tgf wrote:@focusedfire - have you played in GT's or at Adepticon? I play in 4-5 GT's a year and at adepticon last year. You and captain seem to be quibling over what is an "assault" vs. "shooting" army. IMO it has nothing to do with codex composition and everything to do with what is fielded. GK, SW, SM, IG, and Necrons get it done with shooting and rarely ever assault on the competitive stage. I agree the meta is all about killing vehicles, but that is because the vehicles were all about killing infantry. In my last GT I played a necron force and went 4-2 with the losses being minor and having the second highest battle points right behind the best general. I played against GK, SW, BA, SM, SM, and a BT player six space marines, the only player that has an assault army was the BT player, every other army was playing a strait up shooting army, any power weapons or assault they had was completely secondary, as was my force. I ended up in exactly 1 assault in all 6 games. Just because a codex may have lots of assault options it doesn't mean the winning comp makes it assault or even uses assault.
A couple of things here.
First, Tournaments are not the whole game. You are demonstrating a very narrow view of the game here..
Second, Basic Codex composition does matter. When you have an assault army with a lot of transports that are overloaded with guns and
BS 4. The transports do not change the fact that your base leaders excell in
cc.
In 5th you could pop a transport early and the unit inside could and often did survive the next 3-5 rounds of shooting. Now that same unit disappears in a single turn of
cc when the unit with the commander roll up and then assault the next turn.
You might make an argument for hero hammer here, but what it came down to was usually in the late game it was being able to assault and remove a unit that you could not remove with shooting.
Third and Finally, Yes I do play in tournaments. My business and family preclude my travling for the majors so I hand off my golden tickets, Like when I placed 3rd with my Tau in last years 'Ard boys qualifier(Usually place mid-pack to 2nd or 3rd in Nova style tournaments and qualifiers, depending on the draw). This old man now plays local tourneys and leaves the travelling to the younger tourney guys, though I often get requests for tune up games from the guys who are Hard core about their tourneys.
Suffice it to say that you and I have differing views on this matter. You think that an assault army that takes mostly shooting units and only a couple of units/characters that excel in assault is a shooty army.
I think that those same armies are still Assault due to their constant use of late game assaults to clear/capture objectives. They are still assault armies, just that they are not properly balanced ones.
IMO, Assault dominated because one lone base character from any of the
SM chapters and the
DE could wipe out 2 units in 2 turns when the entire army shooting couldn't kill one in a turn.
Nagashek wrote:Whoa whoa whoa whoa! I think at some point here we lost our sense of perspective. Let's dial all this back a little, shall we?
No loss of perspective.
Nagashek wrote:Sure. He only insulted his opinions. Though the way in which he did it was like saying "I wasn't insulting YOU when I called you fat. I was insulting your FAT!" It's the internet. All we are is opinions here. If he disagreed then there are far better ways to phrase that than the... shall we say "undiplomatic" turn of phrase used. I won't even take a stab at figuring out what your "alludes to an old addage" statement means. I'm afraid I don't understand you.
First) Yes, It is the internet and the tgf took a very strong and contentious stance in his
OP. There is nothing wrong with someone strongly disagreeing.
Second)If all you are is opinion here, then you are not listening to what others are posting, thus talking with each other would be a complete waste. Personally, I do not feel this way, nor do I believe that most others are truly this way. Again, opinion/=the individual. With this being the internet, people need to learn the difference. In other words,If someone is so fragile or easily ruffled that they cannot handle someone disparraging an idea as bad, then maybe that person should stay away from the internet until they mature enough to learn how to cope with people who disagree with them.
Third) Your statement about you finding his statement insulting is a bit hippocritical concerning your snide specualtive remark as to whether or not he played 3rd ed.
Your line about diplomacy when combined with you snide comments makes it seem that you feel it is ok to be very insulting....as long as your diplomatic and don't come right out and say such.
Honestly, Both you and tgf have been much more insulting in a patronizing personal manner than Capt Avatar saying that he thinks someones opinion stinks.
Also your anology about insulting someones fat=insulting an opinion is either a red herring or a basic logic failure.
Fourth)You don't understand me,...I agree. As to the old addage/saying I was refrencing, it is this:
Opinions are like A**holes, Everyone has one and they all stink.
This saying, means that everyone has strong opinions/beliefs that others will think stink.
Nagashek wrote:
This third point is the sticky part, and really where I think you might be having troubles with. "The shooting phase allowed[sic] the assault portions of your armies to do what they needed." This is not assault. This is combined arms. My definition of an assault based army is one that has the overwhelming majority of the army geared towards winning in the Assault (or Close Combat) phase of the game. A "shooty" army, is one whose overwhelming majority is geared towards winning in the Shooting phase. A "Combined Arms" force is what you describe: one where shooting allows your assault elements to do what is needed, whether that be cracking transports, softening up hard targets or horde units, or what have you. To put it another way, the Assault portion and Shooting portions of your army complement one another. Where the delineation is for these catagories is a little fuzzy and is often based on personal preference. Some people see it as based on number of units, others on number of points spent, and others on the number of attacks (at ranged or close.) For instance I classified my 4e SM army as a shooting army as there was only one assault unit and it was used primarily for counter assault, rather than aggressively seeking out the enemy. This, despite the fact that it comprised nearly a third of my points at 1850. Ahem. This definition is admittedly broad and unsubstantiated, but appears a common sense one based on experience and local mindset.
I gladly cede that most
SM armies are Combined arms forces.
This does not mean that I cede that Shooting dominated.
As you now know, I contend that Assault was so powerful, that armies with just a few good
cc characters gained a late game advantage. Yes, eveyone could shoot and did shoot. They could shoot all game and those units would still be there or could duck out of
LOS and not be shot.
Most characters in these armies are more geared for
cc than for shooting. One of these characters could do in one turn of assault what multiple squads could not with several rounds of shooting.
You got more rounds of shooting but
cc is what dominated where it mattered, the late game and objectives/
kp. Both were important, I am not saying other wise. Just,
IMO, late game assaults of the units whose transports had been cracked very often meant the difference between winning anf loosing.
Nagashek wrote:
And this backs my belief that there is some missing understanding or communication here. You are asserting that only a CCB or two and some scarabs constitute an "assault army." As defined above, that is barely combined arms, let alone assaulty. Barely. Even Captain Avatar agrees that Necrons are a shooting army. Based on the above provided definition about what constitutes an assault army, he did not in fact prove his point. You are free to rebutt, but you should support your counter-arguments better than you have. His thesis has nothing to do with the newness of the armies. The entire argument centered around shooting vs assault, when tfg asserted that shooting "was the dominant trait" of competitive armies, and CA attempted to refute that. CA then went on to list what I have defined as shooting armies, which did not support his claim sufficiently.
When scarabs and 2
ccb could(in 5th ed) gut your backfield on turns 2-3 and scarabs & Wraiths nail your transports and their contents before they got to mid-table, I would say that that was pretty strong
cc and very much assault oriented. Using every defensive deployment trick I had, the
CCB still did 3-1 damage over the Necron Shooting.
It is not the numbers of models/units, it is the end result.
When
cc rules allow for 2 units to wreak that much havoc, it is hard to see how you think that
cc played second fiddle in the crons.
Yes, Necrons shooting was/is potent, but my vehicles died more from warscythe lords doing fly overs, then the lords jumping out to tie up my broadsides meant no ability to take their other vehicles out.
As to Captain Avatars Thesis, Re read his post. He states that 5th was dominated by Assault armies with newer codices and access to plentiful cheap transports. Its in one of his first lines where he is out-lining his stance. Just because you say he did not, does not make it so.
In the last part here, you are coming off as a bit arrogant. Not sayng you are, just this is how you are coming across. To quote you, "what I have defined as shooting armies". Not everyone accepts your definition and you contradict yourself here by calling armies that you had earlier defined as a third seperate type"Combined Arms" as now being "Shooting".
Instead, maybe if you asserted that that they were Combined Arms Armies with an emphasis on shooting/tank popping we might make some headway towards communicating.
Attempting to dictate the defintition based upon opinion hurts communication and I think all here have been guilty of such. Maybe it was due to the tone of the
OP. How about we instead, enter into a discourse of how we see things based upon and recognizing that they are only our perceptions. Then we might be able to commincate on the differences without the I'm right/Your wrong problem.
Nagashek wrote:
No, they are a shooting army that can survive assaults. You can define this by total number of assault oriented units in the book, the effectiveness of the ones that exist in the army, or by the viability of builds that concentrate on winning in the assault phase, but no matter how you define it the Codex: Space Marines is not for assault armies. Just because you can SURVIVE assault, doesn't mean you are an assault army. By that understanding, TH/SS terminators are clearly shooting units because of their ability to withstand shooting.
No, its the ability to win assaults due to just a couple of characters/models.
I'd like to note that you keep trying to use "debate tactics" here when they really are not necessary. Creating a strawman based off of assertions does not create a fact, it just distracts from an honest dicussion.
Here you say tha sm's are only good at surviving assaults, this is not a fact, just your assertion. Yet you proceed as if it were. By your own statement
SM are very effective in not only survivng assaults but, also in winning them.
A)Fact is that most units that lose combat are destroyed.
B)Logic dictates that if
SM are good at survivng
cc then they are winning.
C)If they are winning at
cc, then they are good at
cc.
D)If they are good at
cc then they are a
cc army.
E)If they also shoot well, then they are an assault(or
cc) army that also shoots well(Or a combined arms force).
Again, it is the end result. If the army could and did use
cc to gain late game victories by assaulting squads(that had lost their transports) on objectives, then assault was the dominant factor of the win.
Nagashek wrote:
But that was not the point of the argument. The argument revolved around shooting vs assault. Nids is an assault army that sucked. Tau is a shooting army that sucked. Clearly we can't use these polar opposites to form our opinions and will have to dig deeper for evidence supporting one side or another. I could say that Assault was the Dominant Trait of 5e because Tau sucked at it, but that would be a false assumption when so many other shooting armies were doing well.
Captain Avatars post, where he stated his assertion as to who dominated, says otherwise. He said that Assault armies with newer codices abd access to plentiful
cheap transports dominated.
You keep saying that he did not mention newer codices and transports but he did.
Nagashek wrote:
Were vehicles doing your assaulting for you? Were they engaging in the close combat phase for anything but grenade magnets? If they weren't dreads, the answer is no. The cheap vehicles that you are talking about here are transports. The cheap transports that were the most game changing were the ones that put out the most shots.
You are coveniently leaving out the big one for 5th ed. Tank Shock/Ramming. I'm comfortable asserting that Tank shocks and ramming were the vehicular equivolent of
cc. How many wins by tank shocking a unit off of an objective?
Nagashek wrote:The dominating DE lists were not Assault based, but Shooting based. My own list was 70% in points allotment and 10/13 choices taken in shooting only, and many viewed that as too diluted.
Thing is, that 30% were much more effective at removing reslient infantry than shooting.
Also, your percentages match up with the meta down here. Sounds like the guys criticiing were just hating.
Nagashek wrote:
I do find it interesting that your Tau never lost to GK unless somehow the GK charged you, given the high numbers of high strength, long range, and mobile shooting GK's can bring to the field, and the obviousness of any close combat tactics aimed at your lines and the Tau ability to redeploy (if you build for it.) Unless of course those GK brutalized you in the shooting phase for 2/3 of the game and assaulted you off of the objectives in the last turn. Just because you lost because of an assault doesn't mean that assault was the game's focus, or even dominant trait. What about the 4-5 turns of shooting that preceeded that assault?
What good is removing 3/4 or more of your opponents army with shooting if in the last turn he can kill your objective holders/deniers with a lone model or two?
To me, this made
cc more effective and dominant than shooting in 5th ed
Nagashek wrote:
One assault unit doesn't make an army, nor did that one model wipe out armies, nor even do a majority of damage. Night Fight negatively affected Necrons as much as it protected them from the other army's SHOOTING attacks. It did nothing to curb ASSAULT armies. So naturally it was easier to beat them in assault. If you had any units left to do it, that is. And even when you did, you'd just get the tarpit anyway unless you were a brutally good CC unit. Did the Necrons charge that unit with wave after wave of their own men until it died? Nope, they shot it, staying away until it was dead. In short, avoiding assault, or counter assaulting with their own units when the odds supported it. Why charge when you can shoot? Shooting allows you to engage more targets at greater range and offers more tactical flexibility than CC does, and the fact that the Necrons have so few CC oriented units supports this design intent.
I beg to differ.
ccb lords were doing tremendous damage. I am very thankful that the new vehicle movement rules nerfed the flyover assault.
As to Night fight hurting the Crons??? What list were you playing? They tourney lists down here used dual crypteks with solar pules. This hurt the opponent while leaving the 'Crons free to shoot. Funny thing i that the
ccb's were doing more damage than the tesla and doomsday rays. Go figure.
As to your point of one unit does not make an assault army....I still argue effect and end result are what show that
cc was dominant if not
op.
By your assertion, I could take one unit of nob bikers and two units of Flash gits and the army would be shooty. I disagree
Nagashek wrote:
I say otherwise. BS5 WS1 S1 T5 A1 LD10 SV 3+ Is this unit for Assault? Are you sure? It has good stats. Clearly it must be meant for assault.
What about BS4 WS4 S3 T3 A1 LD8 SV 5+. What is that one good for? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it could describe most of the units for at least two army books.
What about if the top one has a Power Weapon? The bottom one? What about if the top one had a S6 AP3, Rending 36" range gun? And if the top one is 3ppm while the bottom is 9?
Which good stats are WHERE is what helps to define a unit. The rest is equipment, options, position in the Force Org chart, etc.
Here you are being intentional obtuse in order to make a poor point. The armies being discussed had
cc wargear as standard issue on their seargents and characters. They also had statlines that lend towards excelling in
cc.
Sometimes, difficult in telling if you joke. Maybe if you use the Orkmoticons would help?
Nagashek wrote:
Wittle them down a bit by... what? How? Bribes? Harsh Language? Asking them to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Shooting? What a novel idea. Once again, Assault here is your secondary concern, AFTER shooting.
Once wittled down and/or when you have your
CC character +units in position, it is easier and prefferable to assault them off of the objectives rather than lossing the game, "Is it not?". Again, yes you shoot first but assaulting was/is the quickest way to remove problem infantry. If your army was designed with an innate ability to excel at
cc and you are faily sure of dealing more unsaved wounds than your opponent, then assault was the way to go. Also, you did not have to wittle the ork boys down too much. Get them down to 16 models and make sure that you do the assaulting with an appropriate unit(Usually a troop with a hero/
IC in it)
Nagashek wrote:
Stay in cover and never do anything as slowed as charging a unit you couldn't beat? Unless it was going to outshoot you. But hey, its that odds thing again. Charging COULD be an option for late game objective denial/siezing.
First)Nice strawman. I never said to assault against units you couldn't beat. That was all you. I said Assaulting in the late game with a small squad was a viable tactic in mamy games.
Also, for someone who claims to have a problem with insulting terminology through inference, you seem mighty free in trying to imply that I would do something "slowed".
Don't worry, I'm not one of those Politically Correct hypocrites that tries to censor others speech, I just wanted to point out how your statement came across.
Nagashek wrote:
So Sternguard armed with Combi Plasma would rather charge you than shoot you? What about combi-flamers? AP4 rounds? What if they were on the objective and you weren't? Would they charge you and get pulled off of the objective, or stand pat and shoot you until you left? Just because it is better at assaulting than you doesn't mean its meant to assault!
A) No need for the exclamation point/aggression.
B) The point is that Assault based armies are geared so much more for assaults is that their base non-specialist units "are" better than non-
cc focused armies units that are focused on
cc. This along with the Tranport issue was the major cause of imbalance.
C) Combi-flamer would to the assault
D)Your questions here about the variables serve only to cloid the truth that there are many times when late game assaults made the difference. I never said that they always did such, I did infer that such tactics were dominant and definig of 5th ed.
A good general would work to create the mismatches that allowed for late objective grabbing. You know this, you are a good general.
I ask that you quit creating barriers to discourse and instead actually engage in a dialogue. All of this obfuscating is a bit wearing.
Nagashek wrote:
That's rediculous. If 5e was as dominated by Assault as YOU claim, then Tyranids would have been unbeatable.
Again, never said that it was
cc alone. Rather, I was agreeing with Captain Avatar that it was newer Assault based codices that offered plenty of cheap transports that dominated.
I have asserted that Shooting was not dominant and that the game was dominated by armies that could do both.
Nagashek wrote:
I did. And you are incorrect. His first assertion was that ASSAULT ruled 5e. He then mentioned cheap spammable transports.
Actually they were both in the same sentence and as such are all part of the same assertion.
Nagashek wrote:
By your own points, his as well, you have shown that without shooting, Assault is nothing.
Usually,
We, also, showed that shooting without assault usually meant nothing.
Up til now I have left out that Assault weapons, while shooting were "Assault based and gave a tremendous advantage in 5th ed. So, yes, they shoot but they allowed Assault based armies much more manuverability and made their assaulys even more deadly.
This leads back to both Captain Avatars point and mine that Assault armies with newer codices and cheap transports held the advantage. It was not shooting that dominated, it was
Fotm armies that had very good basic assault abilities, wargear and vehicles.
Nagashek wrote:
5e was the worst assaulting ever should have gotten, and as a Tau player in 3e who had to contend with BA rhino rush and Speed Freeks every saturday, I honestly never thought I would say this. GW went too far with 6th ed with the CC rules.
I'm trying to remember if it was 2nd or 3rd that had the blind grenades and solitaire combo that killed an entire
IG foot list in a single turn.
But, Yes, 3rd ed
cc was broken and
GW has been trying to back away from that mistake ever since.This does not mean that they had brought it into balance with 5th.
Nagashek wrote: You can cite "...in the hands of a competant general" all day long, but the truth of the matter is that some armies are just inherently stronger than others. If even that level of agreement can't be reached between us, then we are speaking different languages.
And, I believe that this is what I've been saying. That Assault based armies with newer codices and cheap transports had the edge and were what dominated.
As for the Tau. I said that in 4th ed, "If handled competently", the Tau were good. Never said they were omg good, had emode or that they were good in 5th ed.
Did I play my Tau all 5th ed? yes
Were they at a disadvantage? yes
Why did I keep playing them? I, liked the challenge
Nagashek wrote:
This is also when you start getting really rude, primarily by casting aspersions as to my character and the sort of army I play. Also you conveniently forget I play DE.
I apologize, Thought that you would catch the jesting naure of my comments by the use of the Orkmoticons. Must not have put enough in...lets see.....................
"E)Your comment about 5th being the worst assaulting should ever get confirms my suspiscions that you have an irrational bias against the shooting phase. Love how you try to claim to be a Tau player here to prop up an(
IMO) irrational and fallacious argument.
F)( Cue generic german interrogator voice)Admit it, your no true Tau player. You are an
SM player that has a small Tau army sitting on the shelf somewhere, collecting dust.
"
Yeah I should have used more but, those there are more than you used. You have come across as fairly arrogant, patronizing and omguangrydude in several sections Maybe, we both should use them a bit more.
Nagashek wrote:
Backstory time!*Edit*
Cool story bro.
My Playing goes back to 2004 for
40K. This is me owning an army. Was playing Fantasy back in the early 90's and around a lot of the
40K players from late 2nd ed on. Friends started in on me getting an army back in 2001 and finally jumped in with Tau in 2004.
I could go on with a similar backstory of how I got my Tau and Eldar except that I keep playing my armies even when they are no longer
Fotm.
But, we are using enough band-width with our back and forth.
Let me get to the important part about 9 paragraghs of backstory down.
Nagashek wrote:
In short, I don't have a bias against the shooting phase, I have a bias against GW making half of a combined arms force (as I see DE, SW, and others to be) utterly worthless. I enjoy playing all phases of the game. Dark Eldar lets me to that in a way that Tau, SM, and Necrons never did. I'm more manuverable, shooty, and assaulty than any of those armies. I'm also more fragile, too, but I like the finesse. I do not disagree that combined arms was strong in 5th, or that assault played a role in the game, but when I look back and compare 5th ed against the backdrop of my 40k experience, I know that 5e was nothing like the previous editions of the game in terms of assault. To call 5e's "dominant trait" assault when compared to those is just not correct.
And I disagree.
I also will now assert that with 6th, you will see transport spam reduced(Not gone, just reduced). You will see more units on foot and with the infantry assaults against vehicles, you
will see more
cc. both in units taken and in combat in the game.
While I do believe that 6th ed will favor move and shoot armies a bit more than 5th ed. I also think that 6thed helped the 'nids more than people realize, That the increased use of infantry units will make the
DoM and Mawloc more effective.
All in all,
CC units will need to be taken in larger numbers in order to get the job done because it is a tougher enviroment for the assault units. The balance is that squads of 10
SMs, 15 Kroot and 10 Striking Scorpions can now glance a fast moving AV10 vehicle to death in a single assault.
It all goes to what I contended at the end of my last post.
While disagreeing, you complimented that section and called it food for thought.
Hope this clears up some of the miscommunication we have been having.
Later,
ff
Officially elevated by St. God of Yams to the rank of Scholar of the Church of the Children of the Eternal Turtle Pie at 11:42:36 PM 05/01/09 
