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2 Step plan to make the game more cc orientated.

Step 1 release 6th edition nids with a codex as competitive as tau/eldar.

Step 2 release 6the edition orks with a codex as competitive as tau/eldar

 Peregrine wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I think the main problem with CC is that the dedicated CC units just aren't good enough at it, or if they are, they're not good enough at getting there.

Nah, the main problem with CC is that GW has made a shooting-focused game (as a scifi wargame should be) but keeps making units/armies that have to assault to do anything. The solution is to reduce the percentage of each army that is spent on dedicated assault units and make it more proportional to the usefulness of CC.

But some people like to use CC. Simply reducing their already-limited options isn't making CC more viable, it's just making it go away.

The premise of this thread is that assault armies are crippled by 6th edition rules. They are, but not to the point where they are broken. GW has simply made guns useful again and it's not the end of assault as we know it.

Guns should be able to kill things at a distance. 5th edition rules were hard to stomach on this point. Why bother with gunlines when I could get so much more done with massed Berzerkers. It got to the point where I didn't need shooting units except for Havocs / Obliterators. There was an element of realism missing from the game, and we have all had to get used to it's absence.

I agree with @EVIL INC on this point, the rules have changed but players have not. Strategies and tactics need to adapt and there's not that much evidence that they do. At a macro level, look at the army lists on dakkadakka. People drift towards lists with uber units, they don't post that many that go too far outside the norms. Heldrakes, riptides, waveserpents, etc. Everybody wants a deathstar. At a micro level, look at the strategy and tactics articles that exist on 3++, Librarium Online or Spikey Bits. They tend to examine units in isolation, only really stopping to discuss tactics around deathstars and the configuration of specific units.

My point is there is a lot of homogeneity between the things we learn about online, and it affects the way we think about playing. I don't personally know anyone who plays 40k and does not read army lists off forums like this to get ideas. They do it because it's efficient - models cost a lot of money these days, it takes time to paint them, and there's a strong impetus to do research to get things "right" before you invest money and time. This leads to a natural selection of playstyles themselves, which precludes people from even examining some different styles of play.

This includes tournament players. As gifted as these players may be, there are reasons to question whether or not tournament results a good measure of what's competitive. Their ideas are shaped by the same ones ours are, and they are motivated by very similar interests in being efficient with what they buy and what they try in their lists. If you stop to think about it, there's proof of this. What separates a top tier and a third tier army in a tournament is typically 1 or 2 wins / draws in a series of games played between a few hundred (talented) players. The majority of them have lists that are similar to one another in composition, and in some cases almost identical.

So saying tournament results are proof that assault is borked is a little dishonest. It's a conclusion reached through the analysis of a series of trials, the results of which are generated from a small sample population that makes decisions based on a popular set of facts and reasoning. It's like going to a small town in West Virginia to find out what the best car would be, the answers you get are going to be very specific to economic factors that impact major purchases of the population. Sure, there are similar towns in California that are going to give you the same answer, but you are probably going to get different opinions if you ask people in Manhattan. But you are getting opinions, not proof of the effectiveness of the underlying mechanics. There are other points of view to consider.

I do not consider myself to be a highly skilled player, but I do run CSM assault style armies and have a good deal of success with them. About 30% of the people at my FLGS are playing Tau these days and I win more games against them then I lose. I posted about this a couple weeks ago in another thread, there's a pattern to how I play that is getting a little tiresome and is centered around getting up the board and chopping things up.

The thing I don't see is a lot of other people trying similar armies. I think part of the reason I enjoy some success against Tau is that they don't know how to fight an assault style army. They don't know what to do during rounds when there's no line of sight to a Rhino (sitting there waiting to be assaulted is not a plan), they don't know how to pick targets (shooting at the biggest unit is not a winning plan), they don't know what to do when they lose a chunk of their army (which happens when I assault). The most effective unit I have against Tau is a MoS Jump Pack Black Legion Chaos Lord with eternal warrior and a 3+ invulnerable save w/ rerolls on 1. He is a huge distraction, can survive a couple rounds of shooting, and is a beast in cc. More importantly, he is a huge distraction for someone who puts too much emphasis on shooting. I can put him in the middle of the board and reliably tie up 3 shooting units for a couple rounds.

This army does not win every game for me. It probably does not win 80% of games for me (well, maybe, it's more than 70%). But, seriously, if the difference between competitive and mid-tier is that you win 1 or 2 more games out of every 8, I don't really care. That's not a basis for saying assault is broken so much as saying it's unique, which suits me fine. It would be broken if I never won.

GW has simply made guns useful again and it's not the end of assault as we know it.

Guns should be able to kill things at a distance. 5th edition rules were hard to stomach on this point. Why bother with gunlines when I could get so much more done with massed Berzerkers. It got to the point where I didn't need shooting units except for Havocs / Obliterators. There was an element of realism missing from the game, and we have all had to get used to it's absence.

Once again, I have no clue where you base this. Considering that Berzerkers don't really scare mass razorbacks/vehicle spam, hitting on either 4's or 6's and generally just being glanced/stopped in tracks because of psydakkadreads and the like, or the massed fire from Necrons..

It's like people played an entirely different game in 5th, one that has no basis in reality. Sure assault was okay in 5th, but it didn't compare to Mech, infact it was the last edition where you could actually run assault armies. Sure you needed to think strategically unlike gunlines, but you actually could potentially win with a lower chance then a shooting list, but it compared nothing to Mech.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Once again, I have no clue where you base this. Considering that Berzerkers don't really scare mass razorbacks/vehicle spam, hitting on either 4's or 6's and generally just being glanced/stopped in tracks because of psydakkadreads and the like, or the massed fire from Necrons..

It's like people played an entirely different game in 5th, one that has no basis in reality. Sure assault was okay in 5th, but it didn't compare to Mech, infact it was the last edition where you could actually run assault armies. Sure you needed to think strategically unlike gunlines, but you actually could potentially win with a lower chance then a shooting list, but it compared nothing to Mech.

Well, sorry to hear you only played against mech armies. Berzerkers were very effective against other armies I encountered more frequently. Razorbacks were more the things that would wreck my day from time to time, but that I could generally deal with using a melta bomb.

Honestly, the hardest armies for me in 5th were IG mech lists with tank squads. So unfair. It's why I started bringing deep striking Obliterators, they were very good against these squads.

5th Edition is widely regarded as being the "Mech" edition. Furthermore, tournament players don't come up with the conclusion that assault is bad because nobody brings assault, but because assault armies rarely do well, even in a meta where, as you said, people don't expect an assault army and therefore don't build for it. 5th was definitely not "bring assault and win".

Also, you can't say that local evidence is wrong and then immediately give your own local evidence. You're also speaking from the perspective of Chaos Space Marines, one of the better-off armies in 6th with regards to melee. We have Chaos Lords on Juggernauts with the Axe of Blind Fury and a few other pretty decent combinations (in general, the Chaos Lord is a good melee unit), we have Daemon Princes of Tzeentch with wings and the Black Mace, we have Abaddon, we have Plague Marines, we have Raptors, and we have melee Chaos Terminators.

However, Banshees and Harlequins suck now. One thing that I agree hurt melee in 6th was changing power weapons from "ignore armour" to "AP3", utterly removing the "Terminator hunter" job that Banshees were good for, and then their update hurt them more. Striking Scorpions and Warp Spiders are decent, but they have trouble getting there.

Tyranids... well, we know about Tyranids.