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I like the idea of so much ork dakka its drowning out all other sound in the air. And I've always disliked mech... while simultaniously liking zzapp guns. So I ended up with big gun batteries. Then came the looters.
Am I completely static? No, that would have me dead, so I include 90 boys, a mob of flashgits and a squad of bikers to intercept.
HQ is SAG or warpheads.

Man you can't blame a player of what he does and how he plays the money he invested on the game.
If someone wanna play gun line, he does it, if he wants draigowing, same.
What you can do is simply ignore him and don't play with him.
I myself play a semi gun line semi mobile flanking IG renegade army.
If you don't like it's ok, you will live by not playing with me.
I might not like your list too. Haters hate. Always.
Some armies due to lame codex or fluff can't play anything else.
And sorry but if I was a human in the grim darkness of 40.000 I would stay behind a trench waiting for any
Ugly mofo enemy to come eat me alive but till then I won't stop hittin the trigger...

A Marine in power armor wading through lasgun fire to start hacking guardsmen to death is pretty much a recreation of what happened to longbowmen fairly often during the hundred years war. (Mind you, the longbow was closer to the bolter than the lasgun during that time - top of the line missile equipment).

Except that's not what actually happens. If ranges were scaled up to be consistent with 28mm scale marines would still die at the same rate they do now, except they'd have to survive 50 turns of lasgun fire to get into chainsword range. Meanwhile artillery, air strikes, lascannons, etc, would wipe away entire squads (just as they do now). A marine player facing IG artillery wouldn't even bother unpacking their army, while the Basilisks would be deployed in the town's other FLGS.

So, like I said, melee in 40k is just exploiting a game mechanic, just like 5th edition wound allocation armies were exploiting a game mechanic and carrying slightly different equipment doesn't really magically make you harder to wound. It's fine if you want to just play a tabletop game and not think about it too much, but don't try to justify it as realistic.

The killer had a gunline, they want a gunline.

about the whole melee not making sense and deployment being too close and all that, did it ever occure to you that the games we play are supposed to be smaller parts of a bigger battle? you cant honestly believe that every marine/ guardsman/nid walked, in plain sight, to where they are. they were most likely dropped off by dropships/drop pods, or carefully used cover to sneak closer. the battle that we play is just when they launch the attack. and melee does make some sense. when you have the armor or numbers to withstand small arms fire long enough to get to grips with the enemy when in close range, why not do it? its easier to hit someone with a sword/claw/fist than it is a projectile weapon.

 Peregrine wrote:

A Marine in power armor wading through lasgun fire to start hacking guardsmen to death is pretty much a recreation of what happened to longbowmen fairly often during the hundred years war. (Mind you, the longbow was closer to the bolter than the lasgun during that time - top of the line missile equipment).

Except that's not what actually happens. If ranges were scaled up to be consistent with 28mm scale marines would still die at the same rate they do now, except they'd have to survive 50 turns of lasgun fire to get into chainsword range. Meanwhile artillery, air strikes, lascannons, etc, would wipe away entire squads (just as they do now). A marine player facing IG artillery wouldn't even bother unpacking their army, while the Basilisks would be deployed in the town's other FLGS.

So, like I said, melee in 40k is just exploiting a game mechanic, just like 5th edition wound allocation armies were exploiting a game mechanic and carrying slightly different equipment doesn't really magically make you harder to wound. It's fine if you want to just play a tabletop game and not think about it too much, but don't try to justify it as realistic.

You entire premise is based on the idea that the shooter always have a flat, mile long plain with no cover in between them and the assaulter. Aliens wasn't a two hour movie about marines shooting a bunch of scrub aliens at long range then driving home to have a beer. "realistic" shooting range means jack all when they're already in your face. or that you're shooting at an enemy of UNTOLD BILLIONS or have armor that shrug off most weapons

Plus, this "realism = long range" thing is nonsense to begin with. Infantrymen nowadays are trained to only engage targets when they're closer than 300m. Even in completely open ground.

Throw in any serious amount of terrain (like fighting in a city), and the engagement range very quickly drops down to 100m or less. Given that it's possible to run that distance in fewer than 10 seconds, I'd say that 40k is actually representing farther away distances than are present in the real world at the moment.

And as for close combat, the reason you don't see it often is because very few people train for it. If you train and build your strategy around close-combat fighting, you can beat face. That space marines are extensively trained for close combat (unlike modern marines), and that ork and tyranid (etc.) basically only do that, it makes sense that there would be a lot of chopping.

I mean, just look at the first battle of grozny. In brief, a bunch of russian tanks and APCs ride into the city. A bunch of rebels pop out of the ruins and slap some anti-tank bombs on them. The survivors pile out and are knifed to death more or less without getting a shot off. If this is what an army that is ACTUALLY trained in close combat can do as recently as 1995, it certainly makes sense that armies in the far future that are even MORE trained in hand-to-hand fighting would get into proper scraps more frequently than they do today.

More like 300-400m, that's what I was told the other day.

 Galdos wrote:
For me its simple, this is the fething 42nd Mil. Why the feth are people using swords?

I wouldnt want modern day soldiers to run into combat with longswords when I could have them kill the enemy with Assault Rifles, so why would I want my future and technologically advance soldiers to use swords?

For me it has nothing to do with winning sense I dont play the game, I just collect the models and for fluff

I actually dont like melee in ANY SciFi setting.

In a Fantasy setting I completely flip that and prefer melee only.

That's just it. 40k isn't a sci-fi setting. It's a fantasy setting with some loose trappings of technology. That's why Space Marines swear oaths of moment and are more concerned with heraldry and chapter honor than with proper user of cover and concealment. It's why you have elves who're supposed to just be magically better than you, and hordes of orks who exist for no reason other than to kill*. Throw in the Space Undead and the "Evil" Space Knights, and you've got a fantasy setting where battles hinge on the might of heroes rather than the thunder of artillery crewed by nameless faceless peasants.

* I know, I know. The orks are the result of a brilliant bit of genetic engineering to create the perfect self sustaining biological warfare agent, but on the surface they only exist to be antagonists.

Oh, and gunlines do suck, unless you're playing on a pool table where they never have to move to draw line of sight to your whole army. Block the middle of the board and the whole dynamic of the game changes. Maneuver becomes far more tactically rewarding when you have to manipulate the terrain to your advantage to impose your firepower on your opponent rather than just deploy, roll dice, and cap a few objectives on T5.

Im sorry, I consider anything in the far future with spaceships etc... to be Science Fiction.

Fantasy is more LotRs ish era in my eyes.

Thats just how I use the terms.


So yes, 40k IS Science Fiction in my eyes. Like Star Wars, Aliens, Star Trek, Starcraft, etc...

and Warhammer Fantasy is fantasy in my eyes like LotRs, Warcraft, etc..

Don't confuse genre with setting.

Star wars is fantasy with a futuristic setting. 40k is fantasy with a futuristic setting. Dune is fantasy in a furutistic setting. Even most of star trek is fantasy in a futuristic setting.

Science fiction requires science. It's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's A Brave New World.

If anything, 40k's world of anti-technology, and of rampant ideology (yes, including tau), and of magic, and of science being described as sorcery (while sometimes actually being sorcery) makes it rather the opposite of science fiction.

Just because someone has a laser pistol in his hand doesn't make it sci-fi.

I prefer to run assault armies. I've got several entire armies that have, if not no shooting, then maybe one or two shots, across the entire army. (Slaanesh daemons, khorne daemons, nurgle daemons).

6th ed has made this approach to the game entirely pointless. There is an entire class of models (flyers) that cannot be addressed in assault.

The game has been pushing assault out for two editions now. In 5th, it was cheap, numerous transports. My unit would spend four turns enduring gunfire as it crossed the battlefield to finally get there and find themselves banging on the hulls of 35 point tanks. Even if we killed it, the trade was very unbalanced.

Now in 6th, vehicles aren't quite so tough, but shooting is much better, and the addition of flyers means the end of the assault-only army. We can't ride in a transport to get into combat, because we have to spend a turn outside it before we do anything. We can't infiltrate or outflank into combat, we have to spend a turn getting shot. Even if we're open topped or an assault vehicle, we're subjected to snap shots. If we try to foot-slog across the field, we are forced to pull our casualties from the front ranks, essentially reducing our move.

Why do people want to make gunline armies? Because the idiots in charge of writing rules at GW have hamstrung assault armies.

 Redbeard wrote:
I prefer to run assault armies. I've got several entire armies that have, if not no shooting, then maybe one or two shots, across the entire army. (Slaanesh daemons, khorne daemons, nurgle daemons).

6th ed has made this approach to the game entirely pointless. There is an entire class of models (flyers) that cannot be addressed in assault.

The game has been pushing assault out for two editions now. In 5th, it was cheap, numerous transports. My unit would spend four turns enduring gunfire as it crossed the battlefield to finally get there and find themselves banging on the hulls of 35 point tanks. Even if we killed it, the trade was very unbalanced.

Now in 6th, vehicles aren't quite so tough, but shooting is much better, and the addition of flyers means the end of the assault-only army. We can't ride in a transport to get into combat, because we have to spend a turn outside it before we do anything. We can't infiltrate or outflank into combat, we have to spend a turn getting shot. Even if we're open topped or an assault vehicle, we're subjected to snap shots. If we try to foot-slog across the field, we are forced to pull our casualties from the front ranks, essentially reducing our move.

Why do people want to make gunline armies? Because the idiots in charge of writing rules at GW have hamstrung assault armies.

In a slight trade off, take transports with heavy / special weapons for the assaulting units, but don't put units in them, or rely solely on Heavy Support for Anti-Air or Anti-Armour..

Rolling a bunch of dice is fun though.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Galdos wrote:
For me its simple, this is the fething 42nd Mil. Why the feth are people using swords?

Because they have balls. unlike the cowards hiding behind their gun.

Nobody has balls in war. All of those guys are already dead.

You take every advantage you can find, stack them up, and hope the tilt is in your favor. There's nothing cowardly about hiding behind a gun. After all, the other guy can have a gun too.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
Don't confuse genre with setting.

Star wars is fantasy with a futuristic setting. 40k is fantasy with a futuristic setting. Dune is fantasy in a furutistic setting. Even most of star trek is fantasy in a futuristic setting.

Science fiction requires science. It's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's A Brave New World.

If anything, 40k's world of anti-technology, and of rampant ideology (yes, including tau), and of magic, and of science being described as sorcery (while sometimes actually being sorcery) makes it rather the opposite of science fiction.

Just because someone has a laser pistol in his hand doesn't make it sci-fi.

Um, yeah. No.

I mean, there's a fair amount of fantasy/sci-fi blend going on in 40K, but there's absolutely nothing exclusionary about that combination.

My dudes don't want to get into close combat.

Better to shoot enemies from here than there and do a last second cap.