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So, from what you've seen, experienced, heard, what is the best melee army in 40K regardless of alignment? My guess would be either Space Wolves or World Eaters... again just a guess.

What have you seen as the best melee army?

Thanks

SG

Absolutely not one of those two. Orks do melee better than those two, and Orks aren't exactly sweeping the meta.

Chaos Daemons and Tyranids do melee much better, as do Thousand Sons (well, Tzaangors and Daemon Princes, but still). Probably one of those three.

Space Wolves and World Eaters are solidly meh.

Nids are up there. Genestealers are flat out nasty. Genestealer Cults are also pretty good, Abberants are nasty in CQC and they get stealers too.

Imperial Knights + Catachan Guard is also a nasty melee army. The LVO winning list was basically some artillery fire support from the Castellan + some Guard ranged units, and a lot of melee guard + bullgryns. You can also take Knights Gallant, which are among the strongest melee units in the game.

Blood Angels have some decent melee units as well, Smash captains are ever-popular, but Death Company and Sanguinary Guard are pretty good, if not top meta.

Orks are another great melee option... 3-4 blobs of 30 boyz, with Psyker support for Da Jump, alongside Unstoppable Green Tide letting them come in 9" away from you on any table edge, makes them a very credible melee threat.

Flesh Tearers, like blood angels but with better melee chapter master.

Orks and Genestealer cult.

Tricks to get into combat and enough bodies to have something left after the retaliation.

The best melle army is one that also shoots really good.

Shinning spears + reapers
Catachan Gaurd with IK's
Orks

Calling Shining Spears + Reapers a melee army is like calling Genghis Khan a card-carrying democrat. You might be able to make that argument, maybe even with a straight face. But it's silly. The claim only gets made for shock value.

Even if you consider the shooting of the Shining Spears themselves to be melee (a reasonable argument, conceptually), most of the list is still shooting. You have one (maybe two) Spears unit. What other CC is there? While there have been CC-oriented Aeldari lists, they tend not to be shining spears.

Also, not many (good) lists run both a Shining Spear an Dark Reaper deathstar. That works about as well as running a Castellian then running moar Castellians. Some units/threats are good as one, bad as spammed.

Shining Spear lists are shooty lists with a single deathstar. They use CC, but are not CC lists. You wouldn't call a Guard shooty list that includes a SmashCaptain as the only CC threat a melee list, would you?

Eldar are good, but calling them the best melee army is only backed up by your hatred of those knife-ears.

FFS, what about Dark Reapers shouts "Melee"? *Tac Marines* wipe the floor with them on a *per model* basis. And you get 2-3 of them per Reaper. And they're trash. And they're not a melee unit.

The hate is strong with this one.

Playable Melee Army is an oxymoron.

Xenomancer makes a good point. Some of the best "melee" armies can be made from units that come from traditionally shooting Factions

An army centered around 3 max units of Shining Spears with Skyrunner Autarchs would probably win 1v1 matches with almost any other "strickly melee" army like Nids, Daemons or any variation of Marines.
The issue is that if you are taking Eldar, even to spam Spears, you are very unlikely to not include some of their fantastic shooting units, like Reapers

Which lends to Bharring's argument that they could never be considered a "melee" army.

In short, there are no "melee" armies in 40K. Those lists that try tend to get removed from the board pretty fast. Those lists that try to balance with some shooting are no longer considered "melee"

-

GSC maybe, we'll see.

Drukhari coven tankspam is a good list that does most of its damage with melee.

Otherwise, you see about 1/3 of a competitive list dedicated to melee and 2/3 to shooting.

"An army centered around 3 max units of Shining Spears with Skyrunner Autarchs would probably win 1v1 matches with almost any other "strickly melee" army like Nids, Daemons or any variation of Marines.
The issue is that if you are taking Eldar, even to spam Spears, you are very unlikely to not include some of their fantastic shooting units, like Reapers"
Three max Shining Spears units is half your points in a 2k list. For 27 bodies. 3+ 4++ vs shooting, 2 wounds each.

One squad can have Fortune. One can have Protect. One can have LQR. One can have all 3. But none of those buffs can be put on any one squad twice.

You're going to get two of those squads shot off the table easily.

There are mostly-CC Aeldari builds. But they don't use Shining Spears. Wyches, Avatar, Guardians is one. Harlies is another. Covens is a third. They do exist. They aren't "Spears + Reapers" lists, though - they usually don't include those units.

I'm not sure if any of those lists would rank over Orkz, though.

GSC have some fancy tricks, so it'll be interesting to see how they do.

Most competitive lists are mostly or all shooting, though.

BA DC hits hard with Lemartes, when they make the charge, but they die fast. SG needs a lot of support to be able to do something significant.

It's 8th if your not shooting your playing wrong.

Calling nids a strictly melee army is a gross misunderstanding of nids.

Nids would get trounced if they went pure melee. Nids work best by layering on all kinds of threats. They CAN be built for pure melee but its not likely to get you entirely through a game.

GSC, DE, Knights, AM (Catachans + Bullgryn), Chaos Daemons, Orks, Nids, Harlies, BA and SW probably in that order.

As BCB said though, a melee only army is an immediate uphill battle.

Best melee in each you mentioned:

Imperium: Imperial Guard Catachans.

Bullgryns, Priest, Harker, Guardsmen. Not much can deal with this. They also have the ability to enable melee Knight(s) and the artillery and range to support it. You can build a complete melee guard list and still feature a Castellan. None of the flavors of Space Marine are worth anything at all in melee. Their base troop is 13 points and has 1 attack. Enough said.

Chaos: Death Guard + Thousand Sons Combo.

Mortarian and Magnus combine to create a beast mode slaughterfest. Mortarian alone, with some decent dice, can really wreck a game completely. His bodyguards are also no slouches in combat, and Tzaangors with a Dark Matter Crystal can be dangerous as well, despite the recent warp time nerf. Overall they have a good toolkit to support melee, as well, if you decide to go with plagueburst crawlers they synergize nicely.


Xenos: Genestealer Cults.

The Cults are basically Orks +1, but without the unenviable task of working around the chess clock. What Orks do with weight of bodies GSC do with targeted precision. Their codex allows them have complete control over it, they can pull in some of the best melee from the Nids codex if they want (Tyrants are still good), as well as Brood Brothers (because, Guardsmen are still the best troops in the game, even if you're worshipping the 4 armed emperor).



Noteable runners-up:

Orks - Still a great army. They play in all phases of the game and require precision and tactics to get the most out of them. A higher skill requirement than GSC.
Tyranids - In a decent spot. They can ally GSC so they're automatically going to be improved, but on their own they function well with a hybrid of shooting and melee.
Ynnari - These guys have good melee units but aren't really a melee army. In general if you drop the shining spears the focus is primarily on dakka.
Chaos Daemons - surprisingly decent and do better than people expect of them. Daemon princes are still good.

As many others have already said, inorder to have a dangerous melee army, you must have credible shooting threats just to keep them honest.

My army is the best melee I have seen.

3 bean Dark elf Salad (in spaaace!).

Kabal for shooting. 8 or 9 dark lances and blasters plus plenty of splinter.

Wytch cult for speed. I hit where I want when I want, usually turn 1. A melee army can't afford to play their game.

Coven hit hard and are tough as hell. And becuase the cults got there the turn before it turns into just a slug fest. Coven does well in a slug fest.

The best melee army will have 3 things. Speed. Tough hard hitting units. And credible shooting.

 Xenomancers wrote:
The best melle army is one that also shoots really good.

Shinning spears + reapers
Catachan Gaurd with IK's
Orks

You missed one, Tyranids. It is the bestw balanced faction. It do very very good in movement, psychic, shooting and melee.

It's a shame that daemons haven't even rated a mention. You'd think they'd be the best melee army when you consider how many of their units can't do anything else.

Custodes? Everything hits on 2+, pretty much everything does D3 damage minimum, everything has at least -2 AP, and S6 is their average strength in combat.

They have the scariest melee dreadnought (I think) in the Telemon (although everyone equips it for ranged) which can have up to 5 S16 attacks, AP -4 and 4 damage, and Aquilon terminators have 4 attacks each, S10, AP -4, D3 damage, with no minus to hit.

Orks like iz sappose' ta be!

As a World Eaters-player, I can safely state that they are trash as a melee-army.

1) They don't really hit that hard for a melee-focused army. The only really hardhitting unit is Berzerkers and to some extent Daemon Princes. Otherwise it's just your basic CSM-units (oh noes!) with +1 A on the charge. Scary...

2) They lack the durability/cheapness to take a beating while waddling into combat.

3) They lack the tools to get into combat quickly and reliably.

I can make a better melee-focused army out of my Eldar, IG and, ironically, even my Thousand Sons, than I currently can with my World Eaters...

Khorne Daemons are hard to ignore. Bloodletters are ungodly for only 7 points.

A unit of 30 can:

1) Deepstrike
2) Charge 3d6 inches, re-rolling if a character is nearby and getting +1 if they take an instrument (which they should)
3) hit on 2+ with 61, str 5, -3ap 2dmg on a 6+ wound roll
4) do it all again for 3 cp

Apart from the cp cost (which can be made up for with a cheap battalion of brimstones or nurglings) I can't see anything else comparing.

Plus khorne daemon princes are brutal, if they take claws they're getting 8 str 8 -2ap 2 dmg attacks. If they take skullreaver they'll do around 20 wounds to a knight each turn of combat (again fighting twice of the have the CP).

Pair that up with some chaff clearing from pink horrors, and some psychic support from thousand sons and you're all gravy

Yeah that's great. You'll drop in with your bomb and just absolutely overkill a squad of guardsmen. Your giant unit killed 40 points.

 ServiceGames wrote:
So, from what you've seen, experienced, heard, what is the best melee army in 40K regardless of alignment? My guess would be either Space Wolves or World Eaters... again just a guess.

What have you seen as the best melee army?

Thanks

SG

Goff orks are hard to argue against. Not many units can claim 234.33 attacks in a round. I dont know how anyone could compete with that

Orks and any stupidly cheap troop unit which inexplicably gets 4+ attacks...you can't beat the weight of numbers.

 Marmatag wrote:
Yeah that's great. You'll drop in with your bomb and just absolutely overkill a squad of guardsmen. Your giant unit killed 40 points.

I mean if you charge guardsman I suppose so but why would you do that? If your opponent is still well screened then just hold them back till turn 3. Kill the screen and then chatge.

Plus 30 models can charge 6 or more units if there's only screen available. Take one hostage and avoid being shot in your opponent's turn.

Just play for fun. This game is far to expensive to worry about being the best.

Grab 3 guys and have a 3 to 4 way games. You're not going to worry about who's better. Besides in one on one pick up games some net listed loser with all flying will kick your ass anyways

The Allfather wrote:
Just play for fun. This game is far to expensive to worry about being the best.

Grab 3 guys and have a 3 to 4 way games. You're not going to worry about who's better. Besides in one on one pick up games some net listed loser with all flying will kick your ass anyways

Read the name of this thread:
What is considered to be the best playable melee army in 40K (Imperium, Xenos, or Chaos)

This thread isn't about what is the most fun or derpy. It's about what is the absolute best, the crème de la crème.

Well out of the armies that are focused on melee according to 40k stats Chaos Daemons seem to be doing the best with a >50% faction win rate (and greater win rate as part of a soup list). Followed by GSC with 50%, then Orks leading the bottom half of all factions with a 48% win rate.