Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Pyreguard wrote:
I personally think one of the reasons am doing well atm in my area is, everybody ditched their transports. Its nearly all foot. So nearly everybody is packing more anti-infantry firepower and they have reduced what anti - tank they have.

Do Necrons and various flyerspam lists just not exist in your area?

CaseyColt wrote:
I'd definitely like to see some potential lists that are more than chimera spam, without forge world or allies.

Just to point out the obvious: I use FW rules just like any other rules GW publishes, and various FW units are important to my lists (of any type). So if you want a no-FW discussion you're probably looking in the wrong place.

So for 55pts, you sit back and nullify the strength of your short range vets? Seems pretty silly. While you guys are sitting in their metal coffin, they're wasting time that they could be contributing. At least foot guard starts ploughing high strength, long range fire from turn one.
Again, foot guard can take artillery and place it out of LoS. You're listing a bunch of things that foot guard can do, but instead of spending 55pts on what is essentially a turn of survivability, you get a whole extra squad.

bogalubov wrote:
However, if you take artillery and hide it out of line of sight you can rain high S shots on your enemy without them being able to retaliate. Then your opponent has to come to you. This is where 3-4 chimeras full of vets can make for excellent counter attacking forces. The chimera also protects the guys inside from getting hit by a bale flamer or tesla for at least a turn. The explosion will kill some, but I'd rather take a chance on that than just be shot right away.

The problem with this is that holding back Chimeras and not shooting effectively with their passengers means wasting points, meanwhile all that tesla/lascannon spam/etc is blowing up Chimeras. This kind of strategy only works when your opponent has very limited anti-transport firepower, and the 6th edition metagame is very strongly in favor of spamming lots of things that kill Chimeras efficiently.

As most have pointed out in this thread, infantry is just terrible now (unless you can make bikes or terminators scoring). There's no good way to get across the table for them.

Vendettas are a great way of getting across the table. The question now is whether to drop my troops to a token scoring unit or two in Vendettas, or if multiple units of Chimera vets still have a purpose in addition to the Vendettas.

 Peregrine wrote:

bogalubov wrote:
However, if you take artillery and hide it out of line of sight you can rain high S shots on your enemy without them being able to retaliate. Then your opponent has to come to you. This is where 3-4 chimeras full of vets can make for excellent counter attacking forces. The chimera also protects the guys inside from getting hit by a bale flamer or tesla for at least a turn. The explosion will kill some, but I'd rather take a chance on that than just be shot right away.

The problem with this is that holding back Chimeras and not shooting effectively with their passengers means wasting points, meanwhile all that tesla/lascannon spam/etc is blowing up Chimeras. This kind of strategy only works when your opponent has very limited anti-transport firepower, and the 6th edition metagame is very strongly in favor of spamming lots of things that kill Chimeras efficiently.

As most have pointed out in this thread, infantry is just terrible now (unless you can make bikes or terminators scoring). There's no good way to get across the table for them.

Vendettas are a great way of getting across the table. The question now is whether to drop my troops to a token scoring unit or two in Vendettas, or if multiple units of Chimera vets still have a purpose in addition to the Vendettas.

I would be thrilled if people wasted their shots on my chimeras. That means they're not shooting the vehicles that are actually doing the damage out there. Last tourney I played 4/5 games I had all 3 of my chimeras still alive by the end of the game. People focused on my artillery while the vets did a great job eating anyone who got too close.

The irony is, with everyone going anti-horde to deal with guard allies and "Troops on the ground" build's, a full mech army would probably knock people for a loop, they would never expect it, and if you took a ton of tanks that could deal with the infantry spam people are running now, you could probably do fantastic by going directly against the "meta"

I realized the same thing Peregrine. My local meta doesn't have Cron Air spam so it took longer to realize this. What I decided to do was to just use the Elysian list from IA8. I went the paratroopers route for the moment as I sell off my chimeras to buy Valks and Vendettas to go Airborne. Or I might just stick with paratroopers.

It mitigates the lack of mobility, and also mitigates the lack of force concentration by allowing you to hit them exactly where you need to.

Vehicles in general, but *especially* anything under AV13, is just too easy to kill in 6E, and lack much of the utility they use to have in regards to at least contesting objectives and scoring with embarked troops. Mechvets have too few T3 5+sv Ld7/8 meatbags to hold objectives outside of transports, while the tanks can't do much to aid them in that role besides try and body-block (often with their ruined hulks).

HP's generally reduce most vehicle lifespans by half in 6E against shooting attacks, and despite many saying CC is dead, it's not (Orks, nids, especially Necrons don't have issues getting lots of units stuck in turn 2, it's the heavy mechanize MEQ assault units that have issues) and there's little in the game easier to kill than tanks in CC (especially as they can't Overwatch) except weak units of Guardsmen.



I've had great success with my aegis line+carapace+artillery (e.g. Rapier Laser Destroyers and Heavy Mortars) foot vet lists, losing only to a very assault oriented Necron army with lots of AV13-shield fire support, but the tanks the mechanized lists rely on are just so bloody easy to kill and lack objective-critical capability that they just don't cut it anymore. Chimeras die faster now than they did in 4E, which is...astounding.

Even Leman Russ centric Armoured Battlegroup lists are oddly fragile.

I think in the last three months I've seen exactly one vehicle die to an explodes result where it still had HP's remaining. They're *super* punitive sadly.

 Evileyes wrote:
The irony is, with everyone going anti-horde to deal with guard allies and "Troops on the ground" build's, a full mech army would probably knock people for a loop, they would never expect it, and if you took a ton of tanks that could deal with the infantry spam people are running now, you could probably do fantastic by going directly against the "meta"

Except the 6th edition meta seems to be very heavy on flyers, and things that counter flyers tend to be very good at destroying Chimeras. The 9999999999 missile launcher lists of 5th are gone, but it's really not much better when they're replaced by necrons with 999999999 tesla guns.

Now, if you manage to find a metagame in which flyers are rare and nobody plays necrons your idea would work beautifully. Without flyers around the focus is more on infantry and anti-infantry, and a mech list can be very effective. I've even had that happen, and had easy wins when my opponent wasn't expecting so many tanks. The problem is that those games seem to be getting rarer and rarer.

Vaktathi wrote:I think in the last three months I've seen exactly one vehicle die to an explodes result where it still had HP's remaining

That's bizzare. Of all the games of 6th I've played so far, I think I've only ever killed a vehicle by stripping it of hull points a handful of times. Likewise, almost all of my own vehicles lost have been in explosions.

Anyways, I think that the real frustration here is this:

bogalubov wrote:Anything out in the open now gets murdered. Be that light vehicles or infantry.

Both sides of the coin - foot and mech - have been really struggling to get units across the board. Perhaps the reason that vendettas are so popular (other than that they're good, and they have a lot of fanboys), is because they're one of the few ways to get units into your opponent's deployment zone. Until they get shot down, at least.

If anything, I think this is the problem to solve. For how much of a reputation that guard has as being overpowered, if we're really rather limited in how much we can get out of our own deployment zone, well, that's a real problem.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I think in the last three months I've seen exactly one vehicle die to an explodes result where it still had HP's remaining

That's bizzare. Of all the games of 6th I've played so far, I think I've only ever killed a vehicle by stripping it of hull points a handful of times. Likewise, almost all of my own vehicles lost have been in explosions.

Statistically, unless being hit by meltaguns, dying to hull points *should* be the norm, by far.

Looking at say, Autocannons vs AV12, you need 72 BS3 autocannon shots to average a single Explodes result, but only a quarter as many (18) to average having killed it through Hull Point loss. Lascannons vs Av12 are more even but still weigh more towards the HP's quite noticeably, requiring an average of 12 lascannon shots to kill through an Explodes result but only an average of 9 to kill through HP's.

You math people....

I get, at least, an explode vehicle every game. Generally it is 2-3 blown vehicle across the board.

But yeah- I never played a game in which a vehicle didn't blow up, all the while having all HP left, or only a sinlge one lost to a glancing shot.

Oh I get vehicles that explode, but they die much more often to HP's, and having one explode where HP's wouldn't have also done it in is rather rare, thus making the damage table rather pointless.

This is one of those conversations that will just keep going back and forth with NO side gaining any ground. I have not lost a single game with my full MechVet list so far in 6th. And before you read this and think that i am just playing new people that do not know have to play, let me say that no i have not. I am here in the DC area and the crowd that we have around here is very competitive and tournament active. I have faced the CronAir, "old" screamer flamer demons, AV13 CronWall, and many more. Do my Chim Chassis die, YES! But the outcome is always the same,... here it is,..... IG in general and Vets jobs in 6thED is now the job of damage output!! If you have overwhelming firepower(which IG can do very easily) than you can blast your enemy off of the table. And if your 55 point Chim dies in an explosion, the only thing that matters for the people inside is that your special weapons in your squad are still firing the next turn. That is WHY you take Vets, and any time you can keep firing the special weapons the squad still has some BIG teeth.

Just my 2 worthless cents

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I think in the last three months I've seen exactly one vehicle die to an explodes result where it still had HP's remaining

That's bizzare. Of all the games of 6th I've played so far, I think I've only ever killed a vehicle by stripping it of hull points a handful of times. Likewise, almost all of my own vehicles lost have been in explosions.

Anyways, I think that the real frustration here is this:

bogalubov wrote:Anything out in the open now gets murdered. Be that light vehicles or infantry.

Both sides of the coin - foot and mech - have been really struggling to get units across the board. Perhaps the reason that vendettas are so popular (other than that they're good, and they have a lot of fanboys), is because they're one of the few ways to get units into your opponent's deployment zone. Until they get shot down, at least.

If anything, I think this is the problem to solve. For how much of a reputation that guard has as being overpowered, if we're really rather limited in how much we can get out of our own deployment zone, well, that's a real problem.

I don't think it's a problem that is isolated to guard either. I also play chaos marines too and any build that focuses on having marines on the table is terrible. That is because if you're dumping points in troops you get units that you feel compelled to use since they cost so much, but you have no way to get them across the table. Yeah there are infiltrating lists that are possible, but you're at the mercy of the dice gods how many troops can do that, 1 or 3. If only one unit tries it, it will just get ruined.

It's more important than ever to win the deployment roll so you can end up with more objectives in your own zone so your opponent has to struggle to get to you.

That's why I don't view going mech as a benefit in terms of mobility. It's a benefit in terms of survival. I get to ignore all anti-infantry weapons most of the game and get to overwatch assault units twice from my chimeras.

So I don't think mech is dead. How they are used has radically changed though.

I completely agree with Bogalubov here! It is 100% HOW you use them.

Am lucky, there's about 4 cron air players in my area so it makes my list better as it doesn't have to deal with them all the time. Thanks goodness I don't have To face flamer spam any more because that was a difficult one to play against.

I am still having success with mech Ig but more importantly am enjoying it. Also I am not crushing my opponents completely.

bogalubov wrote:

That's why I don't view going mech as a benefit in terms of mobility. It's a benefit in terms of survival. I get to ignore all anti-infantry weapons most of the game and get to overwatch assault units twice from my chimeras.

Overwatch usually doesn't accomplish terribly much hitting only on 6's, you'll average (assuming 2 shots and 5 dudes) 1.66 hits only, especially if you aren't loaded up with template weapons. Likewise, the tanks themselves are ludicrously vulnerable to assault, it's easier for a tac squad to kill a moving Leman Russ tank or flat out speeding holo-field Falcon on a charge than it is to kill 2 marines statistically.

On top of that, many of the anti-infantry weapons actually make decent AT now thanks to hull points and never needing to bother with a damage table.

So I don't think mech is dead. How they are used has radically changed though.

In every conceivable sense mech has become drastically less useable and survivable under 6E. Transports have less utility and cannot hold or even contest objectives with embarked scoring units, and tanks in general are easier to kill than they've ever been before typically.

Yes, Pyre. The thing about facing some of these "Power" lists is that there are ALWAYS a downside. Lets take CronAir.... You have ALL of your fire power except the 2 VenVets(i always take 2) on the table while they only have a lil bit. Turn one, you, depending on how smart they are, or how little arty you have on the table(i take 2 mantis) should be able to knock their socks off. Then they piece meal you their fliers. As long as you space your people out(which is not hard considering you have ALL of turn one to do so) the big DeathRay weapon should not be AS bad.

bogalubov wrote:

That's why I don't view going mech as a benefit in terms of mobility. It's a benefit in terms of survival. I get to ignore all anti-infantry weapons most of the game and get to overwatch assault units twice from my chimeras.

So I don't think mech is dead. How they are used has radically changed though.

It's safe to say that bolters are fairly common anti-infantry weapons, and whats a chimera's side armor?

I use mostly mech guard for one reason: It takes less time to move. Call me lazy but I'm not a fan of taking 4+ hours for a single game (had enough of that running green tide orks in 5th).

My mech vets are typically a counter attack unit because most people in my meta are rushing towards me. While waiting for the enemy to come close, my 65 point chimera throws a multilaser, heavy bolter, and a heavy stubber 36" downrange. Not too crazy on its own, but when three or more shoot at the same target, it usually gets something accomplished.

Vaktathi wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I think in the last three months I've seen exactly one vehicle die to an explodes result where it still had HP's remaining

That's bizzare. Of all the games of 6th I've played so far, I think I've only ever killed a vehicle by stripping it of hull points a handful of times. Likewise, almost all of my own vehicles lost have been in explosions.

Statistically, unless being hit by meltaguns, dying to hull points *should* be the norm, by far.

Looking at say, Autocannons vs AV12, you need 72 BS3 autocannon shots to average a single Explodes result, but only a quarter as many (18) to average having killed it through Hull Point loss. Lascannons vs Av12 are more even but still weigh more towards the HP's quite noticeably, requiring an average of 12 lascannon shots to kill through an Explodes result but only an average of 9 to kill through HP's.

Your math is okay but your interpretation is completely off. For the lascannon you have a 50% chance on average to have exploded the chimera at 6 shots. That means that you are more likely to see explodes results 75% chance before HP strip results. That is significantly more likely to see an explodes.


For the overall thread I agree that chimera rush no longer works like it did. I find they work much better in 2 ways now.

1) AV14 rush: This is a wall of AV14 hulls with a chimera behind it. This works best with a couple vendettas to do anti air and you need to balance your weapons properly. The secret is that the AV14 is the only visible armour value for the first 1-2 turns.

2) Artillery: Yeah, this is just loading up on artillery and using the chimeras as a mobile wall to screen them.

The truth of it is that the long range damage of a vet squad has never been that good. They need to close and they used to do that with a chimera. Yes the chimera is less survivable so closing to the 12" ideal damage range of a vet squad is tough. However if you use something more threatening to distract (aka artillery) or an AV14 wall to screen then you can still close.

BTW overwatch is much better than credit is given for it. If you can even do a single kill in the overwatch then you have a chance of stopping the charge. This is not something I would count on but it does change games. Chimeras in assault are our know no fear so we can shoot again next turn.

I'm playing in a 1500 point tournament this weekend. I have enough IG, and SW, to make just about every conceivable option except full Air Cav. The meta in my area seems to have moved more towards foot lists, so just to throw in a monkey wrench I am going to run this:

CCS
4x Flamer
Chimera

Vet Squad
Melta Bomb
3x Flamer

Vet Squad
3x Melta

Vet Squad
3x Flamer
Chimera

Hellhound
Vendetta
Vendetta

LR Exterminator with HB/Sponsons

Wolf Guard Battle Leader with Runic Armor, PF

8 Grey Hunters
Melta Gun
Wolf Standard
Rhino

9 Grey Hunters
Melta Gun
Wolf Standard
Rhino

Basically I've replaced 2 Vet Squads in Chimeras with Grey Hunters in Rhinos. The first two vet squads ride in the Vendettas. My front wall is not all AV 12 but the sidewalls have no AV 10. The CCS and the Hellhound toast anyone who gets too close. As you can see, I like flamers. It's about maximizing the number of wounds you can put on a unit.

I think I can make this work. I've considered dropping the chimera vets for another tank, but I want the late game scoring options.

For Beerbeard above^^

Would it not be better to just take a barebones Rune Priest? i think it is around the same points, if not less, and you get the Div powers as well as the insanely amazing rune weapon anti psyker?

But back on topic, i like the direction Ansacs is going at!

Hmmm, what Ansacs said makes a lot of sense. I could drop all my SW and run a pure Guard list adding another vet squad in a chimera and two LRBT's. Now I would have 3 AV14 fronts...

Interesting, I will run the numbers on shots, etc.

My MecVet list looks something like this

Primaris Pysker

x5 Vets, 3 plasma, demo doctrine in Chim

x2 Vendettas

x2 LRBT

x2 Manticores


Now, my arty gets a good first turn barrage and the LRBT's are there for people to think about shooting at. Vendettas do their thing and the Vets ride around and cover where needed. Demo doctrine(for me at least) is a must. It gives me a TON of deepstrike defence.

Maybe what you could do is take a plasma loaded blob and use a wall of AV14 to do the talking. Use ABG if you are so inclined. Keep the blob behind a ADL and use the blob to cap any objectives once the nasties are dead.

Actually the funny part is I have been running thunderer siege tanks and centaurs (which no one has ever said are good). I have found them to be pretty fantastic so far but I have not run them against necrons at all yet. centaurs are Tiny (notice capital T) so you can hide them completely behind the tank where the enemy has to get behind the tank to fire at them.

I also have noticed that if you do the AV14 wall method you need good anti flier support as the vector strike flying critters will kill you. Also a dynamic element such as SW drop pods or storm troopers to deal with artillery go far.

For your list beerbeard I am not a fan of Rhino's I have never liked the model and have always found them more fragile than I like. I love the SW drop pod, grey hunters, and JoWW priest combo. I think they are probably the only unit/combination that can be added to any list and make it better.

Its pretty awesome in an artillery list. Gives you great mobility 1st turn while the prescience priest makes your artillery re-roll misses.

Some great discussion going on so far. I have been eying my pride of Chimeras (pride, pack, herd?) and trying to decide what to do with them in this ed.

Anyone tried running armored platoons? I was thinking bare squads with melta-guns backed up by flamer toting PCSs and a could of plasma vet squads.

Each squad is only 115 points, so a full platoon in Chimeras is only 575 for infantry and 100 points for a PCS with 4 flamers in a Chimera. That much melta, fire, las, scoring and armor 12 can get a lot done before going down. Is it possible that this style of saturation is now key?

 ansacs wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I think in the last three months I've seen exactly one vehicle die to an explodes result where it still had HP's remaining

That's bizzare. Of all the games of 6th I've played so far, I think I've only ever killed a vehicle by stripping it of hull points a handful of times. Likewise, almost all of my own vehicles lost have been in explosions.

Statistically, unless being hit by meltaguns, dying to hull points *should* be the norm, by far.

Looking at say, Autocannons vs AV12, you need 72 BS3 autocannon shots to average a single Explodes result, but only a quarter as many (18) to average having killed it through Hull Point loss. Lascannons vs Av12 are more even but still weigh more towards the HP's quite noticeably, requiring an average of 12 lascannon shots to kill through an Explodes result but only an average of 9 to kill through HP's.

Your math is okay but your interpretation is completely off. For the lascannon you have a 50% chance on average to have exploded the chimera at 6 shots. That means that you are more likely to see explodes results 75% chance before HP strip results. That is significantly more likely to see an explodes.

And you're not taking the same calculation and applying it to the HP's...

It's much more likely you'll glance/pen 3 times with the lascannon (33% chance on any one shot) before you pen and roll a 5 or 6 on the damage chart with the lascannon (8.33%chance on any one shot), resulting in a 50% chance for 4.5 shots from the lascannon to kill through HP's.

The explodes result is a 1/3 result on a 50/50 chance to pen assuming a successful hit. HP's need achieve a 2/3 chance result 3 times assuming a successful hit to wreck the vehicle. While it is possible for the explodes result to occur before the HP's, the HP's kill result will occur generally earlier than the Explodes kill result will, with the Explodes result requiring an average of 33% more shots to attain the same odds.

It's not until you factor in AP1 that it changes to favor the damage table over HP's.


Thus, HP's should be the primary kill method the majority of the time, and Chimeras, along with pretty much anything that isn't a very heavy tank, are hideously vulnerable to them.

 More Dakka wrote:

Anyone tried running armored platoons? I was thinking bare squads with melta-guns backed up by flamer toting PCSs and a could of plasma vet squads.

Well if you gave them a heavy weapon with the intention of always moving so you're snap firing it, it wouldn't be any worse than if Vets did it.

I'm not seeing too many problems with the IG at my FLGS. Cheap AV 12 is still pretty hard to get rid of in 6th, as lists do have a finite number of anti-tank shots.