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EVIL INC wrote:
Before, they were undercosted, now they are overcosted. This sort of thing is just what happens with the idiot way they release things. That's not the point of the thread. The point of the thread is to discuss ways to effectively get units into combat regardless of costs.

Cost is the single most important attribute of any 40K model. Cost can not be deconvoluted from tactics because the decision must be made to even bother with assault in a particular list.

 chelsea_hollywood wrote:
more generally, i find the biggest influence in being able to assault successfully (or even have a game that's more than "guy with the biggest guns wins on T1") is terrain.

6th has added some ... interesting rules for terrain, but more than anything, it's moved from the "cover 1/4 of the table" to "place about 12 pieces" (on average 2 12" by 12" or smaller pieces per 2' by 2' section of table) by putting legitimate terrain on the table (LOS blocking stuff, area terrain, ruins, big hills, forests) you have far more strategic options, movement becomes important, and units that need to get up close have a hope in hell of getting there.

This is why I don't play points and instead stick to a narrative based game play. Essentially, I'm bringing everything I can and if you have more, it would be an act of Good Sportsmanship if you didn't just try to bowl me over with Vendetta's and Monoliths. That said, the above is the MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR KEEPING MELEE ALIVE.

TERRAIN. TERRAIN. LOS BLOCKING TERRAIN.

If your enemy can't see you, he can't shoot you and I submit that is far more devastating to a shooting unit than a melee unit never getting into battle: A shooting unit never getting a shot. Because of this, I get Overwatch. Because if I spend the entire game hiding in terrain and you never get a shot, and then you compromise yourself to get that shot at the risk of getting over-run in the charge and losing your entire shooting squad in the initial assault phase. Does that mean shooting is still getting an enormous edge? ABSOLUTELY. But not so much that a tactician can't get around it.

And this seems to be the problem players are having more than anything else; With the way a board can be arranged, and with the way shooting armies want to set up a board, the melee player is forced out of his comfort zone and stuck trying to hide behind tin cans and such.

Ex: One such board I plan to make in the near-distant future is a canyon. A map whose majority of playable surface is lined by canyon walls and channels that create bottlenecks and flanking routes against shooters. And this is a big problem for shooters. If the Tau got 30" of open space to shoot through, they'll get you. But if they're forced to watch hallways and split their focus, then the tables change a bit. Especially when you factor in things like Jump Packs that could leap over the canyon walls and smack right into a Tau gunline.

Melee isn't dead. You just need a reasonable map to play on from now on.

Martel732 wrote:

EVIL INC wrote:
Before, they were undercosted, now they are overcosted. This sort of thing is just what happens with the idiot way they release things. That's not the point of the thread. The point of the thread is to discuss ways to effectively get units into combat regardless of costs.

Cost is the single most important attribute of any 40K model. Cost can not be deconvoluted from tactics because the decision must be made to even bother with assault in a particular list.

Points only matters if you're playing in some official status. As I suggested above, play towards a narrative and a lot of these problems melt away with good common sense. And this is an awesome thing to have happen too because if you see an opponent trying to circumnavigate this very plain, common sense playing, then you know what kind of player you are up against and probably won't want to play against him ever again.

Just like the guy I played my first game against ever. This was a kid whose parents bought him every single piece of plastic army, as it came out, he painted them all up, knew everything, and then WAAC no matter what. Case in point: My army just barely field vehicles: 2 Helbrutes and a Heldrake. THIS GUY, because he could, sent a monolith at me. Let me preface this a little better by saying my strongest infantry groups are Chosen, with Cultists and CSM's bringing up a very, VERY distant second. So a monolith, in this game, is just uncalled for. The guy knows he can crush me with all of his transport Arks or w/e and Annihaltion Barge, and Reanimation Protocols, but because of this guys level of common sense, no, we had to be a glut and bring out the Monolith.

And now I don't play against him anymore. Even if I wanted to upset him, I won't because he's going to do anything and everything in his power to make it a crushing defeat all the time. So, in a way, I win by never playing him and denying those crushing defeats he craves so thoroughly. Can he still go to tournaments and get games playing the way he does? Sure. But he's not getting them from me.

Local Taudar players want to play on parking lots. They aren't going to agree to "forge the narrative". GW, like Blizzard, needs to understand that players will always seek competitive advantages.

 TheRedWingArmada wrote:

 chelsea_hollywood wrote:
more generally, i find the biggest influence in being able to assault successfully (or even have a game that's more than "guy with the biggest guns wins on T1") is terrain.

6th has added some ... interesting rules for terrain, but more than anything, it's moved from the "cover 1/4 of the table" to "place about 12 pieces" (on average 2 12" by 12" or smaller pieces per 2' by 2' section of table) by putting legitimate terrain on the table (LOS blocking stuff, area terrain, ruins, big hills, forests) you have far more strategic options, movement becomes important, and units that need to get up close have a hope in hell of getting there.

This is why I don't play points and instead stick to a narrative based game play. Essentially, I'm bringing everything I can and if you have more, it would be an act of Good Sportsmanship if you didn't just try to bowl me over with Vendetta's and Monoliths. That said, the above is the MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR KEEPING MELEE ALIVE.

TERRAIN. TERRAIN. LOS BLOCKING TERRAIN.

If your enemy can't see you, he can't shoot you and I submit that is far more devastating to a shooting unit than a melee unit never getting into battle: A shooting unit never getting a shot. Because of this, I get Overwatch. Because if I spend the entire game hiding in terrain and you never get a shot, and then you compromise yourself to get that shot at the risk of getting over-run in the charge and losing your entire shooting squad in the initial assault phase. Does that mean shooting is still getting an enormous edge? ABSOLUTELY. But not so much that a tactician can't get around it.

And this seems to be the problem players are having more than anything else; With the way a board can be arranged, and with the way shooting armies want to set up a board, the melee player is forced out of his comfort zone and stuck trying to hide behind tin cans and such.

Ex: One such board I plan to make in the near-distant future is a canyon. A map whose majority of playable surface is lined by canyon walls and channels that create bottlenecks and flanking routes against shooters. And this is a big problem for shooters. If the Tau got 30" of open space to shoot through, they'll get you. But if they're forced to watch hallways and split their focus, then the tables change a bit. Especially when you factor in things like Jump Packs that could leap over the canyon walls and smack right into a Tau gunline.

Melee isn't dead. You just need a reasonable map to play on from now on.

Martel732 wrote:

EVIL INC wrote:
Before, they were undercosted, now they are overcosted. This sort of thing is just what happens with the idiot way they release things. That's not the point of the thread. The point of the thread is to discuss ways to effectively get units into combat regardless of costs.

Cost is the single most important attribute of any 40K model. Cost can not be deconvoluted from tactics because the decision must be made to even bother with assault in a particular list.

Points only matters if you're playing in some official status. As I suggested above, play towards a narrative and a lot of these problems melt away with good common sense. And this is an awesome thing to have happen too because if you see an opponent trying to circumnavigate this very plain, common sense playing, then you know what kind of player you are up against and probably won't want to play against him ever again.

Just like the guy I played my first game against ever. This was a kid whose parents bought him every single piece of plastic army, as it came out, he painted them all up, knew everything, and then WAAC no matter what. Case in point: My army just barely field vehicles: 2 Helbrutes and a Heldrake. THIS GUY, because he could, sent a monolith at me. Let me preface this a little better by saying my strongest infantry groups are Chosen, with Cultists and CSM's bringing up a very, VERY distant second. So a monolith, in this game, is just uncalled for. The guy knows he can crush me with all of his transport Arks or w/e and Annihaltion Barge, and Reanimation Protocols, but because of this guys level of common sense, no, we had to be a glut and bring out the Monolith.

And now I don't play against him anymore. Even if I wanted to upset him, I won't because he's going to do anything and everything in his power to make it a crushing defeat all the time. So, in a way, I win by never playing him and denying those crushing defeats he craves so thoroughly. Can he still go to tournaments and get games playing the way he does? Sure. But he's not getting them from me.

First of all, when talking about these tactics assuming that we aren't playing in a competitive environment is kinda pointless.
If you aren't playing to win who cares if you can get into CC or not, since most of your units probably will more be of fluff than optimized.

LOS blocking terrain isn't always in at every place, especially at tournaments you don't really get to choose.

So you're upset because you didn't bring a TAC list?
A Monolith is soooooo uncompetitive and that not being able to tackle it is your fault.
Lol, if bringing a Monolith is going out of his way to crush you then wait til you see the flying bakery.............

Yeah, I wouldn't want to play a fun game and using sub-par units in my codex in and still get yelled as a TFG, thank god he's never going to need to play you again.

At all tournaments, there is a variety of different table set ups. Part of the things is to work to play on a table that suits you more than your opponent. This does not always make a huge difference as tournament organizers do their best to set up tables that don't favor one side or the other and set the tables up so that there ARE LOS blocking stuff without overdoing it.
if your local shop doesn't have a lot, help build some in a workshop or use fantasy stuff. If a tournament organizer sees you all play on tables with fantasy stuff like the castle on a regular bases (its just cool anywhay I think), you can bet that at least one table will have it on in a tourney.

I've donated terrain to my FLGS and even seen others create pieces for them to use. Lots of it has LOS blocking elements. Though that's not the whole fix. In general, if you want to get to close combat, you have to start by getting the lie out of your head that it's the weakest option this edition.

That is the biggest problem we have I believe. As you can see, so many people are willing to fight to perpetuate the lie and support it, they have closed their minds to even trying to overcome what they see as a problem and fight against those who try to help them
.

EVIL INC wrote:
That is the biggest problem we have I believe. As you can see, so many people are willing to fight to perpetuate the lie and support it, they have closed their minds to even trying to overcome what they see as a problem and fight against those who try to help them
.

You clearly missed all the posts where several dakkanoughts started providing tactical advice on the matter.

And none of us have been claiming that assault is unusable.

Again, I don't think anyone says close combat is dead, it's just that a lot of units that were made for assault do not see its uses due to Shooting having a great advantage over shooting.

Lots of people still use CC as long as they are the right units, such as Nurgle Spawn, Nob Bikers, Big Daemons etc...

 Makutsu wrote:
First of all, when talking about these tactics assuming that we aren't playing in a competitive environment is kinda pointless.
If you aren't playing to win who cares if you can get into CC or not, since most of your units probably will more be of fluff than optimized.

LOS blocking terrain isn't always in at every place, especially at tournaments you don't really get to choose.

So you're upset because you didn't bring a TAC list?
A Monolith is soooooo uncompetitive and that not being able to tackle it is your fault.
Lol, if bringing a Monolith is going out of his way to crush you then wait til you see the flying bakery.............

Yeah, I wouldn't want to play a fun game and using sub-par units in my codex in and still get yelled as a TFG, thank god he's never going to need to play you again.

First of all, assumptions are the first steps on the road to defeat. It is a game of oppositions, sure, but competitive to what degree. I hate bringing this up again because I have so little experience being able to do similar things in WH40K but one of the easiest ways for me to defeat my opponents in a game like, say, Battlefield 3? Is to make you think that I'm going in guns blazing in then "Oh noez! I scared and runz away! -C4 clack for chasing me- Surprise, it was all apart of the plan. -trololol-" Or here is a good one for WH40K. My favorite games to play, points scaled and everything (like I've said in past discussions, I am extremely limited in what I can bring because I don't own a mint, among other things) is teams games. 2 v 2, 3 v 3 is better. There, I get the distinct advantage of playing for broke and totally ruining an enemy team by offering strong support or distractions for my allies. Perfect example was a game I played a couple months back where I was Chaos allied with Chaos and Space Marines, v. Space Marines, I think some Tau and maybe Orks. It was a weird line up. But because I knew I didn't possess any distinct advantage until my Heldrake showed up, I took the spearhead and made like I was a hot mess to deal with, while the three of them were trying to figure out what to do with me, my two allies were able to deal with back-field deep striking by one of our opponents better tacticians, while the other got pinned down by our deep striking, including some nurglings I stuck between a squad of my allies that was getting whomped and enemy reinforcements that would've slaughtered him.

So you see, the WAAC attitude gets defeated by the upset player/joker. We live to destroy ourselves hugging the bodies of our enemies. And we win every time, even in the face of overwhelming defeat. +__+ Going back to my beloved BF3, if I run into a room and throw C4 and kill myself and at least 1 other player = Mission Accomplished. 2 other players = Pwnt! 3 others? Dominating. 4 others? YOU GOT KNOCKED THA OUT!

It doesn't matter that I lost 20 cultists to your RIptide. I still killed your Riptide with the Dark Apostle buried beneath. XD

So secondly, I'm obviously not upset at my limitations. They suck, but that's life and I'm poor so I'll live with what I can get when I can get it and maybe one day I'll throw together a flying circus. W/e. But until that time, being a player of my obviously newbish skills and experience, hitting me with Death Stars on my first game kinda smacks of concieite, arrogance, pride, and above all, violation of the Most Important Rule, pg 4 of the SmRB.

Thirdly, there is no yelling. There is no rule bashing. i'm not throwing my pieces across the board. I just don't play against that guy because it's pointless, boring and above all is self-gratifying to the little prick whose done nothing more than sap mommy and daddy's bank account. Screw that noise! Give me a scenario! Give me objectives! Give me a freaking chance at least, even with a stupid monolith! But don't give me this crap of "Well here's my army and good luck! (like it'll help!)" uber-competitor nonsense. It's one of the things that has seriously ruined this planet and our species as a whole. Yes, the microcosm to the macrocosm. They're all reflections of peoples ugliness and beauty sometimes.

True story.

 juraigamer wrote:
I've donated terrain to my FLGS and even seen others create pieces for them to use. Lots of it has LOS blocking elements. Though that's not the whole fix. In general, if you want to get to close combat, you have to start by getting the lie out of your head that it's the weakest option this edition.

It's not a lie. It can be weak and still be "usable". I guess. Part of the problem is that it's hard to even catch the Eldar. The Tau are a bit more a stationary target.

I know that personally that most of my wins in 6th are against lists that have wasted points on trying to do CC when they could have been shooting my meqs off the table.

It is indeed a lie. Many units have changed usefulness.
It is still a viable option that can easily be implemented through tactics and strategy. The faces have changed but the game remains. Instead of seeing berserker spam, you now see spawn spam and so forth. Players need to evolve their lists and playing.
Don't get me wrong, I would hate to have to go out and buy a load of new models to remain competitive but GW is in the business of selling models. Instead of bemoaning how close combat is dead, I would update my army and list to match the new rules so that I have the current most effective close combat models instead of using the old obsolete ones. I would also update my strategy, tactics and overall playstyle to match the new rules and mechanics. You notice that in the tournament circuits, the most successful players do just that and for the most part, those champions armies still maintain a strong close combat presence (except tau of course ).

I don't see many spawn lists winning tournaments.

As I said, weakest does not mean unusable. If HTH is not the weakest option then what is? It's the same way I frame the question about BA being the worst current codex.

EVIL INC wrote:
That is the biggest problem we have I believe. As you can see, so many people are willing to fight to perpetuate the lie and support it, they have closed their minds to even trying to overcome what they see as a problem and fight against those who try to help them
.

Will you please stop with this straw-man attacks on people and snide little digs. I don't think anyone said Close Combat is unviable or impossible, which you keep saying they did. The two posters you keep having this issue with have actually offered some useful advice on getting into CC which I, as a returning player, have found useful. All they did do was make some constructive criticism of some of the things you were offering. For example you suggested that it was easy to just get 4+ cover saves whilst advancing on the enemy because you misremembered some of the rules. And you took their non-hostile comments on that and started ranting about how they knew everything and their penis must be huge (your actual words). Your basic pattern throughout this thread has been to explode at any criticism and exaggerate what they said to absurd proportions, such as claiming someone said CC was impossible. You're being really destructive to this thread. Just stop.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheRedWingArmada wrote:
First of all, assumptions are the first steps on the road to defeat. It is a game of oppositions, sure, but competitive to what degree. I hate bringing this up again because I have so little experience being able to do similar things in WH40K but one of the easiest ways for me to defeat my opponents in a game like, say, Battlefield 3? Is to make you think that I'm going in guns blazing in then "Oh noez! I scared and runz away! -C4 clack for chasing me- Surprise, it was all apart of the plan. -trololol-" Or here is a good one for WH40K. My favorite games to play, points scaled and everything (like I've said in past discussions, I am extremely limited in what I can bring because I don't own a mint, among other things) is teams games. 2 v 2, 3 v 3 is better. There, I get the distinct advantage of playing for broke and totally ruining an enemy team by offering strong support or distractions for my allies. Perfect example was a game I played a couple months back where I was Chaos allied with Chaos and Space Marines, v. Space Marines, I think some Tau and maybe Orks. It was a weird line up. But because I knew I didn't possess any distinct advantage until my Heldrake showed up, I took the spearhead and made like I was a hot mess to deal with, while the three of them were trying to figure out what to do with me, my two allies were able to deal with back-field deep striking by one of our opponents better tacticians, while the other got pinned down by our deep striking, including some nurglings I stuck between a squad of my allies that was getting whomped and enemy reinforcements that would've slaughtered him.

So you see, the WAAC attitude gets defeated by the upset player/joker. We live to destroy ourselves hugging the bodies of our enemies. And we win every time, even in the face of overwhelming defeat. +__+ Going back to my beloved BF3, if I run into a room and throw C4 and kill myself and at least 1 other player = Mission Accomplished. 2 other players = Pwnt! 3 others? Dominating. 4 others? YOU GOT KNOCKED THA OUT!

It doesn't matter that I lost 20 cultists to your RIptide. I still killed your Riptide with the Dark Apostle buried beneath. XD

So secondly, I'm obviously not upset at my limitations. They suck, but that's life and I'm poor so I'll live with what I can get when I can get it and maybe one day I'll throw together a flying circus. W/e. But until that time, being a player of my obviously newbish skills and experience, hitting me with Death Stars on my first game kinda smacks of concieite, arrogance, pride, and above all, violation of the Most Important Rule, pg 4 of the SmRB.

Thirdly, there is no yelling. There is no rule bashing. i'm not throwing my pieces across the board. I just don't play against that guy because it's pointless, boring and above all is self-gratifying to the little prick whose done nothing more than sap mommy and daddy's bank account. Screw that noise! Give me a scenario! Give me objectives! Give me a freaking chance at least, even with a stupid monolith! But don't give me this crap of "Well here's my army and good luck! (like it'll help!)" uber-competitor nonsense. It's one of the things that has seriously ruined this planet and our species as a whole. Yes, the microcosm to the macrocosm. They're all reflections of peoples ugliness and beauty sometimes.

True story.

I don't think anyone disagrees with your position that friendly, narrative-based gaming can be fun or suits many people. It's just that you're in a forum where competitive people come to discuss competitive games. We're not all wound up and angry (well, Evil Inc appears to be) and caught in some trap of competitive gaming. We like it here. Your posts are fine, it's just that it's a bit orthogonal to the actual purpose of this forum which is tactics. You're arguing philosophically about whether or not something is important and that's fine. It's just that you're in the forum for people who think it is.

EVIL INC wrote:
It is indeed a lie. *snip*
Instead of bemoaning how close combat is dead, *snip*.

To reiterate:

 Selym wrote:

And none of us have been claiming that assault is unusable.

 Makutsu wrote:
Again, I don't think anyone says close combat is dead, it's just that a lot of units that were made for assault do not see its uses due to Shooting having a great advantage over shooting.

Lots of people still use CC as long as they are the right units, such as Nurgle Spawn, Nob Bikers, Big Daemons etc...

 TheRedWingArmada wrote:


First of all, assumptions are the first steps on the road to defeat. It is a game of oppositions, sure, but competitive to what degree. I hate bringing this up again because I have so little experience being able to do similar things in WH40K but one of the easiest ways for me to defeat my opponents in a game like, say, Battlefield 3? Is to make you think that I'm going in guns blazing in then "Oh noez! I scared and runz away! -C4 clack for chasing me- Surprise, it was all apart of the plan. -trololol-" Or here is a good one for WH40K. My favorite games to play, points scaled and everything (like I've said in past discussions, I am extremely limited in what I can bring because I don't own a mint, among other things) is teams games. 2 v 2, 3 v 3 is better. There, I get the distinct advantage of playing for broke and totally ruining an enemy team by offering strong support or distractions for my allies. Perfect example was a game I played a couple months back where I was Chaos allied with Chaos and Space Marines, v. Space Marines, I think some Tau and maybe Orks. It was a weird line up. But because I knew I didn't possess any distinct advantage until my Heldrake showed up, I took the spearhead and made like I was a hot mess to deal with, while the three of them were trying to figure out what to do with me, my two allies were able to deal with back-field deep striking by one of our opponents better tacticians, while the other got pinned down by our deep striking, including some nurglings I stuck between a squad of my allies that was getting whomped and enemy reinforcements that would've slaughtered him.

So you see, the WAAC attitude gets defeated by the upset player/joker. We live to destroy ourselves hugging the bodies of our enemies. And we win every time, even in the face of overwhelming defeat. +__+ Going back to my beloved BF3, if I run into a room and throw C4 and kill myself and at least 1 other player = Mission Accomplished. 2 other players = Pwnt! 3 others? Dominating. 4 others? YOU GOT KNOCKED THA OUT!

It doesn't matter that I lost 20 cultists to your RIptide. I still killed your Riptide with the Dark Apostle buried beneath. XD

So secondly, I'm obviously not upset at my limitations. They suck, but that's life and I'm poor so I'll live with what I can get when I can get it and maybe one day I'll throw together a flying circus. W/e. But until that time, being a player of my obviously newbish skills and experience, hitting me with Death Stars on my first game kinda smacks of concieite, arrogance, pride, and above all, violation of the Most Important Rule, pg 4 of the SmRB.

Thirdly, there is no yelling. There is no rule bashing. i'm not throwing my pieces across the board. I just don't play against that guy because it's pointless, boring and above all is self-gratifying to the little prick whose done nothing more than sap mommy and daddy's bank account. Screw that noise! Give me a scenario! Give me objectives! Give me a freaking chance at least, even with a stupid monolith! But don't give me this crap of "Well here's my army and good luck! (like it'll help!)" uber-competitor nonsense. It's one of the things that has seriously ruined this planet and our species as a whole. Yes, the microcosm to the macrocosm. They're all reflections of peoples ugliness and beauty sometimes.

True story.

This is game is rock paper scissors with more complicated rules on top of it, bringing a Fist to a Paper fight is bound to lose.

That's what a monolith is, how is a monolith a deathstar? You lacked a scissor to handle it and ultimately it isn't the guy who brought it's fault.

I think the little prick in this case is you, if you look up how much a monolith is points wise for how much it can do, you'll find that it's not a "uber-competitive" unit as you think it is.

knas ser, Keep your straw men and snide attacks out of here. We have settled down where the personal attacks and false allegations had stopped and don't need you to re-instigate things.

Remember, it is a GAME. There is no reason for you to get excited or bent outta shape just because someone has different opinions on issues and different experiences in games and settings. When you little "army man" dies, you just pull it off the table. He will be fine for the next game I'm sure. If you lose, you will survive. There is no harm to you beyond being bumped down a notch in a tournament. That's why I play for fun first and foremost and winning second. Even in tournments, I'm just happy to get 3 games in a day as well as hang out with other gamers, win OR lose.

knas ser wrote:

I don't think anyone disagrees with your position that friendly, narrative-based gaming can be fun or suits many people. It's just that you're in a forum where competitive people come to discuss competitive games. We're not all wound up and angry (well, Evil Inc appears to be) and caught in some trap of competitive gaming. We like it here. Your posts are fine, it's just that it's a bit orthogonal to the actual purpose of this forum which is tactics. You're arguing philosophically about whether or not something is important and that's fine. It's just that you're in the forum for people who think it is.

Friendly narrative games are fun when both players agree to it, it is fun when using Shokk attack guns and themed list and role-playing at the same time.

I wouldn't say this forum is just for competitive people, this thread however is meant to discuss "effectiveness".
I do not believe that "effectiveness" goes really well with a narrative play as that would not be the goal of it.

 EVIL INC wrote:
knas ser, Keep your straw men and snide attacks out of here. We have settled down where the personal attacks and false allegations had stopped and don't need you to re-instigate things.

If you replaced "knas ser" with "EVIL INC", this quote would be accurate as feth.

Its obvious this thread has turned pointless.

 EVIL INC wrote:
knas ser, Keep your straw men and snide attacks out of here. We have settled down where the personal attacks and false allegations had stopped and don't need you to re-instigate things.

A strawman is where you pretend someone else has made an argument in order to knock it down in place of what they actually said. I'm confused as to where I made any strawmen. Nor did my post contain any personal attacks that I can find - simply highlighting behaviour I wished you to stop. You've basically just made things up in the above. But I've said my piece. I was merely hoping to convey that what you were doing was destructive and that even someone brand new to the forum could see that it was destructive.

 EVIL INC wrote:
Remember, it is a GAME. There is no reason for you to get excited or bent outta shape just because someone has different opinions on issues and different experiences in games and settings. When you little "army man" dies, you just pull it off the table. He will be fine for the next game I'm sure. If you lose, you will survive. There is no harm to you beyond being bumped down a notch in a tournament. That's why I play for fun first and foremost and winning second. Even in tournments, I'm just happy to get 3 games in a day as well as hang out with other gamers, win OR lose.

You do realize that you come across as the most highly strung person in this thread? What with your attacks, demands for people to leave the thread, talk of "false allegations" and references to penis size? Why do you try to characterize fair discussion as getting "bent out of shape"?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Makutsu wrote:

knas ser wrote:

I don't think anyone disagrees with your position that friendly, narrative-based gaming can be fun or suits many people. It's just that you're in a forum where competitive people come to discuss competitive games. We're not all wound up and angry (well, Evil Inc appears to be) and caught in some trap of competitive gaming. We like it here. Your posts are fine, it's just that it's a bit orthogonal to the actual purpose of this forum which is tactics. You're arguing philosophically about whether or not something is important and that's fine. It's just that you're in the forum for people who think it is.

Friendly narrative games are fun when both players agree to it, it is fun when using Shokk attack guns and themed list and role-playing at the same time.

I wouldn't say this forum is just for competitive people, this thread however is meant to discuss "effectiveness".
I do not believe that "effectiveness" goes really well with a narrative play as that would not be the goal of it.

Fair enough. Saying the forum is for competitive people was badly put. I meant rather that it was for people who currently are being interested in being competitive. You don't have to be a competitive player to be here. You just have to be a player that is currently interested in the competitive side of things. That's what I was getting at really - that it is really absolutely fine not to be competitive. But to be arguing the virtues of being non-competitive in a tactics thread, seems odd.


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Fragile wrote:
Its obvious this thread has turned pointless.

Yeah. Apologies for my part in that. It was just annoying me. I'm done here, barring provocation. I contributed what advice I had on CC earlier.

 chelsea_hollywood wrote:
20 boys (w/ nob and klaw; i'm old fashioned) in a battle wagon is only about 260 pts. the battle wagon is about 2/5 of that. it's not a terrible ratio of pts spent on killing to pts spent getting there

Trukks are about 1/3 the price of the unit as a whole (about 160 for 12 boys incl nob w/ the trukk being about 50 of that) so their actually worse (for other reasons too; shame i like them so much)

the goal, for orks at least, is to hit the enemy line on T2. it means less chance of being in the battle wagon when it pops (and yes, that hurts) only hammer and anvil deployment really prevents that goal (unless some castles in the very back corner in a vanguard strike set up)

more generally, i find the biggest influence in being able to assault successfully (or even have a game that's more than "guy with the biggest guns wins on T1") is terrain.

6th has added some ... interesting rules for terrain, but more than anything, it's moved from the "cover 1/4 of the table" to "place about 12 pieces" (on average 2 12" by 12" or smaller pieces per 2' by 2' section of table) by putting legitimate terrain on the table (LOS blocking stuff, area terrain, ruins, big hills, forests) you have far more strategic options, movement becomes important, and units that need to get up close have a hope in hell of getting there.

Right, like i said IF you get them out theyre way better than trukks. Its pretty easy to assume two of them are going to pop after you go flat out since being 6-10" from the front line SOMETHING will have side armor and punch it. If they dont get out then theyre usually worse off than trukkboyz because i have literally never had a BW pop and ended up with enough to still be fearless afterwords. That S4 vs S3 since we have no armor is murder. usually trukkboyz i lose 2-4 on average, BW i lose 7-11. Ouch. Really really hope all ork vehicles get ramshackle in the new dex. S4 hits against the whole unit is murder when you have no armor.

Yes, the thread has indeed turned pointless. Of course, that was the intent of the flamers and trollers, to kill a thread dedicated to helping players learn to improve their game. That is what happens when you let that ilk have free reign to do as they please.
I have kept my posts helpful and accurate but as you can see 2 or 3 people can conspire to kill ANY thread through constant spamming, flaming and trolling regardless of the efforts of those who have the communities best interest in mind..

 EVIL INC wrote:
Of course, that was the intent of the flamers and trollers, to kill a thread dedicated to helping players learn to improve their game.

Speaking as someone who you're accusing, that's a lie.

I have kept my posts helpful and accurate but as you can see 2 or 3 people can conspire to kill ANY thread through constant spamming, flaming and trolling regardless of the efforts of those who have the communities best interest in mind..

And another lie. Flat out.

 EVIL INC wrote:
Yes, the thread has indeed turned pointless. Of course, that was the intent of the flamers and trollers, to kill a thread dedicated to helping players learn to improve their game. That is what happens when you let that ilk have free reign to do as they please.
I have kept my posts helpful and accurate but as you can see 2 or 3 people can conspire to kill ANY thread through constant spamming, flaming and trolling regardless of the efforts of those who have the communities best interest in mind..

If you make one more post falsely accusing others of flaming and trolling, I'll be very tempted to just report you as a troll.

EDIT: anyone wanna join me on that?

Thou dost protest too much. I did not say your name. If you have a guilty conscience, that is on you.

Trolls do not exist. They are a fictional creature. I am a human being just as you are. If you think that that is a lie, I would be more than happy to give you directions to my home to see with your own eyes.
Trolling refers to fishing not actual trolls. However, I learned long ago to not address the person when they misbehave. I address the behavior. So when I mention someone trolling, I am addressing the actions rather than the person so even if trolling was a reference to an actual troll and you are trolling, I would not call you an actual troll, I would still address your behavior.
All told, I have maintained topic, been helpful and tried nto help the community at large in a polite manner maintaining respect to everyone. In return, I have been insulted, lied about and generally treated in such a way that the forum rules have been broken in a number of blatant ways. I refuse to stoop to that behavior and will maintain the moral upper hand if not the verbal one.

@all: Please stay on topic, thanks.

Thank you. I appreciate that. As this post has been drowned out, I will repost it to help keep us on topic and to hopefully refocus attention on the real reason for the thread.....

Again, making use of terrain cover, artificial cover and terrain to totally block line of sight to prevent the enemy from shooting you at all is not an overall tactics in and of itself. It is only a small part of tactics that needs to be taken into consideration.

It does not matter if the cover save is 6+, 5+, 4+ or even better, getting a saving throw when you would not otherwise have one is beneficial to your units. Even better if you are able to use buildings/rock outcrops/whatever to TOTALLY block line of sight to prevent getting shot at at all.
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Ways to assist with this is to have a part in the terrain at your home or local gaming store. A. You can of course get GW buildings and position the doors and windows on the lower levels to be closed in order block line of sight. B. I have seen many places use tiles to mount their building on in order to make them more sturdy and spiced the tile up to match the building. Players will often discuss before the game and rule that the entire tile offers area terrain to match the building to represent rocks and rubble having fallen from it. C. When building your terrain, make several sets of large rock outcrops or other things that can totally block line of sight. These often look really nice and when a board is set up with several of them used at once, it gives a whole different "feel" than buildings every time .D. Make some themed boards, have you ever played on foamboards where rivers and trenches or gulleys and such were build in? I realize that not everyone's home has room for these but shops will usually have at LEAST one and if your willing to help make one, they will invariable let you use shop supplies if your building it for them.

When setting up the table don't fall into the habit of just sitting buildings in the deployment zones and placing a few craters in the middle. Watch what the opponent sets up and play the deployment itself as though it is part of the game. Look where he is setting up fire lanes and block them off while setting up your own protected highways. I am guilty of playing into an enemies hands at this part by setting up what "looks" cool and at times end up playing on fields that look like the grand canyons that are loaded with mountains and rock outcroppings because it looks nice. Don't let your opponent bully you into not placing something you want "you cant put that rock there, its in the middle of the city". When it's your turn to place, YOU get to choose the piece, Remember, it will help affect if you win or lose later in the actual game.
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The denied flank (Someone else who was familiar with it posted the official name but I forget it and don't remember what thread it was in). Mind you, this falls under strategies more so than tactics but close enough for our purposes.
This has actually made a comeback as the whole whoever gets first turn sets thier entire army up first instead of trading deployment of units. This is something to keep in the back of your mind because it is a tactic that works best if used under certain situations. These situations usually consist of A. Your opponent winning the first turn/deployment and B. They play the entire field trying to ensure that they have all avenues of approach covered (which gunlines usually do).
You observe the enemy deployment, possibly measure the ranges of his weapons, take into account which side has longer range and speed of units. Pick the side you want to work on first based on whatever qualifications suit you (this side has the artillery and I want to get into their minimum fir range early while taking away the advantage of it's long range, the other side is foot sloggers with short range weapons, whatever suits YOUR needs). Position as much of your army as you can focused entirely on that one flank. To avoid overcrowding, put your faster units closer a little further away but still able to reach that flank to focus on it right off.
Now, assuming you wont steal the initiative, half of his army will have to either sit still and twiddle their thumbs with nothing in range or move giving you a full turn reprieve from the guns of half (or some other large percentage probably close to 25 totally not shooting and 25 shooting ineffectually. While you are able to overload a small portion of their army with more units than they can shoot at. What usually happens is that you swamp and snuff out that flank killing half of their army while only suffering minimal casualties with the rest of their army trickling in towards you piecemeal depending upon the speed of his different units. While you are ensconced in the defenses.
Of course, if you are able to steal the initiative, it makes it even easier for you.
That being said, it does not work every time and there are ways to counter it just as there are with any strategy. This is one of the strategies I posted earlier that was totally dismissed as never working and being totally not useful. However, I have seen it work to great effect and I have used it myself to practically table opponents.
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Slingshotting
This is another that I put forth earlier that was totally dismissed as being totally worthless and not worthy of acknowledging. However I have seen it used to great effect(against me was the first time I saw it, then I watched the guy do it to others with the same effect). As it is not something I have ever tried only seeing a national tourney guy (one of a large group that goes to different tourneys every weekend throughout the year to mop up the "local yokals" and walk out with the prizes, but tot talk with him, he is actually a nice guy) so forgive me if I dont have a full grasp of it's mechanics. Again, I mentioned this before and one of the other posters had actually seen it as well and piped in with a clarification to help explain it after which on of my fan club shut up about it.
I saw it used with chaos to deliver super slicer chaord lord goodness into my lines. He attached his lord to a maxed out unit of chaos spawn with the mark of nurgle. Even tau are hard pressed to kill 3 or more of them in a single turn of shooting with normal terrain and such. He strings them towards me in a single file line with the lord at the back. With thier speed, they can reach me on turn 2 so I only get a single turn of shooting at them 2 if I get first turn. Only a single one has to reach combat for the entire rest of the unit to be protected and unable to be shot at. This then slingshots the lord into combat from the middle of the table. of course, that is not the only unit coming at me, there are also another spawn squad and big vehicular daemon engine nastyness and so forth as well which causes me to be unable to effectively focus fire on any one single target.
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Not really a tactic but can help the strategy.
Although not specifically offering lists, the evolution of the game decrees that with each edition some units become more or less useful. Some become all powerfull while yet others such as the berserker can become practically obsolete. Personally, I am a conspiracy theorist and feel that thisis often done "on purpose" to force us as players to constantly be forced to buy new and different models to remain competative.
It would be too exausting for me to do a unit by unit analysys for every army. I'm a horrible hunt and peck typer as it is and dont have every codex on me. Suffice to say, that I will assume you can read and make your own decisionsas well as find out firsthand yourself through game play which units are now better suited for what role, what models to pack away until they become useful again and what units to put on your christmas or "to buy" list.
I am pretty sure that if you use the same list as last edition in the same manner you used it then now, you may find it harder to win. For example you may find that now termagants popping out of drop pods are now more effective than hormagaunt rushing.
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Guns do play a more important role in the game than ever before. This is only right because it is a science fiction game where the fluff has them being everywhere. However, it is also a grim forboding and dark furure where monsters lurk everywhere so close combat need to play an important role as well (which it does). Getting into combat should not be easy, it should take skill, tactics and strategy to get to that point because when the monster is upon you and you fire off that last wild reflexive trigger pull, you will most likely be dead.
As I said before, the thread is designed for players to put forth actual tactics, strategies, one trick ponies and ideas to help players make it to close combat and be more effective at it. This is what we should be posting.

Cover can be a double-edged sword for assault units.

On the one hand it gives you a cover save, keeping more of your troops alive for longer. It's especially useful when it blocks like of sight as you can then only take casualties from a handful of weapons.

However, it can also act as a brake, slowing you down and meaning you take longer to get into combat. Taking 1/3 fewer casualties in one turn is not generally going to be worth it if it then takes an entire extra turn to reach the enemy.

The biggest losers here are (once again) foot assault units. These are the only ones that actually have their advance significantly slowed by terrain. Faster units such as bikes, jump-packers and beasts all still move at full speed, with (maybe) a chance at a casualty or two as the down-side. This is almost always worth it to maintain momentum.

In some circumstances having your foot troops avoid terrain will actually pay off. Yes, you'll lose more troops per turn but if you reach the enemy a turn earlier you will still lose fewer to shooting overall.


One key consideration for assault units is how much to spread out. It's a catch 22 situation here - clump up, and you lose less ground from shooting casualties (which in 6th edition have the additional effect of pushing your units backwards), but you're vulnerable to blast weapons. Spread out and blast weapons are far less effective - but only a small number of casualties are pushing you back a significant distance, which will add up over the course of a few turns.

Take a look at your opponent's army to factor in the risks. IG are horrible for assault forces because they bring multiple effective blasts to the table. On the other hand, Eldar have surprisingly few blast templates, as Fire Prisms are out of fashion. It's often worth clumping up a bit more against them as they may lack the ability to blast gaping holes in your line. Tau can be deadly with multiple markerlight-supported cover-ignoring Riptides, but otherwise they also have very few blasts available.

Once again units other than the humble infantryman have the advantage, this time those with larger bases where it's harder to catch multiple models in one go, such as beasts and bikes.


Finally, if you have the ability, get your assault troops nearer the enemy by using scout or infiltrate. It's often difficult to do this as the units with this rule are not always the units you want to assault with, but it's sometimes possible.

For example, this is one of the reasons why Huron Blackheart is the most popular special character for Chaos. He's the only one who gives the many tasty Chaos close combat units a way of actually getting to the enemy, in a codex that is otherwise devoid of usable ways of doing this (rhinos are too vulnerable, land raiders are too costly, and we all know what happens to foot-slogging MEQs, especially expensive ones). Kor'serro Khan would probably do the job for SMs, but it's a lot more effective to simply get loads of bikes instead...

 Hedgehog wrote:
Cover can be a double-edged sword for assault units.

On the one hand it gives you a cover save, keeping more of your troops alive for longer. It's especially useful when it blocks like of sight as you can then only take casualties from a handful of weapons.

However, it can also act as a brake, slowing you down and meaning you take longer to get into combat. Taking 1/3 fewer casualties in one turn is not generally going to be worth it if it then takes an entire extra turn to reach the enemy.

The biggest losers here are (once again) foot assault units. These are the only ones that actually have their advance significantly slowed by terrain. Faster units such as bikes, jump-packers and beasts all still move at full speed, with (maybe) a chance at a casualty or two as the down-side. This is almost always worth it to maintain momentum.

In some circumstances having your foot troops avoid terrain will actually pay off. Yes, you'll lose more troops per turn but if you reach the enemy a turn earlier you will still lose fewer to shooting overall.


One key consideration for assault units is how much to spread out. It's a catch 22 situation here - clump up, and you lose less ground from shooting casualties (which in 6th addition have the additional effect of pushing your units backwards), but you're vulnerable to blast weapons. Spread out and blast weapons are far less effective - but only a small number of casualties are pushing you back a significant distance, which will add up over the course of a few turns.

Take a look at your opponent's army to factor in the risks. IG are horrible for assault forces because they bring multiple effective blasts to the table. On the other hand, Eldar have surprisingly few blast templates, as Fire Prisms are out of fashion. It's often worth clumping up a bit more against them as they may lack the ability to blast gaping holes in your line. Tau can be deadly with multiple markerlight-supported cover-ignoring Riptides, but otherwise they also have very few blasts available.

Once again units other than the humble infantryman have the advantage, this time those with larger bases where it's harder to catch multiple models in one go, such as beasts and bikes.


Finally, if you have the ability, get your assault troops nearer the enemy by using scout or infiltrate. It's often difficult to do this as the units with this rule are not always the units you want to assault with, but it's sometimes possible.

For example, this is one of the reasons why Huron Blackheart is the most popular special character for Chaos. He's the only one actually gives the many tasty Chaos close combat units a way of getting to the enemy, in a codex that is otherwise devoid of usable ways of doing this (rhinos are too vulnerable, land raiders are too costly, and we all know what happens to foot-slogging MEQs, especially expensive ones). Kor'serro Khan would probably do the job for SMs, but it's a lot more effective to simply get loads of bikes instead...

Exalted good sir. Pretty much agree with you.

Now then, does anybody have any particular tactics for orks? I know very little as I rarely see or hear much of them anymore (besides dakka dakka lists), but how would one advise an ork player to maneuver about in a more effective and threatening CC manner? (I use them as from what I have heard they are a army that suffers some of the worst to get into cc with most cc units seemingly being rather slow)