Ailaros wrote:From the giant text wall, I took two points.
1.) AV12 is fragile, but so is HWSs.
and command squads. And AV12 isn't *that* fragile. It's high enough that it's out of the realm of anti-infantry weapons such as scatterlasers and heavy bolters to engage (or engage effectively) whereas AV11/10 vehicles can be destroyed by such weapons, and much moreso than an
HWS to anything except singular meltaguns for the most part. The poor implementation of
HWS's in the codex is really what drags the infantry list more than anything else.
2.) Mech commanders can always avoid close combat.
Not really, I didn't really say much of anything specifically about mech command squads. Mech in general can either avoid/mitigate it, or, if built properly (i.e. you are sinking a ton of points into each unit), can take the loss in stride and come out better for it.
The second is flat out untrue. In a parking lot situation (like you're proposing), there simply isn't enough space to get away from close combat. Without being skimmers, an armored wall turns into a traffic jam in a hurry.
Not really what I was driving at, but neither is it really necessary either. You don't need to evade entirely. Simply moving a single inch suddenly forces opponents to hit you as if you were equal weapon skill no matter what theirs may be. Moving over 6" suddenly makes you hit only on 6's, something not even a WS10 model fighting a WS1 model can achieve. Add to that that most units don't have significant
AT CC capabilities in huge amounts, and it makes the tanks rather hard to pop.
I've seen a 10-elf jetlock council charge across the board and catch 6 vehicles in assault, wrecking 4 of them with their S9 wychblades. The next turn, they multi-assaulted again, blowing up another two vehicles and throwing two vet squads off the table.
Yes, we can all probably come up with some incredible such feat. Most of the time however, this is avoidable. This is certainly not an expected average. You will have at least 1 turn to do something to that unit. If that 10 jetlock council made it across the board like that intact and caught 6 vehicles in assault, the
IG player flat out did not play correctly. There are all sorts of ways to mitigate that, for one, they shouldn't have arrived across the board fully intact, even with fortune. Second, decent positioning and deployment should make it pretty much impossible to hit that many vehicles at once, between putting a couple vehicles out front and using terrain/board edges/other units it's not hard to prevent such a unit from charging 6 tanks. When that's all said and done, they should then be in range and
LoS of just about every gun in the line and face a *very* uncomfortable turn after that.
Such a unit could also cripple the footslogging list you posted fairly easily by flying over your blobs and into your heavy weapons/command squad line behind them.
Keep in mind, multi-assaulting isnt' something that only mech faces, more often than I've seen multiple tanks destroyed (yes, it very definitely does happen, won't deny that, but usually 2 or 3 when well done, not 6), clearing out a ruin full of heavy weapons teams with an outflanking assault unit is a rather common occurence, and just about any unit that makes it to an
IG line, if it's not a blob squad, likely will engage and destroy several infantry units.
I've likewise seen drop pod BT go on a RAMPAGE against parking lots. They show up, throw around melta, and when you shoot them back, they move closer to you and then multi-charge with power fists and krak grenades.
They can't charge the turn they
DS in, nothing allows them to override that restriction. Intelligent deployment, movement, and use of smoke will greatly limit not only the effect of their shooting but what they may even be able to shoot at. I've played such armies many times,
BT,
SM,
SW,
BA. Once they come in and pop their load, perhaps popping 2 or 3 tanks, the drop pod'ing units usually end up in tightly packed clusters in perfect range of just about everything I could possibly shoot and great formation for taking hits from template weapons, and are depleted if not destroyed in short order.
That or you just reserve-denial if you know that's coming and let them drop pod in with nothing to shoot at and roll on turn 2 with 8 tanks and several dozen infantry and either go to town or move >6" and pop smoke forcing them to hit you on 6's in
CC and through 4+ cover with shooting attacks.
You can slightly delay close combat (although, with that many vehicles in the backfield, that would be a challenge, at best), but you cannot outright stop your opponents from getting into close combat, if that's what they've built their lists towards.
That's fine. I can sustain losses. Losing even half a dozen vehicles (hasn't ever happened yet to me to a drop pod assault list) isn't necessarily going to cripple me, there's 11 more and still plenty of firepower. Most likely if they're coming in via drop pod and hoping to get into close combat, they've had to take fire from every gun in the army before they can do that and they typically aren't in much shape to do much of anything after that. The few remaining guys that manage to get into the tanks can try to do something, sometimes they do, but usually nothing near like what they wanted to.
To the first point, you're splitting hairs. Are HWSs fragile? Yes. Are vendettas also very fragile? Yes.
Vendettas are much more durable than
HWS's, and have a multitide of tools to increase their survivability such as turbo-boosting (scout move turbo-boosting in particular is handy) they can come in off the flanks or from
DS, and can easily move away from nearby threats. They also don't really face any lethal threat from anything that isn't at least S7. Such weapons also present a great threat to
HWS's due to their low model count, vulnerability to
ID, and low
Ld. On average, it'll take 11 BS4 autocannon shots to kill a
HWS in cover, 7 to on average expect a failed
Ld test. To kill a Vendetta in the open, you need an average of two and a half times that to bring down a Vendetta, 27 BS4 autocannon shots to on average produce 1 destroyed/explodes result. This is also assuming no cover (not impossible for vendettas to get from terrain, just harder, and they can always turbo-boost). Additionally, S6 shots will achieve the same result against the
HWS's (which typically have higher
RoF's) that will do relatively little against the Vendetta.
The difference is that once the support units are burned away, you're left with a bunch of worthless GLAC squads in cans in a mech list
The support however, as noted above, is significantly more difficult to burn away, it's not even anywhere near the same category of vulnerability,
and they've got to not only get through the support but the transports as well, all of which are equally as hard to destroy, significantly moreso than the support units for the footslogging list.
while you're left with the hard, angry core of implacable infantry with kit to handle anything in the game when it comes to infantry.
That's slow, easily outmaneuvered, and can be engaged by every weapon in the game and is particularly vulnerable to cheap and widely available template weapons and can be forced off of objectives by anything with the Tank trait. Yeah, blobs are really good at CCPlus,
swap out HWSs for russes, and you're now looking at an army that literally doesn't care at all about a vast majority of your weapons.
And the mech army doesn't care much about the russ tanks, it's significantly less
AT fire coming at it that is engaging *far* fewer targets at once and now gives a target for the 5 melta toting chimeras that didn't have great targets before. That's a much easier force to engage.
Once the vendettas are swatted away, the bubble wrapped exterminators or LBRTs will be literally invincible.
Drive one of 5 quad melta-toting chimeras up, tank shock/flame infantry out of the way, shoot out of top hatch with 4 meltaguns. Same standard procedure for any bubble-wrap opponent. The life of your Russ tanks depends on destroying 8 AV12 vehicles that can all generate their own cover saves and 30 infantry before they have a chance to engage, 3 of them on turn 1 and the rest on turn 2 or 3, more stuff than many other armies can even field. Not a realistic prospect unless you routinely are able to table entire skimmerspam Eldar armies in the same manner, which is unlikely.
A mech list is made up of ONLY fragile units, while a foot list is, at most, made of SOME fragile units. A mech list is unable to do anything in 1/3 of the game turn (assault), while a foot list can be effective in every turn of the game.
Here's the problem. You're equating the survivability of the mech units with the survivability of the fragile units in the infantry list, which just isn't the case. The tanks are significantly more difficult to destroy than the heavy weapon and command squads. As noted above, a vendetta is far more durable than a
HWS, and costs 130pts versus 105pts for a lascannon
HWS, or Hydra's at identical costing to
AC HWS's, and can move and fire as well. The "weak" units in the mech list are far and away hardier than the "weak" units in the infantry list and the mech list amplifies it's sturdiness through redundnacy and simple numbers that doesn't work in the same way for the infantry list. 1-4 tanks are relatively easy to destroy, even if AV14. 5-9 starts to be difficult but doable. 10 often is more than many can deal with, 17 is going to actively stress every
AT asset in the opponents army and require that every unit be capable of engaging armor to some degree and be actively doing so if they hope to achieve victory or the unit quite possibly is empty points.
The fact that the mech list isn't doing anything in the assault phase really isn't an issue because that's not where its killing power lies, and the blobs aren't exactly spending the entire game stuck in either (or if they are, they're wasting their significant shooting upgrades) and most of that time is spend simply out-surviving the locked opponent. It's got significantly greater ranged anti-infantry firepower, roughly equivalent
raw ranged anti-tank after rerolls are factored in, and far more mobility to consistently put that firepower to get around
LoS/Range issues than the footslogging list, not to mention mitigate things like outflankers that typically are lighter
CC units or firepower dependent
AT units capable of only engaging one unit each turn
With both lists, you can put out a staggering amount of firepower, but foot lists give you more durability over all (and thus, killing power over the long term).
Again however, this just isn't true. Only the blob squads have any true durability in the infantry list. Everything else can be relatively easily engaged by even annoyance weaponry such as drop pod stormbolters and stand a no unrealistic chance of forcing a morale test, or, when combined with several annoyance weapons, even destroy many support units where for other armies they'd be lucky to kill anything. When you compare Hydras and Vendetta's with their
HWS equivalents, you get significantly more survivability against just about anything except singular meltaguns (multiples start to then drastically increase chances of forcing morale tests against smaller units or flat out wipe them out). Even railguns are about as effective against
HWS's as they are against AV12 vehicles if you look at the potential to force them to fall back (about as much chance to force an Ld7 3 model
HWS to take a casualty and fall back as to destroy an AV12 vehicle).
If
HWS's could be combined into blobs, could do something about their awful
Ld, and didn't have to deal with being multiwound models hideously vulnerable to Instant Death and Morale tests, this would be a very different conversation. The putzing of heavy weapon squads in the codex is really what does it, even with their cost decreases from the previous edition they are still some of the least points efficient heavy weapons in the game (being roughly on par in terms of casualty/vehicle destruction output as the much maligned C:
SM/C:
CSM dev's/havocs but much less sturdy), especially relative to the marine armies. Given the reliance on such fragile units and the somewhat sturdier but still very weeny command squads, footslogging infantry lists are much easier to pull the fangs from.
To say that foot lists are just utterly non-viable because mech lists are just so much better is crazy talk.
Nowhere anywhere did I attempt to make this point. Only that the mechanized list is stronger given the current codex and ruleset.
3000 pnts
1500 pnts 
182nd Ebon Hawks - 2000 Points
Va'Krata Sept - 2500 Points
Fluff for the Fluff God! 
), it's usually because I screwed up the advance in some way and my opponent took advantage of it.
