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Brother and I had a disscussion yesterday on if you can make a complete close combat focused army and be competitive.

When I say close combat focussed I mean every unit you take is get in their face as fast as possible. Except min troops.

If you think so do you have a list you think can do it?

(This includes NO psychic phase) (or a psychic phase that you don't care if you get the powers off)

Curious to see the responses. Thanks!!

Yes.

http://www.torrentoffire.com/5244/weekend-in-review-atc-and-wolves#comments

You know many armies use the Psychic phase to optimize the Assault phase.

barnowl wrote:
You know many armies use the Psychic phase to optimize the Assault phase.

]]

I know Invisibility helps or Fortune just want to see if people think they can do it without it.

For me the psychic phase is pretty key. But yes, you can.....especially with a psychic phase

Close combat works great, as long its not the ONLY thing you do.

Mono-assault will fail, hard, every time.
Assault sprinkled in a balanced army can get the job done.

Almost every faction can field effective mono-assault lists It works fine when you go to the max. Heck, even imperial guardsmen are fierce in cc when supported by azrael and xeno inquisitor with nades.

Ideally, you still need some minimal ranged support but in some cases can do even without it. But note that staying 'completely' without ranged support is quite penalizing. The best way to go is have at least a couple decent shooty units - be it tanks, artillery or something like devastators, warp spiders or lootas.

I'll tell you tomorrow. I'm bringing 1500pts of Tau with tonnes of missiles to bear against a TWC heavy Space Wolves army and I'm bricking it.

Of course it can.

TWC and Pod Wolves have great speed to get stuck in and can shoot decently as well.

Jump Pack Rush BA with a LR or two does the same.

Templars Black Tide

Ork Green Tide/Truck Rush/Battlewagon Bash

Nids in many ways

Possibly Wych heavy DE with proper support.

Probably more.

I played GK against an all mech guard list the other day. I admit that my storm raven did manage to blow up a wyvern, but other than that I had to punch all of his tanks to death. It was a very very near thing, but it worked. Hammerhand ftw.

EDIT: I will add, however, that I think it's a shame no one is allowed to assault from deepstrike anymore. Giving that back to select units in select armies would go a long way to balancing shooting and combat out, imho. Genestealers for example should at least be able to assault from outflank - I mean, throw them a freaking bone. Webway portals, too. Vanguard Vets are a maybe.

 Paradigm wrote:
Of course it can.

TWC and Pod Wolves have great speed to get stuck in and can shoot decently as well.

Jump Pack Rush BA with a LR or two does the same.

Templars Black Tide

Ork Green Tide/Truck Rush/Battlewagon Bash

Nids in many ways

Possibly Wych heavy DE with proper support.

Probably more.

Funny how many of those options are among the worst builds in the game...

Just for the record I voted yes.

 soomemafia wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
Of course it can.

TWC and Pod Wolves have great speed to get stuck in and can shoot decently as well.

Jump Pack Rush BA with a LR or two does the same.

Templars Black Tide

Ork Green Tide/Truck Rush/Battlewagon Bash

Nids in many ways

Possibly Wych heavy DE with proper support.

Probably more.

Funny how many of those options are among the worst builds in the game...

Just for the record I voted yes.

Worst by the parameters of facing off against optimised tournament lists that are rarely seen used outside of such events, which operate with so many alterations to the rules and the expectations of the players to involved that it's an entirely different animal, and not the one I'm discussing here..

I would happily take any of those to your average flgs or game club and be confident of pulling out a win. It may not be as easy as a line - up - and - shoot Serpent/Riptide list, but against most armies they have a perfectly good chance.

 Paradigm wrote:
Worst by the parameters of facing off against optimised tournament lists that are rarely seen used outside of such events, which operate with so many alterations to the rules and the expectations of the players to involved that it's an entirely different animal, and not the one I'm discussing here..

I would happily take any of those to your average flgs or game club and be confident of pulling out a win. It may not be as easy as a line - up - and - shoot Serpent/Riptide list, but against most armies they have a perfectly good chance.

This.

My main is CSM and I tend to run them either very assault oriented or a shooty walker line.
Internet wisdom says both of those play styles, especially when combined with CSM, are doomed to fail foreverz. Yet I pull out more wins than losses in my local meta with these kinds of lists.
What's up with that, hey?
But yeah.
CSM/Elite Cult Marines, Rhinos, LR, Deep Striking Helbrutes, Spawn, Maulerfiends, and cultists. MOAR CULTISTS!

Close Combat is still one of the most powerful things in 40k. Its only issue is...actually initiating it. I still run a primarily CC oriented Ork army, because I know it will shut down most every other army once I get stuck in. If I can get a good enough chunk of Boyz wedged into threatening units, I can play the Objective Scoring game. That, and most times, Orks will come out on top of a CC match up, depending on how tailored your opponents are for a sword fight. (And in this edition, not many are).

My only wish is that Charge distances were better implemented (though Orks got better at it with the revival of WAAAGH). CC is still a threat every army needs to take seriously. A lot of times, even one shooty unit getting shut down can lop-side your entire chance of winning.

 Paradigm wrote:

 soomemafia wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
Of course it can.

TWC and Pod Wolves have great speed to get stuck in and can shoot decently as well.

Jump Pack Rush BA with a LR or two does the same.

Templars Black Tide

Ork Green Tide/Truck Rush/Battlewagon Bash

Nids in many ways

Possibly Wych heavy DE with proper support.

Probably more.

Funny how many of those options are among the worst builds in the game...

Just for the record I voted yes.

Worst by the parameters of facing off against optimised tournament lists that are rarely seen used outside of such events, which operate with so many alterations to the rules and the expectations of the players to involved that it's an entirely different animal, and not the one I'm discussing here..

I would happily take any of those to your average flgs or game club and be confident of pulling out a win. It may not be as easy as a line - up - and - shoot Serpent/Riptide list, but against most armies they have a perfectly good chance.

Hey, didn't mean to assault you or anything, just pointed that out!
And the truth is that they just are bad. No reason to deny it.

But that doesn't mean that they can't work, don't work or shouldn't be played and if you were talking about casual, then my bad.
And it is true that any of those lists could win a beer & pretzels game with no competitive opponent playing Space Marines for example. But it is also true that even if his list isn't that optimized, he does have an upper hand with shooty stuff.

TWC optimised with a well built Lord and Rune Priest rolling on biomancy are v tough. Highly competitive. Invisible chaos spawn are also grossly nasty. Good thread elsewhere here on Flying Circus and the Nurgle and Slaanesh versions are very combat oriented.

You can make a strong assault based list, yeah. All of my lists are mono-assault.

My Purple Rain CSM\Daemons list is currently 5-0 in my gaming group, and consists of CCW cultists, three maulerfiends, a daemonette blob and a seeker blob with locus of beguilement/grimoire+portalglyph heralds attached. With almost everything in the list having at least a 12" move (~22 in the seekers case), its great fun to see the look on your opponent's face when he realizes that you have three AV 12 walkers, a seeker blob and a daemonette blob within charge range of most of his stuff by the bottom of turn 1.

Granted, the list also has two heralds and a sorcerer fishing for invisibility, but you can swap out seekers and the heralds for hounds and a Nurgle DP, and the Sorcerer for a Lord or Huron and still be as effective.

No, assault doesn't work simply because all the tricks to get to assault are now unable to be assaulted from. Deep Strike, drop ships such as Valkyries and Stormravens, Infiltrate. Actually getting to assault would be nice since I do love the close combat, but throwing it all on a gamble of even getting there? No thanks. Now I have two armies that avoid Assault like the plague and my Nid list is at the back of the shelf.

If we include the psychic phase, sure there's ways like Catalyst on Nids to give FNP and all the other psychic tricks in Telepathy and Divination, but overall, nah. Not impressed with any delivery method so I'm avoiding it this edition.

Mono-CC armies can and do work, but only if they also have mobility.

 Araenion wrote:
Mono-CC armies can and do work, but only if they also have mobility.

Greentide and 50 ig with azrael + nade inquisitor fink differently. Mobility is great but sometimes you can also be durable enough to withstand punishment and still hit back. Though, most assault oriented armies rely on exceptional mobility, there are a few who can pull it even without moving 12+ a turn.

Close combat actually gets better by bringing more of it. If you split up your force you allow the opponent to shoot away a good chunk of your attack force (leading to many people believing that assault is inferior to shooting). If you bring enough assault you will have enough units when you reach your targets, even if they got shot at. And once you're in cc they will not be able to shoot (and most likely be inferior in cc to your units). In a shootout the remaining enemy models will shoot back.

So maybe that old stuff about bringing a knife to a gunfight is not appropriate. What about bringing 40 knives to a gunfight?