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What army or armies are the best at melee? I think Space Wolves are one, Maybe Orks and Tyranids, But what other armies would be good at melee?

I mean, Daemons pretty much have to be on this list because they've got almost no other ways to kill anything.

Most armies (i.e. everyone except Tau, Sisters, and Guard) have solid/effective melee units, but most of them can't build particularly effective armies around them. I'd say vanilla Marines, Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Wolves, CSM, Khorne Daemonkin, Daemons, Orks, Harlequins, and the Genestealer Cult are the armies you'd be able to field as melee-focused armies effectively. Of those vanilla Marines, Space Wolves, Daemons, Khorne Daemonkin, and the Genestealer Cult are probably the most effective when built that way.

Genestealer Cults and certain Daemon builds (though technically they focus more on squatting objectives and refusing to die). GSC are fragile but they hit hard for cheap and can easily get the drop on armies.

Then you have builds like the Barkbarkstar...

Dark Eldar aren't to be underestimated in this either. The Succubus is an excellent close combat HQ, Sslyth are pretty strong, Grotesques hit real hard, Incubi, Reavers with Cluster Caltrops for D6,S6 HoW with Rending, Beastpacks aren't bad and of course the Talos is a real beast.

The only disappointment is that Wyches, Hellions and Bloodbrides who should all be good in combat, arent.

Avoid Sisters of Battle if you want a melee army. We have three melee units. Sisters Repentia have gameplay equivalent to their lore, they're a suicide charge unit that often dies before killing anything. Penitent Engines are too fragile to survive long enough to get into combat. Battle Conclaves are tough to get into melee since they travel at normal infantry speeds and don't have any proper assault vehicles.

Our melee units can dish out a ton of damage, but they kinda lack the ability to get into melee to actually deal that damage.

Genestealer Cults are good at melee? Intresting

Space Wolves have a slew of excellent melee units, and even their basic non-specialists do okay at it.

I'd have to go with space-wolves here. Wolfen and thunder-wolves are units that really have no equal in this game in terms of melee power.

Next I'd say eldar just because wraithknights.

Harlequins, although fragile, are very capable in melee. They ignore terrain completely on the charge (flip belts) and have a solid stat line for CC. Add in their weapon options and they are scary. However, you know, bullets.....

Stay away form Orks, they are not a Close Combat army anymore

S3 I2 6+ save means they die in droves before they get a chance to swing, and even when they do swing its at S3 unless they charged then for 1 turn its S4.

The only relatively good unit in CC we have is meganobz who are over priced terminators without an invul save.

To add to the echo in here, I'm pretty much in agreement with:
Space Wolves, Vanilla Marines, Genestealer Cults, KDK and Daemons.

GK's -can- be very effective in CQC in my experience. Halberds are cheap and awesome, Falchions can be good mixed in to give some extra "oomph", and the good ol' fashioned Daemon Hammer. And ofc, the entire army has Force, making each attack a credible threat to anything and everything.

SemperMortis wrote:
Stay away form Orks, they are not a Close Combat army anymore

S3 I2 6+ save means they die in droves before they get a chance to swing, and even when they do swing its at S3 unless they charged then for 1 turn its S4.

The only relatively good unit in CC we have is meganobz who are over priced terminators without an invul save.

Meganobz + Trukk or even Battlewagon is vastly superior to whatever delivery method you want to try and get Terminators into close combat. Also MANz are 2 wounds which is great against non AP2 attacks and they have more attacks (and higher strength on the charge).

Also Orks are about picking your battles and "Shooting the Choppy and Chopping the Shooty". They can't out punch that deathstar or out dakka that gunline but they can out punch the gunline and out dakka/runaway/roadblock that deathstar while playing to the objective. Are Orks a top tier army? Nope not by a long shot but by Gork they are still an assault focused one Just gotta assault the proppa things while being kunning about delaying them dead ard deffstar gitz..... that's what grots is for .

 Vankraken wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Stay away form Orks, they are not a Close Combat army anymore

S3 I2 6+ save means they die in droves before they get a chance to swing, and even when they do swing its at S3 unless they charged then for 1 turn its S4.

The only relatively good unit in CC we have is meganobz who are over priced terminators without an invul save.

Meganobz + Trukk or even Battlewagon is vastly superior to whatever delivery method you want to try and get Terminators into close combat. Also MANz are 2 wounds which is great against non AP2 attacks and they have more attacks (and higher strength on the charge).

Also Orks are about picking your battles and "Shooting the Choppy and Chopping the Shooty". They can't out punch that deathstar or out dakka that gunline but they can out punch the gunline and out dakka/runaway/roadblock that deathstar while playing to the objective. Are Orks a top tier army? Nope not by a long shot but by Gork they are still an assault focused one Just gotta assault the proppa things while being kunning about delaying them dead ard deffstar gitz..... that's what grots is for .

Against any unit that has a powerfist or equivalent, Meganobz are wasted points because S8 AP2 = dead MA Nob. Also in my experience they tend to do very little. 4 attacks on the charge is nice but you have to get there and survive long enough to do those attacks. Plus at WS4 your probably only going to hit with 1/2 your attacks so in a unit of 3 thats 6 hits and 5 wounds on average. Pray god they don't have an invul and your good, also if they have that PK or PF your going to lose some models and that isn't a good thing for MA nobz.

Like I said, our best unit isn't spectacular, Also that advice about shooting the choppy and chopping the shooty is just meh. Everyone does that, unless their forces are significantly better.

Meganobz are still really good. It's silly to pretend otherwise.

Martel732 wrote:
Meganobz are still really good. It's silly to pretend otherwise.

Compared to what?

Terminators are 5pt cheaper and have 1 fewer wounds and attacks per model. They have +2 ballistic skill, +1 initiative, +2 Leadership, ATSKNF, Relentless instead of Slow and purposeful, Can deepstrike utilize Chapter Tactics and have different ways to equip them(heavy/special weapons) ...ohh and they have an INVULNERABLE SAVE!

the only thing Meganobz are good at is crumping things without any real CC ability. They are also pretty good at fething up vehicles, the problem is that they can't run and therefore don't benefit from Waaagh special rule, they are still LD7 so when you kill 1 model your causing a morale check and they have a good chance of failing it.

Merellin wrote:
Genestealer Cults are good at melee? Intresting

They're really good. Really, really good. It's hard to overstate just how nasty Claw-Morphs are; WS4, S6 Rending, I4 with grenades, 4 attacks each on the charge - ten of them have a reasonably good chance of plonking a Land Raider, IK or Wraithknight. For padding you have Acolytes, which are mini-Genestealers, easily capable of shredding basic troopers, AV10, and all the other piffling crap you don't want to waste Claw-Morphs on, and Neophytes, who are dirt-cheap infantry-killers/ cloggers.

Cult Ambush allows you to get these units in position to assault without taking too much damage, or potentially just charge right out of reserve. Any damage you do take can be restored by Return to the Shadows if you bring the Cult Insurrection Detachment. Above all, though, the army is priced appropriately; you can build a seriously nasty melee component without damaging your ability to bring shooty units and psykers (which allow you to summon in MOAR melee units with free wargear upgrades).

They're pretty great, all told.

SemperMortis wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Meganobz are still really good. It's silly to pretend otherwise.

Compared to what?

Terminators are 5pt cheaper and have 1 fewer wounds and attacks per model. They have +2 ballistic skill, +1 initiative, +2 Leadership, ATSKNF, Relentless instead of Slow and purposeful, Can deepstrike utilize Chapter Tactics and have different ways to equip them(heavy/special weapons) ...ohh and they have an INVULNERABLE SAVE!

the only thing Meganobz are good at is crumping things without any real CC ability. They are also pretty good at fething up vehicles, the problem is that they can't run and therefore don't benefit from Waaagh special rule, they are still LD7 so when you kill 1 model your causing a morale check and they have a good chance of failing it.

I'll take meganobz over terminators any day. Just my opinion on the matter. The transport options help a lot, too.

Martel732 wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Meganobz are still really good. It's silly to pretend otherwise.

Compared to what?

Terminators are 5pt cheaper and have 1 fewer wounds and attacks per model. They have +2 ballistic skill, +1 initiative, +2 Leadership, ATSKNF, Relentless instead of Slow and purposeful, Can deepstrike utilize Chapter Tactics and have different ways to equip them(heavy/special weapons) ...ohh and they have an INVULNERABLE SAVE!

the only thing Meganobz are good at is crumping things without any real CC ability. They are also pretty good at fething up vehicles, the problem is that they can't run and therefore don't benefit from Waaagh special rule, they are still LD7 so when you kill 1 model your causing a morale check and they have a good chance of failing it.

I'll take meganobz over terminators any day. Just my opinion on the matter. The transport options help a lot, too.

I am not a fan of the transport options honestly. To many weaknesses.

If you buy a trukk you have to buy at least 4, otherwise they get focus fired and destroyed easily on turn 1-2. If you buy a battlewagon your investing 110pts in a transport, if you give it a ram and some guns your looking at 140pts. If it wasn't OT but still an assault transport that would be different, but I get those things blowing up to side armor to often.

I like MA nobz they are good, not compared to other CC specialists but they are good. If they had an invul standard and were 5-10pts cheaper they would be fine, but they don't which means that they are only used in Ork games because nothing else in the codex is that much better.

 BBAP wrote:

Merellin wrote:
Genestealer Cults are good at melee? Intresting

They're really good. Really, really good. It's hard to overstate just how nasty Claw-Morphs are; WS4, S6 Rending, I4 with grenades, 4 attacks each on the charge - ten of them have a reasonably good chance of plonking a Land Raider, IK or Wraithknight. For padding you have Acolytes, which are mini-Genestealers, easily capable of shredding basic troopers, AV10, and all the other piffling crap you don't want to waste Claw-Morphs on, and Neophytes, who are dirt-cheap infantry-killers/ cloggers.

Cult Ambush allows you to get these units in position to assault without taking too much damage, or potentially just charge right out of reserve. Any damage you do take can be restored by Return to the Shadows if you bring the Cult Insurrection Detachment. Above all, though, the army is priced appropriately; you can build a seriously nasty melee component without damaging your ability to bring shooty units and psykers (which allow you to summon in MOAR melee units with free wargear upgrades).

They're pretty great, all told.

I'am with BBAP. I got a Genestealer cult army and almost everything got S4+-rending. If your looking for the best melee ARMY, then they're the best at this point. There are good close combat units and specific close combat deathstars out their but the genestealer cult units are soooo cheap and can easily get furious charge, hatred, rage etc.

At a tournament my metamorphs assaulted a land raider: 20 attacks with S7 rending (my icon gave them furious charge) and I got 2 hullpoints with immobilised result. Enemies turn I hit the landraider again with automatic hits and I destroyed it. Metamorphs only cost 1/5 compared to the landraider. sick..