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The way to balance shooting vs melee is the same way real balance is achieved in games like StarCraft - with the map/terrain. Play on good tables and melee is quite strong, always has been.

Bremon wrote:
So the solution to overpowered shooting isn’t buffing melee, because that would be overpowered? If you buff melee, shooting remains viable, and then mixed/TAC lists become viable too. “Shooting needs to be nerfed”? A melee buff IS a shooting nerf.

Why should melee units drop in and die after a turn when shooting units can fire at will. That’s without taking bubblewrap and the >9” minimum distance into account.

Your solution to getting to melee is spending points on rhinos? When the solution to making shooting more viable is to just spend more points on shooting units? Sounds questionable.

Eh, yes and no. While a buff to melee is certainly an indirect nerf to shooting, buffing melee and nerfing shooting would accomplish it in two different ways. The former isn't really what this game needs, as it will only lead to more games being decided by turn two or three or, worse, by who goes first. A nerf to shooting would tone down the rate at which things die - a major issue for melee armies. This would help melee armies get to grips with shooting armies without exacerbating a few of the issues already apparent in this edition. Such as alpha strike.

the biggest problem with melee in the game at current is the other side can just walk away for the rest of their army to mow you down.

if disengage required a roll and wasnt automatic it would make melee much more effective. For now tho they lose a unit and if you lucky and engage other units with the 3" consolidate/follow up for winning then they just walk away and shoot all your melee guys down....

Seen it in alot of games now...thats what mainly makes melee armies crap now.

chaos45 wrote:
the biggest problem with melee in the game at current is the other side can just walk away for the rest of their army to mow you down.

if disengage required a roll and wasnt automatic it would make melee much more effective. For now tho they lose a unit and if you lucky and engage other units with the 3" consolidate/follow up for winning then they just walk away and shoot all your melee guys down....

Seen it in alot of games now...thats what mainly makes melee armies crap now.

I play Grey Knights and Custodes. People walking away from me isn't the problem. It's getting to them and sometimes getting shot to bits after killing them. CQC is really deadly though and once you connect with something there isn't usually much to walk away with.

the base problem is, the bangles' core units - deep striking melee elite infantry with an emphasis on flamer weapons - is just the antithesis of what's effective in general in 8th edition.

They're going to need a lot of bespoke goodies to be usable. Given the resounding success of Grey Knights, I'm not optimistic.

At the end of the day it is a matter of what the designers want the game to be. In my opinion it should be viable to be a melee army, if the game designers integrate melee armies into their game. Sure, there are the people that say that shooting is far superior and of course melee armies should be mowed down at sight. But what would be the reason to play a melee oriented army then? Shall I spend my bucks and time to buy, build and paint such a faction just to get shot to bits?

On topic: I hope they release some more info soon. Can't wait to see more of the big picture how BA will be after our codex drops. The first snippets look promising so far. Hopefully they adressed all the probems index BA had. I'm still worried if our infernus and flame pistols will drop in points like sisters did. Or if bloodclaws will be any good. To be honest I didn't like the path the index took. Creating one mega unit by stacking some buffs felt like deathstars back from 7th.

Agreed; I was very disappointed yesterday had no tidbits dropped and I don’t want to wait until Friday for the twitch stream.

Bremon wrote:
So the solution to overpowered shooting isn’t buffing melee, because that would be overpowered? If you buff melee, shooting remains viable, and then mixed/TAC lists become viable too. “Shooting needs to be nerfed”? A melee buff IS a shooting nerf.

Why should melee units drop in and die after a turn when shooting units can fire at will. That’s without taking bubblewrap and the >9” minimum distance into account.

Your solution to getting to melee is spending points on rhinos? When the solution to making shooting more viable is to just spend more points on shooting units? Sounds questionable.

You are reading into what I wrote a bit much. I'm not saying melee doesn't need to be buffed--it certainly does--I'm just saying you can't tilt the balance too far in the other direction. The problems with melee are two fold: getting there intact and causing enough damage once you get there. The FNP banner and +1 to wound addresses both of those for Blood Angels. Does it do it enough? I dunno, but it's currently much better than what we currently have. Regarding Rhinos and such I was just pointing out there are ways to make it into combat currently without getting shot off the table.

The two big issues with the 8th Edition rules now as I see it are units being able to break from close combat. Previously melee units were safe in close combat. Now, any savvy player will just drop out of melee and shoot that unit with everything they have which compounds the problem not to mention multiple wounds and varying AP values favors shooting more. The other issue is long charges requiring buff characters to also make a charge roll. That often strands a buff character from their unit. If I was redoing the rules, I would require a roll off to break from melee, the unit breaking would suffer mortal wounds, if the unit would fail to break off the unit in combat would gain a +1 bonus to hit, etc. There should be some sort of downside as not being able to shoot isn't enough. On the buff characters issue not making it with their units I would allow 1 character to tag along with a unit they are close too and do a group charge. So one charge roll for the unit and the character that is with him. Those 2 things would solve some issues.

I don't foresee any of this happening, but what they are giving Blood Angels in our new Codex is certainly a step in the right direction.

Yes, I agree with what you’re saying theharrower; so much of the imbalance of melee could be rectified by having units retreating from combat not be guaranteed to get away without consequences. Mortal wounds should be potentially generated. Hell, when I started playing running from combat meant you failed a morale test, and frequently lead to squads being wiped out completely, or fleeing off the table.

^ this was great but being an eldar player seeing the look on my opponents face when a rather cheap unit of aspect warriors gets lucky and beats their powerful unit in combat and then overruns them did feel a little strong haha. But I agree their should be a bigger penalty for falling back rather than just none fliers can’t shoot.

Audustum wrote:

chaos45 wrote:
the biggest problem with melee in the game at current is the other side can just walk away for the rest of their army to mow you down.

if disengage required a roll and wasnt automatic it would make melee much more effective. For now tho they lose a unit and if you lucky and engage other units with the 3" consolidate/follow up for winning then they just walk away and shoot all your melee guys down....

Seen it in alot of games now...thats what mainly makes melee armies crap now.

I play Grey Knights and Custodes. People walking away from me isn't the problem. It's getting to them and sometimes getting shot to bits after killing them. CQC is really deadly though and once you connect with something there isn't usually much to walk away with.

Depends on the target if you kill it first off.

Secondly what happens more often than not is you kill the primary target but due to getting an extra roughly 6 inches of movement from the first 3 inch pile on plus the second 3 inch consolidate at the end of your fight turn you can often reach additional units against gunline armies.

The ability of those secondary target units you most likely didnt kill just being able to walk away is what really hinders close combat/melee army combat ability.

As it then leaves you completely exposed to tons of fire, and against some factions they can just step back and shoot you even with the units you locked up. This to me is what really kills melee units....lets face you can you for sure get about one 9 inch charge per turn if you stack your army right unless you have total crap luck. As you can deep strike with more than one unit plus characters and you can always re-roll one dice per charge phase. So getting in a charge is easy money if you plan accordingly and have some redundancy built into your list---which any good list should have.

 theharrower wrote:


You are reading into what I wrote a bit much. I'm not saying melee doesn't need to be buffed--it certainly does--I'm just saying you can't tilt the balance too far in the other direction. Having melee The problems with melee are two fold: getting there intact and causing enough damage once you get there. The FNP banner and +1 to wound addresses both of those for Blood Angels. Does it do it enough? I dunno, but it's currently much better than what we currently have. Regarding Rhinos and such I was just pointing out there are ways to make it into combat currently without getting shot off the table.

Exactly, and this has really been the same issues melee has faced for quite a few editions now. At least in past editions the opponent couldn't just fallback from CC. My issue with stuff like the banner is that we continue to have to add more wargear and models, that cost more points, on top of units that typically cost more to begin with just to be competitive. Hopefully it works but i highly doubt it. BA, and melee in general, still need some more help.

 theharrower wrote:
The two big issues with the 8th Edition rules now as I see it are units being able to break from close combat. Previously melee units were safe in close combat. Now, any savvy player will just drop out of melee and shoot that unit with everything they have which compounds the problem not to mention multiple wounds and varying AP values favors shooting more. The other issue is long charges requiring buff characters to also make a charge roll. That often strands a buff character from their unit. If I was redoing the rules, I would require a roll off to break from melee, the unit breaking would suffer mortal wounds, if the unit would fail to break off the unit in combat would gain a +1 bonus to hit, etc. There should be some sort of downside as not being able to shoot isn't enough. On the buff characters issue not making it with their units I would allow 1 character to tag along with a unit they are close too and do a group charge. So one charge roll for the unit and the character that is with him. Those 2 things would solve some issues.

I don't foresee any of this happening, but what they are giving Blood Angels in our new Codex is certainly a step in the right direction.

I literally said this the first day I really read through 8th rules. You should not just be able to break from CC with virtually no penalty. I understand the counter point is that the unit can't shoot, or charge, but tbh, that's not really a draw back when the rest of the army can just wipe that squad out, and leaving his squad still alive. If I turn my back on someone i'm fighting and run, they are either going to strike me in the back with melee weapons or pull their pistols out and shoot me as I run. Either way, there should have been something else done with breaking from CC.

The loss of extra attacks from charging and 2 CCWs/pistols hurt a lot too. Regular assault squads got really gimped by this as they only have 1 attack base and being able to shoot in CC with pistols did not even come close to making up for all the lost attacks in the first round and beyond. But a lot of the new rules favor shooting heavily over melee.

We'll see what happens, but like you I don't think the book will fix these issues.

In all the examples people are saying, about falling back and unloading the army into that melee unit; why is that the only unit that's threatening the army? Where are the other melee units in their lines to draw more fire? What about ranged units harassing them so they aren't sure who to pick off, or have been holding objectives the whole time the enemy is focusing on the melee units? Why is it just this one melee unit in their lines who can be focused on?

Because deep strike units have less than a 50% chance of making a charge, so they’re likely also sitting out in the open getting obliterated. Taking more min sized units to maximize number of charges means the ones that make it to combat probably aren’t strong enough to wipe a unit they charge in the first place. Deep strike targets are always priority because theyre up in your face and can prevent one of your units shooting the next turn. Bubble wrap usually have short range guns; melee units get close enough to unload on while gun lines are too far away. The problems with deepstriking melee units are pretty simple and obvious.

Also shooting armies are inherently in a better position to bring their force to bear where they need it to be.
Leveraging multiple CC units on a key target or targets faces a number of hurdles whereas most shooting units would just need LOS.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
In all the examples people are saying, about falling back and unloading the army into that melee unit; why is that the only unit that's threatening the army? Where are the other melee units in their lines to draw more fire? What about ranged units harassing them so they aren't sure who to pick off, or have been holding objectives the whole time the enemy is focusing on the melee units? Why is it just this one melee unit in their lines who can be focused on?

Not one person has suggested a single melee unit is all we're talking about here. We're talking about the weakness of CC compared to ranged in general really, and my posts are assuming JP heavy BA army DSing multiple units in. As Bremon pointed, the chances to make those charges are not only less than %50, they are way less than %50, like %16.66 chance I believe. GW made assaulting off DS so inconsistent that you can't rely on it at all unless your army has some rule or gimmick that substantially improves those odds. Characters like Lemartes can help, but even with his re-roll, your still under way under %50 chance to make that charge. So yeah, you might have multiple units that failed their charge, and will be able to the following turn, oh by the way, they got overwatched as well, so they might be down a couple models now, and they will likely be shot at and over watched a 2nd time before they actually get into CC, and your opponent is going to do his damndest to clear as many of them out as possible, or at least weaken them to the point that they can't do enough damage.

EDIT: oops, got my % wrong, forgot about the 1" being in CC, so need 9+ on 2D6 or %27.8 to make charge, so like 1 in 4 squads will get in.

To expand on bobafett’s point; you have a 27% chance of making a charge after deep strike. You can only use one command point reroll for charges per turn. You take overwatch, likely fail the charge, so depending on your luck you can have one priority charge target overwatch multiple units; even hitting on 6s; you’re likely taking casualties. My feelings on the matter currently is that the only truly competitive deep strike unit currently is Obliterators; they hit like trucks, and bubblewrap hardly has an effect on them because they have a 24” touch. Deep strike into cover and your opponent has a hell of a time shifting them. Death Company, vanguard vets, etc. dont have the resiliency, reliability, OR hitting power they have.

Can I take a moment here to laugh at the imagery of librarian dreads using wings if sanguinus?

Literally a 10 ton metal box flying across the battlefield with fire wings.

The flying librarian dread and mephiston will likely be the biggest beneficiaries of Wings of Sanguinius lol.

Would just making it so a given unit can only overwatch once per phase even things out? To me it seems like a simple change that could make things a bit more balanced with little risk of messing something up elsewhere in the game.

I think changing the 9” deep strike rule to 7” would help a lot. It would also make flamers viable. You’ll just be flaming/charging screen units anyway and they can walk out of combat so it’s hardly broken.

Tiberius501 wrote:In all the examples people are saying, about falling back and unloading the army into that melee unit; why is that the only unit that's threatening the army? Where are the other melee units in their lines to draw more fire? What about ranged units harassing them so they aren't sure who to pick off, or have been holding objectives the whole time the enemy is focusing on the melee units? Why is it just this one melee unit in their lines who can be focused on?

Not a lot of armies can do pure melee. Granted we are talking about this in a vacuum, but largely the issue is most units can be whittled down to nothing by shooting and bubble wrap can protect other units. I agree that a list that is put together well presents a lot of target priority issues and gives opponents issues deciding on what to kill. You can saturate and focus on melee, but when you do that your army suffers in other areas.

NinthMusketeer wrote:Would just making it so a given unit can only overwatch once per phase even things out? To me it seems like a simple change that could make things a bit more balanced with little risk of messing something up elsewhere in the game.

Definitely not. Overwatch is largely just a crap shoot. Granted there are units that can really do some damage when Overwatching, but that's not what makes me lose games. Rarely does a unit I'm charging do enough damage that it can Overwatch more than once. This can be mitigated too. Charge your Rhino in first to draw fire and bring your melee unit after so it doesn't shot. There are also the grenades from Reivers and some other things you can do. Multiple Overwatch is not a problem in my experience.

Kavish wrote:I think changing the 9” deep strike rule to 7” would help a lot. It would also make flamers viable. You’ll just be flaming/charging screen units anyway and they can walk out of combat so it’s hardly broken.

I think this is tilting the balance the wrong way. Flamers are fine. They don't need a lot of help. The day this happens is the day everyone takes flamers. It would be crazy overkill. I'd love to see them give Drop Pods some kind of bonus to units coming out of them. Like a +1 save bonus to units disembarking out of it or armies getting a -1 penalty to hit. Doesn't help all armies of course, but they do need to do something.

Back on topic I saw the Blood Angels dice today. BA symbol on the 6, skull on the 1, and tear drop instead of pips. They look ok, not great.

hey symbols on 6's alone is a huge boon, used to be they always put symbols on 1's, so the dice would mock you every time you failed.

rhavien wrote:
At the end of the day it is a matter of what the designers want the game to be. In my opinion it should be viable to be a melee army, if the game designers integrate melee armies into their game. Sure, there are the people that say that shooting is far superior and of course melee armies should be mowed down at sight. But what would be the reason to play a melee oriented army then? Shall I spend my bucks and time to buy, build and paint such a faction just to get shot to bits?

Agreed but what is the proper method? Making automatic turn 1 assaults possible? That leads game even more of required screens and alpha strikes. Game is too alpha strike heavy as it is. Game needs to move away from that(including shooting obviously) rather than even more in an arms race of alpha strikes to point of 1st turn being winning roll.

 Kavish wrote:
I think changing the 9” deep strike rule to 7” would help a lot. It would also make flamers viable. You’ll just be flaming/charging screen units anyway and they can walk out of combat so it’s hardly broken.

Personally, i'd go no lower than 8", simply because of flamers. Being able to deep strike a unit of flamers onto the table and then unload on a unit would not be good for the game. At all. Sure, not many units can load up on nothing but flamers, but, those that can, will basically change the game completely. Currently there are ways, in some armies, to get flamers into range after deep-striking, but it is always at the cost of failure.

Don't get me wrong, i'd love to drop down my assault squads and just flame 3 or 4 units straight away and then mop up the last couple with pistols or the charge, but suddenly there is no counter to it at all.

Really? A unit of flamers dropping in and shooting would be game changing? Only to the extent that people would take flamers in the first place. 5 flamers drop in; average 17.5 bolter equivalent hits. A unit of sternguard with storm bolters can already pop off 20 shots for 13.33 hits at 12”, while being useful up to 24” rather than 8”. There’s a reason you sometimes see dakka Aggressors but flamer one’s are practically a myth. Flamers are garbage. If an opponent wanted to spend points on a drop pod and 4 devastators with heavy flamers and could torch a unit upon arrival I’d be absolutely fine with that. They’re still less effective, less durable, shorter ranged, and more expensive than obliterators for that setup.

I feel like reliable deepstrike assaults would be too much in melee armies' favour. Suddenly appearing in front of enemy units to then reliably charge them to destroy them, seems like the flip side of how shooty armies can kill us off over the table without us being able to do much about it. So I'm not sure that's the way to fix melee armies.
Deepstriking has never been a reliable way of doing anything, before 8th it was even more random. The potential to spawn much closer was definitely there before, but there was a much greater potential of ending up somewhere you didn't even want to be. So I'd say it's better now than what it was, at least. I think the problem is that shooting armies have too much alpha currently, killing melee off too fast for it to be competitive and if we made melee just as strong it'd end up a murder fest of instant kill buttons. I sort of feel like shooting needs to be dialled down a little to give melee some breathing space.
That's just my take on it anyway, I don't want to say anyone is wrong, because I'm not a rules writer so I wouldn't really know to be honest. Just my experience with 8th is just how deadly shooting is, preventing melee to get its chance, because a lot of melee units are very powerful in theory, if they weren't just being shot off the table.

EDIT: I also agree that the BAngel symbol being the 6 is an instant buy for me haha. The old ones having symbols for 1's was quite frustrating haha. So I'm keen for them.

EDIT 2: I also think the deepstriking isn't necessarily about being in the enemy's face right away. I think it's meant to be flexibility in where your units are set up. You can gage the battlefield and what your opponent is doing and then drop your units in where they're needed. For melee units, maybe deepstriking behind cover first would allow them to live so that they can then move in close to assault. Or having a cover bonus/-1 to hit, like the harrower mentioned is a good way of handling it. It'd also make sense: a big flash of energy kicking up dust/ dudes dropping down on jump packs kicking up dust or taking them enemy off guard/ drop pods slamming into the ground; it'd throw the enemy off a lot. So I'd say that's possibly a step in the right direction. More defence for the units coming in, rather than more reliable charges on the turn they come in. Because, just like you'd want a chance to counter your oponent as a melee army, you want the same for a ranged army, there's just too much in favour of ranged armies currently.

EDIT 3: A follow on from what I was saying in EDIT 2, shooting units who can deepstrike in are definitely able to do their dmg when they drop, which is sort of an issue. There's something about being able to suddenly appear where you want to do dmg to who you want which sort of feels unfair. You never want to be in a situation where you can't have some kind of control over it. Some armies can have screaming units to help prevent this, but others can't. So this still sort of feeds into ranged units being too powerful. Though, again, I'm not the best when it comes to rules or strategy, so I can't really discuss it much, but it's just my perception on it. Anyone with better knoweledge of this stuff, feel free to roast me haha

 theharrower wrote:

The two big issues with the 8th Edition rules now as I see it are units being able to break from close combat. Previously melee units were safe in close combat. Now, any savvy player will just drop out of melee and shoot that unit with everything they have

I feel you are looking at this from the wrong side.

True, a savvy player will drop out of combat and then shoot with his other units - however, a savvier player will make sure that the unit that has dropped out and not shooting is the one that will do the real damage.

Put another way, if someone has struggled to get into combat, has his enemy pull back and then gets hit by others, then his opponent has out played him. They have decided which units will be involved in close combat, not the attacker. Which has to be just wrong for a close combat army.

Close combat is still very good - you (generally) get more attacks and, importantly, you do damage every turn, not just once a round. Once you get there, it is a far more efficient way to destroy units.

The thing is - that shooting received a bunch of major buffs whereas melee took minor nerf's and bufs.

First of all - shooting doubled twin linked fire. And where orks ballistics makes it irrelevant, the SM shoting on 3+ and easy re-rols effectivle doubled the rate.
Also - Heavy now fires after moving.
Also - all vehicels now fireall weapons they have.
Also split all fire - means efficient spread of damage.
Also - Firing with vehicles is easier than ever - fire tracks right from the corner.

And melee got... what? losing bonus attack on charge? losing anti-ranged shield in melee? can't charge after fall back even with some keyword?
The only buff I can think of is - losing initiative, +1 inch to charge.

Deep strike actually now favors precisely shooting shock troops. It's the meltagun and other 12-inch-threat weapons that get major buff. 8 inch and less weapons became almost useless.

So again - problem with melee is not about its powerfulness, but with the difficulties to make it work, difficulties to pull it off the right way.
Also - there is a little thing called Screen that makes all deep strike harmless to shooting armies :/

MongooseMatt wrote:
you do damage every turn, not just once a round.

That is a misconception - you take all the shooting first. Means shooting is a type of combat when only shooting hits you. There is no counter-shooting to this.
Whereas in close combat it's not just you hitting the enemy. Enemy also strikes back. Not all the shooting army are weak in melee. All of them have some kind of basic melee attack. Whereas a lot of the melee units have no ranged attack at all!

 Omega-soul wrote:

Whereas in close combat it's not just you hitting the enemy. Enemy also strikes back. Not all the shooting army are weak in melee. All of them have some kind of basic melee attack. Whereas a lot of the melee units have no ranged attack at all!

But this goes back to my point of picking your targets and not allowing your opponent to match like with like - there are plenty of units that a Blood Angel Vanguard (for example) does not have much to fear from. I would also never advocate any expectation to simply deleting enemy units without suffering any loss in return, something that some on these forums (not you, Sir) seem to be questing for.

I was just pointing out that that close combat(normally) gives you more attacks than you would get from shooting, and that you get those attacks twice per round. You can do a lot with that and is why, I feel, close combat remains relevant in this edition.

Then again, I would also advocate the use of flamers