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Long story short, do you have to have them?

What I mean by that is: do you have to have a squad of TH/SS termies or some sort of assault element in a competitive list? Or can you stick with shootty elements?

I run a chapter master with teeth of terra and arti armour in a five man honour guard squad with a chapter banner and buffed with tigarus when I can

This gives my commander 6+d3 attacks at ws6 s6 and ap3 with strikedown..... Sorted

Then the honour guard get their attacks lol

The only thing is even in there razorback I don't expect them to actually get to the combat haha

At lower points levels with my salamanders I don't bother, the best I have is Vulkan chilling with a tac squad who can assault and clean up after roasting a unit down to a few survivors.

I do occasionally use th/ss terminators, but I tend to look at them more as a tar pitting unit against hard hitters than a dedicated CC unit.

 phoenix darkus wrote:
Long story short, do you have to have them?

What I mean by that is: do you have to have a squad of TH/SS termies or some sort of assault element in a competitive list? Or can you stick with shootty elements?

Using the Imperial Fists doctrines, you can make some meaty gun lines and/or shooty lists. Same with Salamanders + Flamers/Melta. Same with Pedro Kantor and Sternguard.

How well they would do at competitive tournaments against Tau/Eldar lists remains to be seen.

I run a pretty shooty Crimson Fist drop pod list, but i do hav a unit of 7-8 power sword Honor Guard that i either run with Pedro or atleast withing 12 inches of him. 5 attacks on the charge with a power weapon, and artificer armour for 25 points.

they work for me

No you can manage absolutely fine without assault elements.

They can help in so many situations, but if using them as a counter-assault unit, they are wasted points against an opponent who plays a gunline if you are also playing a gunline. Against other opponents you have to judge if their points are not better spent on more firepower to prevent that opponent assaulting in the first place or if by not taking them it leaves you horribly vulnerable if the opponent does make ot to your lines or deepstikes in.

On the otherhand, if wanting to run an assault themed army, it has been rather difficult since so many basic rules work against assault in 6th (not being able to charge from vehicles/outflank, random charge distances, overwatch, counter-assault, ignores cover, not being able to sweep into combat, assault vehicles being exceptionally highly priced, the high proportion of cheap high rate of fire xeno weaponary, jump shoot jump, disorganised charges, fortifications to slow an advance, to name but a few), but it is still viable. BA for example are an assault themed dex and suffer for it, but it is still possible to build a list which holds up reasonably well if going for all out assault.

One thing ive been experimenting recently with (on paper) is the massive cheap buffs the codex inquisition brings. The major problem for a BA player is that the inquisitors who have access to the most advanced weaponary in the imperium are allergic to jump packs, so apart from a footslogging or podding death company, they have absolutely zero synergy with the BA dex.

Since allies cannot share transports in case the machine spirit throws a domestic, the only way to include them is in foootslogging units. The ones that come to mind are seige assault marines, Carcharodon tac squads with ccws, black templar crusader squads or a counter assault unit such as honour guard protecting a gunline.

I would very highly recommend an inquisitor with hammerhand, rad granades, lieber heresius and force weapon for 85pts to massively buff one of the above squads. His buffs are so much better than a BA chaplains at 100pts that its not even funny.
Take further inquisitors without the liber heresius (its a relic) for stupidly cheap hammerhand/prescience/rad granade buffs (up to 4 total at dual FOC) and your bog standard footslogging crusaders become lethal in combat.

Hmmmmm you got me thinking about a BT crusader list now!

Assault elements are ironically more useful against other meq lists that tend to be mid-field lists.

I appreciate all the feedback!