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Martel just FYI this article came out recently regarding playing pure BA.

https://www.goonhammer.com/16987-2/

I agree with Martel on the zoning out of DS. Even a half decent player work that out quickly. DS is a busted flush for assault.
Also a reminder that DCPI also have a strat for 5 up FNP. That combined withe the banner offers a lot of resiliency and that's before shield and other buffs. BA are in a good place especially now the field has been narrowed.

Martel732 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Blood Angels can protect their CC units to an extent by deep striking them and using the bonus to charges paired with other bonuses the army has to make fairly reliable turn 3 charges.

That said, 8th has felt like the combined-arms edition to me. Between knights and chaffe armies need multiple answers built into their lists for a number of threats/obstacles.

Melee is still powerful, and can hard counter certain units given the right set up, but it requires smart play and is just not an option people can go all-in on and be successful.

I'm sure there are some edge cases that can do it, but that only serves to reinforce the point, rather than disprove it.

BA can only afford to pay for DoA twice really and not on the same turn. If DoA affected three units instead of one, id agree
Its just too easy to screen out deep striking BA.

You do know you can just deepstrike units that have jump packs, right?

Can't kill something that isn't even on the table.

No, but you can force it to deepstrike in crappy places by locking our most of the board

Martel732 wrote:
No, but you can force it to deepstrike in crappy places by locking our most of the board

Hence why you play a combined arms army that uses the rest of the force to clear the board and help set up your hammers.

Or are we pretending that the game doesn't involve at least half an army that has to be on the board now?

 Eldarain wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Do the other build your own subfactions in non Astartes books get to keep any benefits from the parent subfaction?

Nope. However those aren't necessarily successors to anyone, so I don't think that in particular counts.

Ah. Thought they might have set up the Nids as splinter fleets. Just frustrating when some factions get enthusiastic lore focused updates and some just get mailed in.

It makes sense for several armies to get that successor treatment. Of course a couple would be barred, like Craftworld Eldar who are dying, Custodes who aren't splintered at all, Chaos Marine Legions that will still be fighting pretty much the same, etc. However, I'm otherwise in agreement that the current treatment for most factions is garbage.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, but you can force it to deepstrike in crappy places by locking our most of the board

Hence why you play a combined arms army that uses the rest of the force to clear the board and help set up your hammers.

Or are we pretending that the game doesn't involve at least half an army that has to be on the board now?

That should be a sign though that there is an issue. You can go all in on shooting and be reasonably sure of a good outcome. Assault you go all in and it's a one sided slaughter fest that see's your assault groups trickle in slowly at best and made useless at worst. Hitting throw away chaff and then blasted clean. As well by the ideal time for the assault doctrine there is probably little left to your forces. I'd also add if melee is so kind of " Well you can make it work if you really believe ! " Why not just ignore it for more immediate gains other places ? As well why make some chapters seemingly all with a hell bent desire for that if its such a niche option?

Would just be nice to feel more parity and not " Well you can make it work if you really try hard " matched to shootings, just do it, or lose.

Just in terms of general balance, there's really no necessity for an all assault army to be viable. Like, assault doesn't have to equal shooting at all.

It's a great option to have decent assault units, and they should be viable to some degree. But that's quite a different story.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Just in terms of general balance, there's really no necessity for an all assault army to be viable. Like, assault doesn't have to equal shooting at all.

It's a great option to have decent assault units, and they should be viable to some degree. But that's quite a different story.

Daemons? If they want to write a Codex with no guns in it an all-assault army had better be viable...

 Insectum7 wrote:
Just in terms of general balance, there's really no necessity for an all assault army to be viable. Like, assault doesn't have to equal shooting at all.

It's a great option to have decent assault units, and they should be viable to some degree. But that's quite a different story.

That would be a fair thing to say in a game where there aren't armies that relies on assault to do its heavy lifting. Orks, Chaos (marines and demons in particular), Tyranids, have big gaps in their shooting and some armies like Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Black Templar are sold on their assault ability.

I can agree with Insectum in premise, but I feel like if "all-shooting" is a viable build (and it is), then all-assault should be equally viable.

I think it is mechanicaly impossible though, because for a melee army to work it would have to be able to engage in melee turn 1 or 2, in majority of cases. An efficient list like that would hard counter the majority of shoting lists.

Karol wrote:
I think it is mechanicaly impossible though, because for a melee army to work it would have to be able to engage in melee turn 1 or 2, in majority of cases. An efficient list like that would hard counter the majority of shoting lists.

You can definitely get most melee lists into the enemy by turn 2 at the latest, but the largest bonuses don't kick in until turn 3.

Karol wrote:
I think it is mechanicaly impossible though, because for a melee army to work it would have to be able to engage in melee turn 1 or 2, in majority of cases. An efficient list like that would hard counter the majority of shoting lists.

And look at the melee lists that exist, they do excactly that and have either an hyper efficent way of curbing the adverse effects of shooting, or in general can guarantee an alpha strike.
Massed assault that relies on multiple on field melee units that don't alpha strike but might ride a transport don't work because it is easy to stop them in their tracks T1.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Karol wrote:
I think it is mechanicaly impossible though, because for a melee army to work it would have to be able to engage in melee turn 1 or 2, in majority of cases. An efficient list like that would hard counter the majority of shoting lists.

You can definitely get most melee lists into the enemy by turn 2 at the latest, but the largest bonuses don't kick in until turn 3.

yes, but your not stoping a shoty army from functioning. I am talking about an efficiency the pre nerf IH had. Where each and every unit was shoting at stuff turn one. Of course you can sling shot a possessed bomb across the table, but that is not as much a melee army, as a chaos army with a alfa strike unit.

An efficient melee army, lets say something that uses jump packs or bikes and can get a move buff on them on turn 1, would be something like that. And an army like that which could get 1000-1300pts of units in to melee turn 1, would make it very hard for shoting armies to function. Same way 100% shoting armies make it hard for melee armies to function right now.

Massed assault that relies on multiple on field melee units that don't alpha strike but might ride a transport don't work because it is easy to stop them in their tracks T1.

yes, that is the only way for assault to work out for armies right now. But it is a very swing an miss, plus with how tough primaris can get and the use of mass flyers by some armies, the efficient assault unit is something like a possessed bomb. My GK can do something like that too. Drop in 10 paladins and unload rapid fire with 10 paladins at str 6 d2 shots with bolters , then become tank incarnate with stratagems, granting super physilogogy, +4inv etc to get stuck in with hammers and halabards, all on 3W models. But this is one unit, even if high cost, out of an 2000pts army, that can do that. Old BA smash hammers were like that too, only cheaper and with better relocation possibility.

I feel like goal posts are being moved whenever "yes, but..." is thrown around.

I just don't think that an army that has one even costly melee unit that it catapults thanks to da jump or being possessed bufffed, is a melee list. Specially as often the rest of the army is focused on shoting.

There are melee units that work or which worked in 8th ed. Inari spears for example pre all the changes, smash captins, specially of the BA kind pre nerfs. But one can't say that something like BA right now are played as if they were a melee army.

w40k seems to me, at least as far as good lists goes, be focused around either armies that are so good that they don't care what the opponent is doing or skews where one side won't win. And it is true with more general shoting vs melee armies. If there was an army that could engage with 1500-1700pts of its models on turn 1, shoting armies would be considered too weak. just like right now we had a long time where shoting was shuting down any form of melee armies.

Well that is the thing though, if all shooting is viable so should all CC. I get that in certain cases well CC should just be an addition to capability, sure, but then why make armies who sole focus on that as a means to achieve a victory or if not a sole focus a key selling point where many of their units are supposed to thrive ?

I further add shouldn't all CC be able to counter shooting ? More to the point all shooting should have a list based hard counter that isn't just a million units or -1 over and over again to make it just impossible to hit.

No one is saying shooting should never win, but the current skew is such CC is just an after though but for some armies its their primary focus.

This was started though to say that assault doctrine focused armies feel poor done with the fact they need to wait till turn 3 to really shine and by then as has been said they've been effectively housed or severely diminished in terms of potential gain.

Leaving assault doctrine holding the bag and the only fix that I think we'd see is being able to trigger it turn 2 as well or maybe having the doctrines work somewhat differently for assault doctrine focused armies to increase some defensive ability to help be sure they'll be assault forces left to hit the line at turn 3.

As even in pretty casual games most forces tend to be pretty ripped up by 3 especially if they came in through deep strike leaving less targets for first time to absorb damage and what does come in taking much over watch and being strung out.

I don't think one melee unit should roll a whole shooting list but a full CC army should have better parity vs a full shooty list if both are able to be made and some armies push it as their primary focus like some push shooting as their primary aim.

Just to let you know what's outside the Dakka bubble, this is taken straight from a "how to win with BA" article:

"I’m going to start with what many might view as a very controversial point of view on list design. That is, we are an assault army. This is where the army really shines with utilzing their biggest strengths being Red Thirst, Savage Echoes, and a variety of hard hitting units and characters. One of the biggest mistakes I see Blood Angels players make are trying to use shooty units to supplement our forces. This is a mistake because our army has very little available to make our shooting more than middle of the road. We are not Iron Hands, Imperl Fists or Ultramarines. We are Blood Angels. And true to form, Blood Angels work best in combat."

This is impossible to reconcile with the advice being given here.

Martel732 wrote:
Just to let you know what's outside the Dakka bubble, this is taken straight from a "how to win with BA" article:

"I’m going to start with what many might view as a very controversial point of view on list design. That is, we are an assault army. This is where the army really shines with utilzing their biggest strengths being Red Thirst, Savage Echoes, and a variety of hard hitting units and characters. One of the biggest mistakes I see Blood Angels players make are trying to use shooty units to supplement our forces. This is a mistake because our army has very little available to make our shooting more than middle of the road. We are not Iron Hands, Imperl Fists or Ultramarines. We are Blood Angels. And true to form, Blood Angels work best in combat."

This is impossible to reconcile with the advice being given here.

Care to actually link the article for greater context?

And I disagree. At minimum Blood Angels get the same doctrinal bonuses those chapters do which means that at least -some- shooting can pave the road to make the assaults more devastating. We're not talking about Chaos Daemons after all (who have basically no shooting), but Marines, and Marines still shoot like champs.

But if you plan to shot, why not just take a good shoting army, and just some a bit worse smash hammers from other chapters then BA. If BA assault doesn't make them win games, and their shoting is worse then the more shotier marines, then the army, at least as far as rules goes, makes little sense to be run. picking them up would be effectivly playing a worse army in a worse way, with exact the same models.

Martel732 wrote:
Just to let you know what's outside the Dakka bubble, this is taken straight from a "how to win with BA" article:

"I’m going to start with what many might view as a very controversial point of view on list design. That is, we are an assault army. This is where the army really shines with utilzing their biggest strengths being Red Thirst, Savage Echoes, and a variety of hard hitting units and characters. One of the biggest mistakes I see Blood Angels players make are trying to use shooty units to supplement our forces. This is a mistake because our army has very little available to make our shooting more than middle of the road. We are not Iron Hands, Imperl Fists or Ultramarines. We are Blood Angels. And true to form, Blood Angels work best in combat."

This is impossible to reconcile with the advice being given here.

Outside of the internet bubble, I see BA players running shooty units alongside their core of heavy melee hitters,and doing pretty well. You don't have to narrow down everything to a single trait to do well. I don't know how true that is for the tournament scene, but for regular games that's just fine.

On the contrary, the one time a match vs a BA player was really one-sided was simply down to how he didn't bring at least some ranged firepower, which left my strong units untouched while his melee was taking too long to reach them. And that match saw my entire MT dropforce fail miserably due to an astropath that decided to explode next to both command Squads

https://m.facebook.com/groups/484023581735540?view=permalink&id=1755541201250432

Martel732 wrote:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/484023581735540?view=permalink&id=1755541201250432

Broken link or removed.

Oh its in a group that you need permissions for.

BA just won a tournament the other day. I expect they'll rise to be a very successful and popular chapter.

I read the full breakdown. It's not a list i would enjoy playing, but some of his gambits were very enlightening. That being said, i dont think he would have won under ca missions based on his own comments.

I still think vanilla chapters are significantly better in practice. Which has been the case for a long time now, so i guess i should just accept hard mode.

Martel732 wrote:
I read the full breakdown. It's not a list i would enjoy playing, but some of his gambits were very enlightening. That being said, i dont think he would have won under ca missions based on his own comments.

I still think vanilla chapters are significantly better in practice. Which has been the case for a long time now, so i guess i should just accept hard mode.

Different tournament types require different lists. Unless we see a drastic shift in how the game works that'll always be the case.

Yeah i guess that he'd bring a different list to a ca tournament. I guess i really need to see those changes to help inform my fame.

I'm a member of the group that was posted in. I think it may have been a goonhammer article. Anyway I didn't agree with it then and I still don't. You can't all-out assault in this game it's just not worth it and believe me I've tried.

I do believe that especially with a mostly primaris version then all BA's are an assault unit and can fight well to some degree now after BoB.

I do recognise that BA aren't THE! top line competitive SM army but they are not as bad as all that IMHO and now the marine pack has just got tighter.

I know Vanguard Tactics on YT is doing well with them at the moment and they may be worth checking out.