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Are they really that bad?

Going to a 2k tournament in a few weeks and plan on fielding a 2k melee nids army. Really just going to have fun and try for best painted.

After scanning through the list section I don't see anything resembling a melee focused list.

I play a Khorne CSM army, and from my experience, it all depends on what kind of 'melee' army you mean.

90% melee, with the most bare bones ranged? You'll almost lose every time.

Mostly melee, with artillery to back you up? You'll find more success, but you still hurt against some lists.

To me, the true best way to play Melee, is to utilize light ranged for your bulk of bullet sponges, and let them soak the threat damage up while your melee units footslog or transport up the board.

Never underestimate the power of the new Character rules. If you have a very powerful Melee HQ/Character, slap him behind footslogging trash and he's untouchable, until it's too late for the enemy to respond.

Melee can be good right now, it is totally possible to run a competitive melee list if you are one of the following factions.

-Chaos anything, except Death Guard or Thousand Sons
-Tyranids
-Ynnari
-Harlequin

There are factions stuck in weird spot where melee is possible, but for a number of reasons fails to work like...

-Orks
-Grey Knights
-Blood Angels

So don't worry Tyranids can totally do it. The reasons lists like that are rare is because a melee list does kind of write itself for Tyranids.

 Quickjager wrote:
Melee can be good right now, it is totally possible to run a competitive melee list if you are one of the following factions.

-Chaos anything, except Death Guard or Thousand Sons
-Tyranids
-Ynnari
-Harlequin

There are factions stuck in weird spot where melee is possible, but for a number of reasons fails to work like...

-Orks
-Grey Knights
-Blood Angels

So don't worry Tyranids can totally do it. The reasons lists like that are rare is because a melee list does kind of write itself for Tyranids.

I'd say Death Guard are a very good Melee list, at least with how their close proximity shenanigans work. Even if most troops try to fall back from you, they're still within that 7" sweet spot where those mortal wounds start packing on.

Blood Angels want to incorporate both melee and shooting in their lists.

For example, one of the most efficient ways to equip Death Company is boltgun + chainsword. This keeps them cheap, gives them a better alpha strike than a bolt pistol would, and lets them do more damage before overwatch, thus hopefully preventing casualties due to it.

Meaning they aren't "pure" melee. But they're still really good melee, at the same time. Which is very keeping with Blood Angels lore; the sons of Sanguinius do try to keep themselves in check through adherence to the Codex Astartes, that they may never betray their primarch by becoming like the World Eaters.

Yea, but do you see tournament lists like that? No. I mean you literally just described a slightly worse version of a Grey Knight Strike Squad. Except instead of a stormbolter and power weapon, you got a boltgun and chainsword.

But they DO get jetpacks... and ignore damage on a 6.

EDIT: Kinda rash of me to say forgot they get 4 attacks in total now.

 Quickjager wrote:
Yea, but do you see tournament lists like that? No. I mean you literally just described a slightly worse version of a Grey Knight Strike Squad. Except instead of a stormbolter and power weapon, you got a boltgun and chainsword.

But they DO get jetpacks... and ignore damage on a 6.

They get an additional attack on the charge, and a 6++ feel-no-pain save. Not superb, but it's actually not all that bad, either.

DC are way better than SG, because they are better vs hordes and you lose less when overloaded plasma hits them. BA do well in CC until they run out of dudes. So if you count that as doing well, then, sure they do well. I count that as failing at CC because they all end up dead and then lose.

BA shooting, like most marine shooting, is rather poor, which compounds their problems.

Thanks for the insight.

Regarding Blood Angels and assaulting, I brought a melee-centric list to a recent tournament. Among other things I had 20 JP DC with a few special weapons and Lemartes. I don't see much point in bringing more than two special weapons per five DC. It just paints a bigger target on their back without improving their already lackluster durability. Maybe if the extra damage provided by special weapons was more impactful or if they could be delivered into melee with more consistency. Bolter and chainsword puts DC at their best against horde units per pt so I figured that they could be used as a fast, relatively durable nuisance. Main target being horde units and locking up tanks etc, with a few special weapons to threaten durable targets.

Turns out that they won't be able to deliver enough of a punch whether you try the deepstrike charge or footslogging. Too few will make it into melee either way even if you have favorable terrain. Tau overwatch was particularily destructive, no way of getting past that with enough survivors to deal significant damage. Charging from out of LOS, getting access to soft backline units etc did not happen vs good opponents. After the initial charge every opponent had enough of a counterattack to wipe them efficiently - anything with at least AP-1 is good enough. I don't think that they made their points back or played an important role in any game, whether they got to fight hordes or not. Simply not worth it compared to what you can do with the same points invested into Stormravens etc.

I think they would be better off without jumppacks and riding in rhinos instead, but at that point you are just playing beta Khorne Berzerkers.

I think the problem with melee is that its dependent on a few key dice rolls.

Do you go first? If so, great. If not - you are probably going to lose.
Do your first turn units (infiltrating, deep striking, psychic jumping) make it into assault? Unfortunately you will fail a lot of charges. Critical charge fails at any point? Again, you lose.
Finally since everyone can just walk away you have to do critical damage when you charge. Otherwise you take a full round of shooting and then have to get back into combat to finish off what you were fighting before. As such while it can apply to shooting units as well, a fluffing of dice (especially for special high-damage weapons such as thunder hammers, power fists etc) can leave you without any followup. A shooting player can re-direct fire to finish off something. An assault focused player finds it more difficult.

That and there are a lot of melee units which are just not very good - which is what I think about BA.

In brief when it works its really good. I just don't think you can ever get it to work consistently, which is why you don't see it much at tournaments where its all about going 6:0.

 Quickjager wrote:
Melee can be good right now, it is totally possible to run a competitive melee list if you are one of the following factions.

-Chaos anything, except Death Guard or Thousand Sons
-Tyranids
-Ynnari
-Harlequin

There are factions stuck in weird spot where melee is possible, but for a number of reasons fails to work like...

-Orks
-Grey Knights
-Blood Angels

So don't worry Tyranids can totally do it. The reasons lists like that are rare is because a melee list does kind of write itself for Tyranids.

And here I am planning a list for DG that consists of about 70-80% melee Wonder how that'll work xD

If you're using Plague Marines in a DG list, going with a large unit equipped with bubotic axes and flails is one of the best options. That doesn't necessarily make your whole army "melee focused", and you'll probably want some PBC or something for some ranged fire support, but DG are nothing to sneeze at in melee.

A DG/Nurgle Daemons list could be almost entirely melee focused and be fairly competitive.