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So I have three armies, Tau (Heavy shooting), Necrons (Mostly shooting), And Space Wolves (Can melee well, But still tend to do most of their damage in shooting before mopping up the remains in melee) And I was thinking of making a more assaulty army, Something thats strong in melee and can just charge in and chop enemies up. But.. What armies are good for assaults..? I was considering getting Daemons since they are primarily assault, but what other options do I have..?

At the moment, Chaos Daemons are probably the best assault army available, but since Orks and Tyranids are up on deck (allegedly) for new books, that may change.

The problem with Daemons is you really have to rely completely on the assault, with very few shooting units available (and one of them really requires an HQ slot be used to make them viable). I'd imagine Orks and Nids will keep their shooty aspects and have their assault units improved in some way or another. If that happens, those two armies will probably be incredibly hard to handle.

If you already have three armies, it might be better to just wait it out and see what comes out, especially since Black Templar rumors are increasing lately, which will add another assault based army to the mix. Heck, Space Wolves are probably the best assault Marine army out there, so why not just build them up as a pure assault army?

I was thinking Orcs, Tyranids and Blood Angels would all be strong contenders.. Black Templars might be good too if they get a new codex.. I have a couple of color schemes I would like to try on space marines (Without changing my space wolves) so Blood Angels or Black Templars might work.. For BT I'd wait for a new codex.. I guess i'l have to wait a few months and see what comes out..

Blood Angels right now are pretty much one of the worst armies.. they have very few decent assault units so I certainly would NOT go with them.

In order to do well in assault in this edition you need the following

1. Move 12" (preferably more)
2. Ignore terrain when moving
3. Ignore terrain when charging and have a re-roll

If you don't do those then you might as well just shoot because your units can always shoot where as 6th edition randomly robs you of being able to assault.

Blood angels just can't do all of those thus they aren't a decent assault army. I'd go with CSM allied with Demons since they can get a ton of units that fulfill the 3 above requirements but there aren't very many armies that can assault reliably.

Maynarkh Necrons are a pretty awesome assaulty army.

Flayed Ones as fear-causing Troops, Lychguard with Fear and something else, Tomb Stalkers as Elites, and Lords and Overlords with a chance to go psycho and gain combat bonuses in return for counting as destroyed at the end of the game... plus the usual necron CC-nastiness of Wraiths and D-Lords.

Even causing Fear (which seldom works and even then, many armies ignore altogether), Flayed Ones are still awful. Being Troops in the Maynarkh list helps a little bit since they're not wasting a specialized slot, but they're still a garbage unit.

Blood Angels are fine, they're just different than they used to be. Changing editions requires an army to adapt with either different units or different tactics, and a lot of people don't seem to know how.

Orks are in a rough place, since challenges dick them over pretty badly. Ork mobs rely on the power klaw to do most of the damage, but challenges single that klaw out and if there's anything resembling a combat character in the challenge, that klaw is going down. This means the klaw isn't chewing up the unit itself, and is at best being wasted or at worst getting killed. They're better as a mobile shooting army right now.

Templars need a new codex before being considered. Their codex strangely supports shooting better than assaulting, and rumors point to them getting a new codex soon.

Nids can do well, but generally they only do really well with the same list everyone else runs that maxes out of Tervigons and winged Hive Tyrants, with Zoanthropes or Hive Guard filling up the Elites slots.

Yes chaos demons, but also khorne CSM. The IoW allows you to reroll charge ranges, and +1A and furious charge don't exactly hurt either. Plus, you can give any unit hatred: space marines, which is a very broad brush including things like grey knights. Plus, come on, axe of blind fury.

And because they're power armor, you get better force concentration, and have a reasonable expectation of being able to charge across the table without just dissolving on the way.

I'm in agreement with the other posters, if assault is what you're after, Chaos seems to be the way to go. As far as successful builds I've seen, you've got;

Daemons:

Daemon Prince Circus - In full form it is backed up by a CSM allied contingent lead by a Black Mace MoN FDP, probably the best assault unit in the whole damn game. Total glass cannon, but my god the damage that model puts out is silly.

Houndrush - Just swamp the enemy with fast moving doggies, 'nuff said

CSM:

Tri-Mauler, backed up with Nurgle Bikers/ Chaos Spawn and sometimes Hellbrutes for AV saturation. This is less flavour of the month that the others, but under for an AV12 5++ walker, the Maulerfiend is exceptionally fast and deadly, it can often be in assault in turn two, under the right deployment and with IWND and the ++, stands a great chance of staying there. Also CC melta stats, whats not to love!?

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Others: Did Beastmaster Rush fail with the new Eldar dex? Far as I can see it should work just as well, even if the loss of RoW sucks. Still is prone to misfiring as you must roll Invisibility for it to work properly.

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Hope that gives you some inspiration, kudos for wanting to mix things up a bit in 40k: Gunline edition

Daemons all the way. Flesh hounds are amazing.

I don't rate the flying circus much though, assaulty hordes are great.

A great list you don't see often, is slaanesh chariot spam. You can have up to 16 slaanesh chariot's in a standard army, that get up to 4d6 hammer of wrath's, and then 3+"however many people you killed with hammer of wrath" attacks with ap2. Not much is gonna survive the charge from them, and as they can get about 30 inches up the table turn 1, it's fantastic. How many chariot's can they kill in one turn? Certainly not 16

Been looking at rumors for the next Black Templars codex and I think I'l wait for that to come out and see how many of the rumors are true, Seems like it will be realy nice ^_^

It's all about the Chaos Daemons!

My best assault army is Grey Knights. Maybe followed VERY closely by my Dark Eldar Monster list.

 Evileyes wrote:
Daemons all the way. Flesh hounds are amazing.

I don't rate the flying circus much though, assaulty hordes are great.

A great list you don't see often, is slaanesh chariot spam. You can have up to 16 slaanesh chariot's in a standard army, that get up to 4d6 hammer of wrath's, and then 3+"however many people you killed with hammer of wrath" attacks with ap2. Not much is gonna survive the charge from them, and as they can get about 30 inches up the table turn 1, it's fantastic. How many chariot's can they kill in one turn? Certainly not 16

Slaanesh also has the added fun of the dreaded "Challenge Herald" leading packs of either Fiends or Seekers

Ork waaagh is incredibly tough assault army easpecially if you add speed mixes into it.

Orks are an ok assault army, stormboyz work well as well as multiple 30 boy mobs especially when combined with other units.

Lynchguard with a destroyer lord and Oberon work pretty well as I here wraiths too.

Any marine in land raiders especially grey knights, purifiers will rarely loose.

The key to assault armies is the support units for them. You need to be able to survive, and take out more serious threats in shooting, which is why space wolves work well. Any pure assault army will be less successful than a shooty/mix army.

Orks WAS an assaulty army. They're not anymore. There's no way a slugga green tide is making it across the table in 6th ed rules, and even if they did, they now have to deal with even harsher versions of 5th ed rules, like running into pointless speed bumps or transports.

And then you can't assault off the board edge, so there goes kommandoz, and koptaz (who can no longer turn 1 charge either), and stormboyz are still stupidly expensive for not doing anything more than slugga boyz, and burnaz have been reduced to Ap3 with their power weapons, and you no longer have hidden power klaws, etc. etc. etc.

Orks were a choppy army. Now they're an army of lootaz stripping hull points, monstrous creature grot cannons, and dakkajets with the vague sprinkling of nob bikers over the top to make you remember that at some point orks could win in assault.