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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.

There is a difference between adding shooting and expecting results like IH and adding shooting to facilitate charges from hammer units.

If someone wants to go full tilt melee then they need melee chaff clearing and they'll NEED to get the job done turn 2 to get the rest landed on turn 3.

I didn't want to come out swinging, but i didnt agree either. I havent figured out which shooting units work best though.

If it's the Goonhammer article the list was written for ITC where tabling your opponent actually gives you less points which means people tend to have a better chance of using pure assault builds with BA.

Primaris and BA mesh well since you can get decent melee and shooting in a single package. I mean compare Incursors to CQC Scouts and you get a better save, better gun (which ignores cover) same number of attacks (which can explode on 6s), a mortal wound dealing mine and the same ability to infiltrate.

Sure, more points per model but with that kind of straight upgrade they're arguably worth it.

Mixing shooty and assault is something that has always worked well in 8th. Before the IH meta, the meta has been defined for a long time by lists which mixed shooty and melee (ynnari and IG/BA/IK).

Fighting against all assault lists is easy, the counters are obvious. If you don't get mathematically overrun, you can outplay it.

An all shooty list is harder to counterplay, but still doable.

A shooty list combined with melee threats is really hard to fight. Your opponent has a lot of plans available.

Spoletta wrote:
Mixing shooty and assault is something that has always worked well in 8th. Before the IH meta, the meta has been defined for a long time by lists which mixed shooty and melee (ynnari and IG/BA/IK).

Fighting against all assault lists is easy, the counters are obvious. If you don't get mathematically overrun, you can outplay it.

An all shooty list is harder to counterplay, but still doable.

A shooty list combined with melee threats is really hard to fight. Your opponent has a lot of plans available.

It's just a solod way to build an army to boot. I had reasonable success with my Sisters over several editions with that approach.

Spoletta wrote:
Mixing shooty and assault is something that has always worked well in 8th. Before the IH meta, the meta has been defined for a long time by lists which mixed shooty and melee (ynnari and IG/BA/IK).

Fighting against all assault lists is easy, the counters are obvious. If you don't get mathematically overrun, you can outplay it.

An all shooty list is harder to counterplay, but still doable.

A shooty list combined with melee threats is really hard to fight. Your opponent has a lot of plans available.

I agree with this. I just think the shooty backbone with assault auxiallary is so much better than assault backbone with shooty auxiallary. And vanilla does this way better than snowflake chapters. At least sw have long fangs though.

Martel732 wrote:
The 5+++ banner is okay, but its still not free and ubiquitous like ih tactics. BA chapter tactic is awful in practice because range zero attacks suck in 8th. BA intercessors dont live to punch anything because the banner is elsewhere.

You gotta bring like...40 of them. Ill tell you right now. If you aren't bringing like 40 BA intercessors minimum you are doing it wrong. Opponents will stop bringing chaff against you all together if you do this. You can shoot them all up by the end of turn 1 and with proper positioning you are getting 5+++ on every save you take in phase. It's like playing a DG army except you also shoot better and melee better.

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.

'Mechanically impossible'?

Implement the over-half-range and obscured-target hit penalties from Kill Team. Treat units as obscured if other units are screening for them. Add a rule where a unit can never lose more models to an attack than the firing unit can trace LOS to. Change CP generation to per-turn a la AoS, so alpha striking is less viable. These are just some spitballing ideas.

Turn 1/2 charges are only necessary when you cannot survive a single turn of shooting at long range. Changes that reduce the lethality of shooting will make melee better able to make it into combat and more lethal by comparison.

Then we can go a step further and make melee more directly effective, encouraging its use.

Give units free auto-hits against enemies falling back. Change the rule on pistols so that they can't fire in melee in the shooting phase, but can be fired in the fight phase in addition to the model's melee attacks.

A combination of reducing the long-ranged lethality of shooting plus increasing the lethality of melee- and heightening the risks of trying to escape melee- would swing things back towards melee as a viable build archetype. Do I necessarily think ALL of the above should be implemented exactly as I wrote it? No, but there's absolutely no reason it's 'mechanically impossible' to make melee work again.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The 5+++ banner is okay, but its still not free and ubiquitous like ih tactics. BA chapter tactic is awful in practice because range zero attacks suck in 8th. BA intercessors dont live to punch anything because the banner is elsewhere.

You gotta bring like...40 of them. Ill tell you right now. If you aren't bringing like 40 BA intercessors minimum you are doing it wrong. Opponents will stop bringing chaff against you all together if you do this. You can shoot them all up by the end of turn 1 and with proper positioning you are getting 5+++ on every save you take in phase. It's like playing a DG army except you also shoot better and melee better.

You can only crush so many models around that banner. No one is changing their lists because of one ba player lol.

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.

I mean...articles can say a lot of crap.

Most of the BA units that combined arms is the way to go. Units that do everything are the best units in 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The 5+++ banner is okay, but its still not free and ubiquitous like ih tactics. BA chapter tactic is awful in practice because range zero attacks suck in 8th. BA intercessors dont live to punch anything because the banner is elsewhere.

You gotta bring like...40 of them. Ill tell you right now. If you aren't bringing like 40 BA intercessors minimum you are doing it wrong. Opponents will stop bringing chaff against you all together if you do this. You can shoot them all up by the end of turn 1 and with proper positioning you are getting 5+++ on every save you take in phase. It's like playing a DG army except you also shoot better and melee better.

You can only crush so many models around that banner. No one is changing their lists because of one ba player lol.

You can do 2 lines of 10 man units on both sides. with 3-4 dudes under the aura. With a LT and captain in the middle too. I put most of my ultras list under the dang banner - you can do it. The extra firepower from shooting when you die is not to be underrated too. The ancient is honestly the best unit marines have access to.

BA have the crappy ancient banner though. This sounds like a vanilla special to me.

Funny enough, I think that Space Marines still sit as the strongest army in the game after these nerfs.

They are. I agree.

Even Orkz know you gotta bring gunz to your knife fight. BA can do it too. There are plenty of Factions (and Sub-Factions) that are as good, or better, than BA in CC. They still being guns to clear screens or deal with pesky units hiding behind those screens.

Darsath wrote:
Funny enough, I think that Space Marines still sit as the strongest army in the game after these nerfs.

Yep but its good to knock the utterly broken top off to better see the more structural problems underneath. I suspect there will be some more changes that hit all marine chapters in the April/May faq.

Quite likely Ordana, I agree. Though they want to be careful that they don't release too many nerfs, and in too short a time. Might look bad.

I think the most likely change will be a slihht points hike back up. Enough to make make people drop a unit ot take less upgrades.

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.

"I guess I just have to accept playing on Hard Mode" sighed the player with 30 shuriken cannon windrider jetbikes and 3 suncannon wraithknights in 7th ed.

What are you talking about?

Martel732 wrote:
What are you talking about?

You are playing an objectively less efficient version of what is currently far and away the most efficient army in the game. The folks stuck with tyranids, necrons, harlequins, GSC, Daemons, etc will all play you a sad song on the world's smallest violin.

"Sniffle - I guess I'll just shift into my INFERIOR version of the doctrines rules that your army doesn't get, and shoot at you with my WORSE intercessors who are only rapid fire 2 at 30" range and can't even get rapid fire 4....oh, woe is me...."

Uh huh. I'm not buying that after marine players were told for years to STFU and deal with it.

Those armies you listed stack up fine vs BA and BT, because being good at range 0 is inherently limiting.

It is very limiting, when the reaching of range 0 is hard to achive.

Martel732 wrote:
BA have the crappy ancient banner though. This sounds like a vanilla special to me.

How is it crappy? You shoot when you die on a 4+. You don't get the ignore morale trait for some reason but objectively a 5+ FNP aura is literally worth the loss of that.

Because the vanilla version lets you shoot on a better number if I recall. I can bolt the FNP effect onto any banner. Why would I put it on a slow model with a dubious ability?

Martel732 wrote:
Because the vanilla version lets you shoot on a better number if I recall. I can bolt the FNP effect onto any banner. Why would I put it on a slow model with a dubious ability?

You're thinking of the Codex 1.0 relic banner. The new relic banner is a 9" bubble instead of procing on a 3+.

Martel732 wrote:
Because the vanilla version lets you shoot on a better number if I recall. I can bolt the FNP effect onto any banner. Why would I put it on a slow model with a dubious ability?

No not anymore. Ultras used to have a relic to shoot on a 3+. That got changed to a relic that gives +1 attack for Ultras only. You can take an upgraded ancient for additional CP but it really is not worth it and all that would do is allow you to shoot on a 2+ bs when you use the ancient banner ability. IMO the best ancient is actually the blood angels one (5+ FNP is an S tier stat). Though I do take the Ultras relic ancient every game. I know it great because it proves it every game and everyone complains about it.

I see. I'm still not sold on lining up intercessors like that.

The BA relic is very good for sure. I just think universal 6+++ is better.

I should build a list that's 3 MA Mekz and 2 Stompaz (between a Supreme Command and Super Heavy Aux), so I can also say "I guess I should just accept Hard Mode."

Yea, you should.

Martel732 wrote:
I see. I'm still not sold on lining up intercessors like that.

The BA relic is very good for sure. I just think universal 6+++ is better.

Well I do face it a lot with a pretty efficient ultras army. The games are close. In the end I prefer the ultras because I get Ap-2 BR that I can move and still BD. AP-2 is just way more versitle than ap-1 on the ABR. Both armies shoot and melee really well. My power peices are just shooting and his are melee. The core of the army is about the same 40 ish intercessors.

Also on table much like you talk about. Maybe 1 LOS blocker per side. CA mission. Games a blood bath.