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I have a rather general question for you dakka. While it is well known that 7th edition isn't the most fair towards close combat, it must still be a workable phase. With that in mind, who do you all see as being the most viable as a melee force?

Space Wolves with allies. All other lists are a distant second at CC. A good SW list can kill other CC lists at 2:1 or even 3:1 points odds. That's how good they are.

Martel732 wrote:
Space Wolves with allies. All other lists are a distant second at CC. A good SW list can kill other CC lists at 2:1 or even 3:1 points odds. That's how good they are.

This is a bit of an exaggeration. Space Wolves are very good at CC (Wulfen are one of the only things I've found that can reliably kill a Wraithknight in close combat), but double your points in clowns will overrun a Space Wolf/allies CC list easily enough.

Back to the original question a big part of the reputation of 7th as 'not a melee edition' is that many dedicated melee armies aren't doing well right now. Grey Knights, Tyranids, Orks, and a lot of Chaos are all down towards the bottom of the power curve, and the strongest builds in the top-tier Codexes all revolve around shooty units (grav-cannons, scatterbikes, Riptides...).

Most of the best close combat units these days are found as support elements in combined-arms forces rather than as the centerpiece of a dedicated melee force. If you want a strong army built primarily around close combat most of them will (to a greater or lesser extent) rely on psychic support to survive into combat and win once there. Space Wolves and Chaos Daemons are probably your strongest single-Codex options, but most Imperial armies can serve as the centerpiece of a respectable melee-focused force. An effective Eldar/Dark Eldar/Harlequin 'assault army' has to pick its melee battles to the point where it ends up as a combined-arms force in the end.

This does all depend on the competitiveness of your meta and on how much of a purist you want to be on 'melee force', if you ask a more specific question I can elaborate further. (Also I haven't read the Genestealer Cult or Black Crusade books so I can't comment on those at the moment)

Whilst vanilla melee units (and even specialists) can be quite useless against most other armies occasionally you can find a combo using melee units, IC, artifact buffs and psychic powers to make almost unkillable balls of death.

The most extreme of these examples are the death stars moatly concisting of: 2++ re-rollable invulnerable saves, FnP, invisible and a tonne of high strength attacks (it also helps if the unit has a 12" movement). These units can quite easily tank the majority of shooty armies.

Aside from cheesy SM ally lists I find the Khorne Daemonkin to be a strong melee army and the new genestealers are looking great!

I guess my question would be more from the stand point of a single codex source, as opposed to picking and choosing from the best of what you can. I hardly play with allied forces, and with how my current meta is, no one else does either.Where i usually play its a rather casual atmosphere, so there really aren't any tourny style lists that circle around often.

To be a good melee army in 7th you need the following:

1) Speed (the most important one), or some other way to reach the backfield quickly
2) Some combination of durability and hitting power

Or have expendable/cheap/regenerating chaff units (daemons, GSC.)

For those armies that don't have one of those options, they're a bit screwed.

 stratassj wrote:
I guess my question would be more from the stand point of a single codex source, as opposed to picking and choosing from the best of what you can. I hardly play with allied forces, and with how my current meta is, no one else does either.Where i usually play its a rather casual atmosphere, so there really aren't any tourny style lists that circle around often.

I would say the best non competative fun cc codex to play (in my opinion) are Daemons and KDK. The cc lists for these codeces are fast and hard hitting, Daemons also have the ability to support these units with psychic powers if you want to go a bit more comp.

My KDK is primarily CC, Soul Grinders and Melta Bikes for some range, but bikes w/ PF and Soul Grinders have the Iron Claw. I've always like assault especially from hordes of Choppa Boyz.

Properly done Harlequins can be quite strong. Not Eldar/Tau/SM strong, but if done right can tear apart many lists.

Space wolves by a proper mile. They are the perfect CC army IMO (you need supplements to me the most out of it, but the original book is still pretty solid). Demonkin can be fun, but I got burnt out on them after umpteen games of "run forward and chop chop". Bugs would be more viable if they had invuln saves and every dedicated CC unit wasn't WS3, I3.

Two armies that can actually build viable CC armies people usually look over are Crimson Fists and DE. DE CC list is super monobuild, but it can be pretty cool. Especially when run alongside Harlequins.

Genestealer Cult can dish out some CC hurt, but they are more of a glass cannon than DE (in combat anyway).

I'm super happy to say BA got better with the new supplement, but their original dex is still complete ass. It also remains to be seen how much Angels blade will help their CC game. They're still dependent on the charge and their Demi company is beyond terribad but running the Death Company army with assault out of DS terminators could be pretty sweet. Still not even in the same ballpark as Furries or Khorne though.

The fact that a lot of armies are receiving "where did they come from" [stab] options - fist of khorne bezerkers, orbital intervention blood angels terminators, sanguinary guard, raven guard vanguard, genestealers, etc.

That makes a big difference in the calculus of melee versus assault.