My other list is a Great Unclean One and CSM flying Daemon Prince with those plague marines. Suffice to say when I DS a GUO into a relatively bunched up opponent it is hilarious. I could probably give you better examples with my eldar, SM, or IG lists but I use FW stuff in those or end up trapped in the same gunline or mechanized trap you were complaining about. I also have an idea for a really cool white scars list but I need a bunch of lance and grav gun bits to do it.

The only games I've ever had which involved a truly mechanised gunline were ones where I was the gunline player (72nd Cadian Armoured)--and that was back when the IG codex came out in 5th and I decided it was finally time to follow in my friends' footsteps and give 40k a try. my first floundering steps involved getting tabled constantly by a Thunderwolf Lord (I swear this guy is just unkillable on some days, regardless of how many meltaguns, multilasers, demo-cannons, or lascannons hit him). After that I found that sitting back and blowing crap off the table for most games work extremely well and thus was born the dreaded '72nd Tank Wall'. Nobody liked fighting it and I stopped enjoying running it after a few games.

I've neither played it or against a similar list in 6th, but I remember that deathstar-style units had an ability to consistently krump the army. I still greatly fear Thunderwolves and Thunderwolf-Lords. Units with high strength, good invuln saves, and a good way of getting close were always the hardest things to deal with. Granted, the mobility of a mech gunline allows it to save itself far more times than it should, but it can still be caught.

Unfortunately I'm doubting that most books have a solid counter to mech gunlines other than another mech gunline. IG's disruption units are pretty lacklustre for their points in my opinion, making out-shooting the mech gunline the best choice...and this just encourages the build in the local meta.

As Scuddman said the best answer to a gunline is a disruption--mass drop pod assault, DS'ing Hammernators into the enemy lines, etc.. Infantry-based gunlines tend to experience a domino effect where the enemy then spreads out from the disrupted portion and eats the force away. Mech gunlines can run away from most threats *and* fight at the same time. One way to do this is with very fast (so no Hammernators or pod-borne squads), strong disrupting units (Thunderwolves come to mind here...and little else I've encountered, I'm afraid). Unfortunately these units have to first collide with the gunline (getting shot on the way) then have to chase it down (getting shot on the way)...and I can see where this might end awfully, despite my past history of getting krump'd by Space Wolves doing exactly this.

Assuming one doesn't have the deathstar(s) required to run down a mech gunline like this then the gunline will need to be boxed in--and very early on. Unfortunately this can be hard to do if just moving normally out of the deployment zone as it'll take a few turns of being shot up to get to the enemy, who will likely be moving in response to the advance. I think (12" scouts, infiltrators, and first-turn deep strikers can be used to this effect and be quickly mobilised to form a perimeter around the most important/dangerous part of the gunline. Once that's done one's forces can close in and end it.

I'm currently building an SM army using the Raven Guard Chapter Tactics in which pretty much the whole army scouts 12". I've not tested it much at all, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to use the extra 12" at the start of the game to close in on gunline-style armies (mech or otherwise) without getting half my army shot off the board in the process. Sadly, I don't think most armies have a similar ability to do first-turn close-ins/disruptions like this...

I also fear I may be rambling at this hour. Forgive me if this just comes across as useless drivel. >.<

Easy, do the MONSTER MASH!

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
HQ- 640pts
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon

Troops - 1260
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
10x Termagants
Tervigon
Tervigon
Tervigon

Fast Attack - 100
5x Spore Mines
5x Spore Mines

Made that a while ago. Now, you can be evil and turn those spore mines into 10 sets of Toxin Sacs for all your gaunts or leave them in. Then, deploy those spore mines on your opponents side of the field with say a 3-4 inch gap between mines. You will force them to deploy outside of productive areas like fortifications, and just screw with them more. You won't make many friends, but its a annoying tactic. Also, I fully agree with the helper idea, except you do NOT bring 2. Bring 4. Seriously. 2 Tervigons and spawn per person, because remember; your pulling out 100+ a turn. 2-3 turns with proper amounts of Termigants means that you will have insane amounts of bases to move, and you'll need more than 2 people to move all that quickly.

Add more stuff as needed at higher points games.

Be sure to laugh maniacally as the board rapidly gets flooded in termagants.

Just get into smash range and break stuff while sending a rolling wave of nids to fleshborer everything with less than T8 to death.

If you have cheap enough units, I've found that they can out swarm my mech.

I have been beaten down by massed Krak Grenades.
180 guardsmen with krak grenades.
90 guardsmen ran up each flank to prevent escape and the heavy guns pounded the middle.

It was clear that I didn't have enough firepower to kill 20 squads while in the transports, and to get out was to give up my speed advantage and my protection from the big guns. My shooting was average, but I was over-killing one squad while under killing another. Even a handful of guys with krak grenades take out transports.

In the end, I didn't have enough time to get to his back field, let alone the mid field objectives.


If you opponent backs up for 2 turns, then you pop the transport, it's going to take him ~2 turns to get his infantry back where he started, and that doesn't leave him much time.

-Matt