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Massed shooting is still king in 8th ed as far as I understand it, but I wanted to get your opinion what the best and most fun melee focused armies in 8th ed are. I am not only talking tournament results, but your personal experiences and opinions.

Harlequins and mixed-Eldar melee is difficult but amusing when it works.

Hmm.

"Forces of the Hive Mind" is probably the best, the term being used to describe any army made up of a mix of Genestealer Cults, Tyranids, and Astra Militarum codexes. Abberants, Acolytes, and Genestealers are some of the absolute best close combat units in the game, and Hive Tyrants are no slouches either.

GSC and Daemons

KurtAngle2 wrote:
GSC and Daemons

Genestealer Cults I've heard that they can be very good in melee, but I've never seen or played against demons myself. Are all demon armies in 8th good in melee or just khorne? Are there even just khorne lists?

Tiberias wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:
GSC and Daemons

Genestealer Cults I've heard that they can be very good in melee, but I've never seen or played against demons myself. Are all demon armies in 8th good in melee or just khorne? Are there even just khorne lists?

pure Khorne lists really aren't a thing, Bloodthirsters are not durable enough for their points cost unfortunately, and bloodletters are too fragile to be useful.

You could definitely do an all daemon army though, it would just be Chaos Undivided if you wanted the strongest army possible. A solid core of Nurgle Plaguebearers, some Tzeentch princes and Horrors, and a Khorne prince and some Bloodletters would be good.

 Horst wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:
GSC and Daemons

Genestealer Cults I've heard that they can be very good in melee, but I've never seen or played against demons myself. Are all demon armies in 8th good in melee or just khorne? Are there even just khorne lists?

pure Khorne lists really aren't a thing, Bloodthirsters are not durable enough for their points cost unfortunately, and bloodletters are too fragile to be useful.

You could definitely do an all daemon army though, it would just be Chaos Undivided if you wanted the strongest army possible. A solid core of Nurgle Plaguebearers, some Tzeentch princes and Horrors, and a Khorne prince and some Bloodletters would be good.

Thank you for explaining. are there any good Imperium focused melee armies? Space marines are not so good in melee this edition as far as I have heard and the marine+ armies like grey knights are also not really good.

They just announced a new space marine codex, and Black Templars apparently get to re-roll all failed charges now, and all space marines get +1 attack on the charge now. Black Templars might become a legit scary melee focused army.

As far as other Imperial melee lists... I saw a list running 3 Knights Gallant, backed up by a Custodes Shield Captain and 3 squads of 3 Custodes Bikers. Looks like a lot of fun, but not sure how 'good' it is, there are a few armies out there that would just absolutely hard counter it.

 Horst wrote:
They just announced a new space marine codex, and Black Templars apparently get to re-roll all failed charges now, and all space marines get +1 attack on the charge now. Black Templars might become a legit scary melee focused army.

As far as other Imperial melee lists... I saw a list running 3 Knights Gallant, backed up by a Custodes Shield Captain and 3 squads of 3 Custodes Bikers. Looks like a lot of fun, but not sure how 'good' it is, there are a few armies out there that would just absolutely hard counter it.

Yes, I was not fully up to speed on those, but the new chapter tactics look really great and interesting...and I don't even play marines.

The golden banana boys hit really hard in melee true, but they have to play bikers don't they? Transports are too expensive and even though their normal infantry hits like a freight train, they have to footslog across the field and are also not good at holding objectives, because they want to get in close an personal and not stay back holding some objective.

What about orks? As far as I've heard they are very dependent on CP to be effective

Golden boys pretty much have to play bikers if you wanna be competitive with them, though some people have had success taking a single squad of their terminators to act as "shock troops" in ITC mission formats that have "magic boxes". It's an ITC-only thing, where you cannot shoot in or out of a building, and only infantry can go into the building. So you'd need something that hits hard, like Custodes Terminators, to get the job done.

Orks are very good in melee, they do burn though a lot of CP, but they also can very easily take 3 battalions since their HQ's and troops are their strongest assets, so when you start with 18 CP if you're spending a lot of them you're still probably fine. Their most CP heavy units are Lootas or Tankbustas, where you'd spend like 4 CP on them per turn between More Dakka and Showin' Off. So yea, you can spend 6-8 CP per turn with them, but you get at least 2 turns of burning at max power before you run dry, so no worries there.

I'm having a ton of fun with my Kraken tyranid swarm, mostly warriors and tyrants and fexes, although I'm not going full on melee - all the warriors have swords and a gun, for example.

I love the Tyranids codex in general, it's got really good internal balance

Chaos space marine flinging?
Granted the list is daft but inbetween flying dp, Lord discordants, sorcerers and movement shenanigans aswell as recycling a army Centered around red Corsairs csm might now work decently especially with the melee buff.

I haven't played them all, so I couldn't possibly say.

I can tell you that mono-Slaanesh Daemons are tremendously fun, though.

Haemonculus Covens, as tough as it gets and Grotesques and Talos both hit really hard.

For imperials blood angels deserve a shout out, they have the tools. Best slam caps, one of the best delivery strats, lots of force multiplying, scouts to push back. Plenty of ways to build them with allies whether it be knights, admech or assassins.

Tiberias wrote:
Massed shooting is still king in 8th ed as far as I understand it, but I wanted to get your opinion what the best and most fun melee focused armies in 8th ed are. I am not only talking tournament results, but your personal experiences and opinions.

It's not. You need to be able to give and take assault in some capacity to take the middle ground, and skirmishers are very powerful offensively. If your plan is to stand and shoot and you make no effort to advance aggressively, you will be unable to capture the objectives necessary to win.

That said, I like melee melee-focused Sisters of Battle. It's pretty fun, especially with the Vanguard move getting units to skirmish on T1.

Orks.

Blob of 30 Goff slugga ork boyz with banner nobz, ghazzy, and weirdboy casting warpath. Based 3 attacks, +1 for choppa, +1 for over 20 models, +1 for ghazzy, and +1 with warpath. Each boy has 6 attacks each. If you are able to wrap the whole blob around a target you can dish out 180 attacks hitting on 2+ and exploding on 6s. Last time i did this, I generated around 230 attacks total.

White Scars now have AP1 D2 chainswords on turn 3. That could be fun.

Grey Knights. Because you can just throw the game and go play outside.

EDIT: I had too many tabs open and commented in the wrong thread. ignore.

dominuschao wrote:
For imperials blood angels deserve a shout out, they have the tools. Best slam caps, one of the best delivery strats, lots of force multiplying, scouts to push back. Plenty of ways to build them with allies whether it be knights, admech or assassins.

that might change once all the SM supplements are out.

How do you define "fun" for the purposes of this thread?

 fr3ddy wrote:
Orks.

Blob of 30 Goff slugga ork boyz with banner nobz, ghazzy, and weirdboy casting warpath. Based 3 attacks, +1 for choppa, +1 for over 20 models, +1 for ghazzy, and +1 with warpath. Each boy has 6 attacks each. If you are able to wrap the whole blob around a target you can dish out 180 attacks hitting on 2+ and exploding on 6s. Last time i did this, I generated around 230 attacks total.

I never play Goffs so do they get +1 attack on their boyz?

Because my math is 2 attacks base, 1 for choppa, 1 for 20+, 1 for ghaz and 1 for warpath for 6 attacks each

Best? Maybe not Orks.

Most Fun? Orks. Always Orks.

I'm beginning to think the answer MIGHT be white scars after the new codex and supplement

BrianDavion wrote:

dominuschao wrote:
For imperials blood angels deserve a shout out, they have the tools. Best slam caps, one of the best delivery strats, lots of force multiplying, scouts to push back. Plenty of ways to build them with allies whether it be knights, admech or assassins.

that might change once all the SM supplements are out.

Hmm you might be right.. Mechanized primaris ftw!

White scars looks like a FUN assault army.

 Elbows wrote:
How do you define "fun" for the purposes of this thread?

Should have defined my question better initially. For the purposes of this thread I meant the army you personally had the most fun playing with, regardless of the results. And I should have framed a second question in which I asked what melee focused army perfomed best in your personal opinion.

Fun wise? World Eaters butcherhorde. Kharn, e-champ with murder sword, two apostles, one with soultearer other with illusion. I then do 2 multi melta brutes, 4 berserkers squads (P-axe/plasma pistol champ, 2x axe plas, 5x axe bolt), then 2 (fist combi-bolter, 2x axe plas, 5x axe bolt), & 2 (fist combi-melta, 2 axe plas, 5 axe bolt). Split troops & HQs between 2 battalions.

I know numbers seem odd but I'm a stucker for sacred numbers. The squad comp is what most will disagree on. I've opted for chainaxes from the beginning as my local meta is full of guard/eldar/tau who got annihilated by all those s6 ap-1 attacks, and the pistols are there to clear out survivors who couldn't/didn't fall back. Anecdotal I know, but those plasma pistols do quite a bit of work as vehicle killers/weakeners. Brutes are mostly in there for filler, but they have come in clutch a few times. Those are what I tend to tweak about the most. I haven't run this since CSM got +1 attack thing, but I'm being berserker charges will be quite nice now.

The question is what's the most fun. Fun doesn't mean most powerful.

For me, it's Cultists.

I like putting down 80 - 120 models then plucking half of them off the board 5 minutes later. Have had games where the dead pile gets so big, it spills onto the table and I mistake them for live units. Have used large blobs to screen enough of the table to prevent reserves from arriving.

Close second: Bloodletters.