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This is coming from someone who has been absent for too many editions to count and hence catching up.

Am I missing anything or is this edition the charge / alpha strike meta, when it comes to melee?

There used to be initiative, and some weapons were powerful but heavily penalized for it (e.g. power fist termies). Now, it seems that the IGYG nature is further emphasized, with fewer interruptions of that flow (overwatch in most armies doesn't seem to be a major factor).

When I see "competitive" lists with good melee (for imperium, so mostly marines) it is all about jump packs and stacking attacks on glass cannon units. It does seem to pay off! Sanguinary guard or death companies, with some buffs, seem to be doing eye watering damage.

Am I misreading it? Personally, I prefer grindier fights, with morale mattering more and so on.

If you prefer longer, drawn-out fights and morale mattering then I'm sorry to say 40k really isn't the game for you. It's extremely rare for units to last more than one turn once they are targeted. In fact, if a unit can't destroy its intended target in one turn it's often derided as not being worth much. Exceptions exist for tactics like wrapping and trapping units in melee, but that's usually in order to utterly obliterate them next turn.

40k is far too lethal at the moment and that means if you want to compete you need to try to be ahead in the lethality race.

Slipspace wrote:
If you prefer longer, drawn-out fights and morale mattering then I'm sorry to say 40k really isn't the game for you. It's extremely rare for units to last more than one turn once they are targeted. In fact, if a unit can't destroy its intended target in one turn it's often derided as not being worth much. Exceptions exist for tactics like wrapping and trapping units in melee, but that's usually in order to utterly obliterate them next turn.

40k is far too lethal at the moment and that means if you want to compete you need to try to be ahead in the lethality race.

And on top of that 40k is weighed pretty heavily in favor of shooting over melee. A melee unit isn't worth a [censored] if you can't reliably cover 26+ inches and deny overwatch fire*, but a shooting unit is vastly easier to get into range and the good melee units generally aren't better than the good shooting units by enough to make up for being so much harder to deliver.

* Overwatch doesn't always matter but when you hit Tau, Iron Hands, or anything with a lot of auto-hit weapons it's ruinous to suffer the overwatch.

Assault unfortunately just has too many failure points.

1. Your opponent rolls hot on shooting - either killing the unit charging, or crippling it to irrelevancy.
2. You fail the charge and so potentially take damage while achieving nothing (the big one).
3. You whiff your attack rolls/opponent rolls hot on saves - and your opponent then rolls hot fighting back, killing or crippling your unit to irrelevancy (such as reducing it so a quick smite clears the unit off). Or allowing them to just back away and everything else can attack that unit.
4. You charge two units in, your opponent activates counter-offensive for 2 CP, and proceeds to smash the second unit if they charged anything with melee power.

Whereas shooting has the following failure point:
1. You whiff your attack rolls.

It inevitably happens - but with the ability for one unit to roll hot after another rolled cold its much less significant.

Shooting has been buffed and units can fall back, often without penalty, so assault has to be boosted to the point where its odds on to one-shot anything it gets to.
But this then means that if assault can make a first turn charge its often a guaranteed win while your opponent can do nothing. They can screen in deployment - but screens can be removed.
So the whole assault game ends up coming down to charge dice. Those games where you go first and get 3 10+ charge rolls, after any modifiers, rerolls etc so you can contact loads of units and tri-point (surround) something so they can't fall back and shoot you? Odds are high you are going to win. Those games where you fail all three charges? You've almost certainly lost.

And that's just going to play out statistically. Which doesn't necessarily matter for one off games - but for a tournament, the odds of rolling hot on those charge dice for five games in a row are incredibly low.

Thanks for the informative comments!

It just seems to me that part of the issue is terrain set up (and rules!); when tables are shooting galleries, I fail to see how you make assault relevant unless it is "alpha striking" in the ways all of you described. Deepstrike / jump pack assaults seem to be the only reliable way to get to melee.

As for the simplification of the combat phase, they said they wanted to reward tactics (i.e. getting the charge) over stats. This was said in a 2017 warhammer community post.

Do you guys feel that cc is now more tactical? And how about fun, is it more enjoyable?

Personally, as I said I like to play more with morale and grindier fights, but it might be just me.

CC is much more tactical, I'd say it's the part of the game that needs the most thought and positioning. It's also much better than in prior editions, where CC basically didn't need any thought put into it, once you got there the units were smashing their faces in until one side was dead or the game was over.

I'd add that what newman said is only true for some matchups and tournament play, I see combats lasting for several turns in many games. And CC has also gotten stronger than in 6th and 7th Edition. But I admit that shooting overall is still easier to accomplish. But as you correctly pointed out, if shooting decides a game alone you either played against very specific lists (Tau, Guard, Space Marines ) or didn't have enough terrain on the board.

Grey40k wrote:
It just seems to me that part of the issue is terrain set up (and rules!); when tables are shooting galleries, I fail to see how you make assault relevant unless it is "alpha striking" in the ways all of you described. Deepstrike / jump pack assaults seem to be the only reliable way to get to melee.

You got the problem exactly right. No unit in the game survives crossing the table for two or more turns before making a safe charge, anything that cannot appear and charge immediately will just get blown to bits before it has a chance to attack.
Terrain setup changes almost nothing about it, more dense terrain usually just makes it harder to get into melee, as many units can't move through terrain and/or lose movement from it.

As for the simplification of the combat phase, they said they wanted to reward tactics (i.e. getting the charge) over stats. This was said in a 2017 warhammer community post.

Do you guys feel that cc is now more tactical? And how about fun, is it more enjoyable?

Well, if you do get into combat, this is actually the case. Units striking first, taking turns for those that don't and the counter-attack stratagem have made combat more interesting than initiative ever did.
The problem is just shooting is too reliable and too powerful in comparison. There is no point in marching boyz across the board when your opponents can clear out 60 or more per turn by shooting them.

Grey40k wrote:
Thanks for the informative comments!

It just seems to me that part of the issue is terrain set up (and rules!); when tables are shooting galleries, I fail to see how you make assault relevant unless it is "alpha striking" in the ways all of you described. Deepstrike / jump pack assaults seem to be the only reliable way to get to melee.

As for the simplification of the combat phase, they said they wanted to reward tactics (i.e. getting the charge) over stats. This was said in a 2017 warhammer community post.

Do you guys feel that cc is now more tactical? And how about fun, is it more enjoyable?

Personally, as I said I like to play more with morale and grindier fights, but it might be just me.

Terrain can certainly help, but it still doesn't really fix the core problem, which is that shooting is very heavily favoured by the current rules. More terrain allows for a bit more nuance in the movement phase but the vast majority of currently effective close combat units are models with high mobility and Fly so terrain doesn't cause any extra problems for them and the current core rules make blocking LoS with terrain quite difficult.

Close combat is probably the most tactical part of the game...but that's not really saying much. It's the one part of the game where positioning makes a big difference and there is some level of real interaction between players. However, most of the "tactics" are really just rote memorisation of mechanical effects with not much opportunity to mess up providing you follow a pretty basic flowchart of procedures in your turn. Outside of accounting for the Counter-Attack stratagem (which I've never really liked, but that's a different topic altogether) there aren't really any difficult, meaningful decisions to be made to pull off your tactics.

In some ways its more fun than it was but in others it's probably worse. I like the idea of Fall Back as some kind of mechanic for escaping from combat, but hate the mindless implementation of it, for example. There also isn't much n the way of prolonged combat, precisely because of Fall Back. If a player is charged and ten decides to stay in combat in their turn (Assuming they could Fall Back) it's almost certain that one of the players is wrong.

If deepstrike was reduced to 8", or if melee armies got a strategem to deepstrike within D6+3" like the Callidus I think melee would be much more viable. 9" charges are just not worth it, especially since everyone bubble wraps.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
CC is much more tactical, I'd say it's the part of the game that needs the most thought and positioning. It's also much better than in prior editions, where CC basically didn't need any thought put into it, once you got there the units were smashing their faces in until one side was dead or the game was over.

I'd add that what newman said is only true for some matchups and tournament play, I see combats lasting for several turns in many games. And CC has also gotten stronger than in 6th and 7th Edition. But I admit that shooting overall is still easier to accomplish. But as you correctly pointed out, if shooting decides a game alone you either played against very specific lists (Tau, Guard, Space Marines ) or didn't have enough terrain on the board.

Oh I do see melee combat take several turns, but it's always between two units that are badly suited to hurting each other when neither player can get another unit in to help.

Well some armies can do close combat. In general itvis better to talk about spesific builds then close combat in general.

SirGunslinger wrote:
If deepstrike was reduced to 8", or if melee armies got a strategem to deepstrike within D6+3" like the Callidus I think melee would be much more viable. 9" charges are just not worth it, especially since everyone bubble wraps.

Melee wouldn't really be more viable. Deep striking would be more viable.

Buffing deep strike as the solution to melee is missing the forest for the trees: the reason melee is so contingent on deep strike right now is that footslogging or even transport-borne melee units are non-viable. If you can't either charge across the board on turn 1 or charge immediately out of deep strike, you're toast. If you can't do enough damage in that one round of melee to justify your cost, you die and it's a bad trade.

The poor state of melee right now is a combination of:
-Increased shooting lethality at range, especially when combined with mobility. No more sacrificing your shooting entirely or only hitting on 6s when you move and fire Heavy. No more being limited to 12" when you move and fire Rapid Fire. Abilities like Bolter Discipline, FRFSRF, and Doctrines give high shooting ability from long range. Re-rolls are just everywhere.
-Stratagems, which disproportionately benefit shooting and increase turn 1 lethality. 'Shoot twice' is easy to use, just have multiple targets within range. 'Fight twice' is much more situational, and you never get to use it if you get 'shoot twice'd off the board T1.
-Overwatch, which gives shooting units yet another opportunity to kill melee armies before they get to swing (or free shots if they fail the charge).
-Fall back, which allows shooting units to get out of melee without penalty- after they've already had an opportunity to swing back, and for many armies, with mechanics that let them still shoot.

Trying to buff deep strike to fix melee is a band-aid that still leaves footslogging melee armies unplayable. Something has to be done about the sheer lethality of shooting combined with the ease of falling back out of combat for footslogging melee to be viable.

Edit: I would also argue that Deep Strike in its current form is an un-fun mechanic. Bubble-wrapping is the only counterplay and that's not a very fun interaction for either side. I miss being able to make the call to try a death-or-glory danger-close deep strike, and risk the unit scattering and being instantly destroyed. Plus having to weigh whether to deploy a unit normally, or put it into DS and not know when it will be available or where it will scatter to. All-DS lists were as hazardous to themselves, coming down piecemeal and scattering unpredictably, as they were to the enemy.

Instead it's either you bubble-wrap correctly and the DSers just can't come down anywhere useful, or you leave an infinitesimally small gap and then the DSers instantly come down with pinpoint precision and immediately shoot you.

Turn 1 charges are frustrating for much the same reason. Either you deployed correctly, or you didn't. No opportunity for counterplay (or if you lose priority, even shooting) before you get charged.

The only melee I might make use of would be a raptoral host of Warp Talons as Emperor's Children to make use of the new charge strat to change one of the charge dice to a 6, use the +2 from raptoral warlord trait and warp talon's negating overwatch ability on the turn they came in and charge as many things as I could.

Still kind of expensive, you need to put a fair bit of points and cp into it and it's still vulnerable to any number of anti-deepstrike abilities, strats, screening, advance warning systems..etc...

The only other melee list I want to try is really a goofy one (only because I like slaanesh and the new KOS model) : Take 2 supreme command detachments as daemons, take 4 KOS (1 of them is Shalsexy Thighbane) and 3 daemon princes with claws and wings, make one of the princes warlord and give him stuffs to help him kill (mark of excess/soulstealer etc...) and 1 infernal enrapturess.

Hope you get 1st turn, run at people and summon 2 more KOS and 1 more prince with the enrapturess and then..erm, try and stay alive as your opponent masturbates into his printed list of shooting dice.

Alternatively, get some points somewhere to include a herald or two for the str buff, or take out a KOS for the wundertwin new daemon prince/herald character. Maybe fit the mirror of vanity in there somewhere too, if you suspect flyers and/or want to tie everything up.

Of course all this relies upon your opponent being a moron and not using screens and anti-deep strike tactics, alongside ridiculous amounts of shooting power. Your opponent not having hands to throw dice also makes things a bit easier.

PS: Or use decent house-ruled terrain.

Looking at the hyperbole dakka likes to throw around I wonder how people play Daemons, Custodes, Orks etc.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Looking at the hyperbole dakka likes to throw around I wonder how people play Daemons, Custodes, Orks etc.

For the most part, they don't. And when they do play them, you see lists like

"Here's my ork list. it's 18 stationary cannons, 1 HQ is a psyker and 1 HQ is a stationary cannon, every other model is a grot or a max blob of deep striking ork boyz."

the_scotsman wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Looking at the hyperbole dakka likes to throw around I wonder how people play Daemons, Custodes, Orks etc.

For the most part, they don't. And when they do play them, you see lists like

"Here's my ork list. it's 18 stationary cannons, 1 HQ is a psyker and 1 HQ is a stationary cannon, every other model is a grot or a max blob of deep striking ork boyz."

Or the Custodes list that's entirely FW shooting units, or actually just 12 Dawneagles and 900 points of Guard.

There have been some successes with Keeper of Secrets spamming Daemons lists - but cynically I think thats more riding your luck than being good. It doesn't seem to be consistent.

Ye olde Plaguebearers+Thousand Sons got nerfed quite hard in CA19, but its still reasonably effective at what it does. But no one is impressed with an upper middle list being your friends collection of stuff they just happen to own.

Slipspace wrote:

Terrain can certainly help, but it still doesn't really fix the core problem, which is that shooting is very heavily favoured by the current rules. More terrain allows for a bit more nuance in the movement phase but the vast majority of currently effective close combat units are models with high mobility and Fly so terrain doesn't cause any extra problems for them and the current core rules make blocking LoS with terrain quite difficult.

That's what I was thinking; right now most melee I see is precisely jump packs. LoS and terrain issues are in part rule based, though. I find that cover isn't currently that great, but I haven't experimented enough to get a good feel.

catbarf wrote:

SirGunslinger wrote:
If deepstrike was reduced to 8", or if melee armies got a strategem to deepstrike within D6+3" like the Callidus I think melee would be much more viable. 9" charges are just not worth it, especially since everyone bubble wraps.

Melee wouldn't really be more viable. Deep striking would be more viable.

Buffing deep strike as the solution to melee is missing the forest for the trees: the reason melee is so contingent on deep strike right now is that footslogging or even transport-borne melee units are non-viable. If you can't either charge across the board on turn 1 or charge immediately out of deep strike, you're toast. If you can't do enough damage in that one round of melee to justify your cost, you die and it's a bad trade.

I agree with the sentiment.

-Increased shooting lethality at range, especially when combined with mobility. No more sacrificing your shooting

Yeah, anything like assault 3 on long range bolters should be gone. High volume of fire should require close range, like it kind of did in older editions.

Re-rolls are just everywhere.

I really don't understand all that re roll business...ugh!

Turn 1 charges are frustrating for much the same reason. Either you deployed correctly, or you didn't. No opportunity for counterplay (or if you lose priority, even shooting) before you get charged

That's what I don't like of this edition. Too many gotcha moments, with a lot of special rules, stratagems and super high lethality.

I prefer to fight things out more slowly.

I'd advise the op look at some battle reports on YouTube to be honest, try to watch something like deployment zone or a tabletop tactics video where they take more interesting rather than ultra competitive lists.
Getting the most competitive perspective on melee can lead to a pretty skewed outlook. But plenty of top ranked players use lots of melee, not many of them post on dakka however.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Looking at the hyperbole dakka likes to throw around I wonder how people play Daemons, Custodes, Orks etc.

I don't think any hyperbole could actually keep up with the competitive 40k meta.

Part of these issues are close combat specific, some are more general 8th edition design choices by GW.

8th edition turned the lethality up to 14 on a scale of 1-10.
Everything is class cannons compaired to older editions.
Most lists think nothing of just deleting 500 points or more of any opponents list turn 1.

GW replaced deathstars with aura bubbles that achieve the same thing.
Strategums and CP balance was so bad GW basically has lost control of the damage they add.
Having abilities and strategums means points cost of units can feel both far to high and rediculously under depending on subfaction rules strategum stacks etc etc.

I just don't understand why it's legal for overwatch to still go off even if the opponent failed the charge.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
I just don't understand why it's legal for overwatch to still go off even if the opponent failed the charge.

Overwatch is done after a charge is declared but before the charge distance is rolled so it’s not really the overwatch going off after the charge fails. I’ve always interpreted it as the overwatch has successfully deterred the unit from charging.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Looking at the hyperbole dakka likes to throw around I wonder how people play Daemons, Custodes, Orks etc.

Orks are a shooting army that uses deep striking melee troops as distraction and board control.

Aash wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
I just don't understand why it's legal for overwatch to still go off even if the opponent failed the charge.

Overwatch is done after a charge is declared but before the charge distance is rolled so it’s not really the overwatch going off after the charge fails. I’ve always interpreted it as the overwatch has successfully deterred the unit from charging.

That's true, and I do see how the narrative could be forged that way, but still, it's just one more thing that makes melee unnecessarily difficult in the game.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Looking at the hyperbole dakka likes to throw around I wonder how people play Daemons, Custodes, Orks etc.

The only successful Daemon army of recent times is the Plaguebearer list that isn't so much a close-combat army as just a slow, horde-based force with massive resilience. It gets into combat eventually, but that's usually just to stop it getting shot once it loses the -1 to hit buff from being whittled down. Even in that case it was often accompanied by a TS detachment that did a lot of the actual killing. It was more or less pushe dout of the meta by the rapid increase in shooting effectiveness and the points increase on Plaguebearers. Orks are more of a shooting army than a close combat one nowadays if you want to be competitive. That's one of the reasons a lot of Ork players are mad at GW - their army looks like it wants to be an in-your-face mob of unruly close combat dudes but that doesn't work nearly as well as spamming a bunch of semi-reliable shooting. Custodes are incidentally good at combat but most of their decent lists are also spamming the best shooting they have available and using melee as more of a last resort.

Seeing a pattern here? Obviously, in less hyper-competitive environments you can make melee armies work a bit more easily but they almost always rely on Depp Strike to operate at full effectiveness and that's very random. Even more annoyingly, the various nerfs GW made to Deep Strike early in the game's life cycle made DS shooting more attractive than melee options. I play both Deathwatch and Blood Angels and, in terms of DS, the DW are much more dangerous because I can drop 20 Primaris within 15" of my preferred target with relative ease and Rapid Fire away, often from the safety of cover or even a nice handy ruin and often regardless of screening units because I don't care so much about getting close - anywhere within 15" is fine. My BA really need to get within 9" and even then the battle plan often hinges on a small number of high-variance dice rolls to make the charge. Annoyingly, if you succeed in all of them it often makes the game frustratingly unfun for your opponent because you've basically appeared and charged with no chance for retaliation whereas if I fail too many of them the opposite is true. It's one of the reasons I moved to a more boots-on-the-ground BA army.

Screening is the only real protection against DS but as I mentioned in a previous post, that's not really tactics - it's just rote procedural memorisation. It's the 40k equivalent of bureaucratic busywork: not difficult just annoying and time-consuming. The DS changes in general are a symptom of the general problem with 40k right now. We used to have no pre-measuring and fixed charge ranges. Now we have premeasuring whenever you want and random charges. That removes the randomness of range from shooting. You no longer have to decide whether to move a unit to get into range and potentially risk losing their shooting because you're still too far away. DS used to scatter, allowing you to risk a closer drop at the risk of losing your models, or scattering into terrain and having the same happen. Now it's pinpoint accurate. That basically leaves dice as the last random factor but recent increases in the number of rerolls has meant that even dice rolls aren't random any more. A typical SM shooting phase, for example, rolls and re-rolls so many dice you're very often achieving the average expected results with every unit and those expected results are often very devastating.

That's why I think in order to improve 40k you need to start again, annoyingly. The 8th edition framework is mostly fine (though still a bit too simplistic for me), it's the various additions and army-specific rules that are the problem along with some of the decisions around things like relative S/T values and unit movement speeds.

The Newman wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
If you prefer longer, drawn-out fights and morale mattering then I'm sorry to say 40k really isn't the game for you. It's extremely rare for units to last more than one turn once they are targeted. In fact, if a unit can't destroy its intended target in one turn it's often derided as not being worth much. Exceptions exist for tactics like wrapping and trapping units in melee, but that's usually in order to utterly obliterate them next turn.

40k is far too lethal at the moment and that means if you want to compete you need to try to be ahead in the lethality race.

And on top of that 40k is weighed pretty heavily in favor of shooting over melee. A melee unit isn't worth a [censored] if you can't reliably cover 26+ inches and deny overwatch fire*, but a shooting unit is vastly easier to get into range and the good melee units generally aren't better than the good shooting units by enough to make up for being so much harder to deliver.

* Overwatch doesn't always matter but when you hit Tau, Iron Hands, or anything with a lot of auto-hit weapons it's ruinous to suffer the overwatch.

This isn't true. I feel that this edition has made melee really powerful, probably more generally powerful than it should be.

You don't even have to be good at melee to want to charge in, because initiative is gone, chargers fight first, and if you have any survivors [which isn't exactly a stretch], the enemy unit can't charge or shoot next turn and is effectively locked out.

IMO, CQC should be something specialists do and are good at, and to some degree this is true, but really, regular units are also adequately good at it since it just requires having bodies and making your charge to be considered "Adequate".

I guess that part of the issue is that what the new rule designers at GW consider tactics are essentially combos.

Pile in some buffs and get a charge for that gotcha/ alpha strike moment. No breaking and coming back, no grindy fights. Swift all out fights that tend to reward timing and a bit of luck.

My idea strategy is more positioning, knowing the relative strength of units, outmaneuvering the opponent. I prefer more of a “simulation” and less of a “table top board game”.

As an example, two computer games I played: men of war assault squad and close combat series (a bridge too far, etc.). Assault squad (men of war franchise) rewards a tad more micro of units with direct control. It is more gamey and you can accomplish true hero like feats of you practice. Close combat let you give orders to units, but no micro. Morale and experience played a large role, and here are no miracle feats. It is a lot more about positioning and sound strategy.

I feel that old 40k was close combat, and the more arcadey version of assault squad is 8th edition.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

The Newman wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
If you prefer longer, drawn-out fights and morale mattering then I'm sorry to say 40k really isn't the game for you. It's extremely rare for units to last more than one turn once they are targeted. In fact, if a unit can't destroy its intended target in one turn it's often derided as not being worth much. Exceptions exist for tactics like wrapping and trapping units in melee, but that's usually in order to utterly obliterate them next turn.

40k is far too lethal at the moment and that means if you want to compete you need to try to be ahead in the lethality race.

And on top of that 40k is weighed pretty heavily in favor of shooting over melee. A melee unit isn't worth a [censored] if you can't reliably cover 26+ inches and deny overwatch fire*, but a shooting unit is vastly easier to get into range and the good melee units generally aren't better than the good shooting units by enough to make up for being so much harder to deliver.

* Overwatch doesn't always matter but when you hit Tau, Iron Hands, or anything with a lot of auto-hit weapons it's ruinous to suffer the overwatch.

This isn't true. I feel that this edition has made melee really powerful, probably more generally powerful than it should be.

You don't even have to be good at melee to want to charge in, because initiative is gone, chargers fight first, and if you have any survivors [which isn't exactly a stretch], the enemy unit can't charge or shoot next turn and is effectively locked out.

IMO, CQC should be something specialists do and are good at, and to some degree this is true, but really, regular units are also adequately good at it since it just requires having bodies and making your charge to be considered "Adequate".

But at the same time, it makes all elite melee armies that aren't mounted on jetbikes or jetpacks, really horrible. While at the same time GW has this strange idea of costing melee stuff as if it was range stuff aka is melee units would always reach melee at full strenght. And that is stupid, because everyone knows a termintor even teleporting in, is not going to make it in to melee most of the time.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
This isn't true. I feel that this edition has made melee really powerful, probably more generally powerful than it should be.

You don't even have to be good at melee to want to charge in, because initiative is gone, chargers fight first, and if you have any survivors [which isn't exactly a stretch], the enemy unit can't charge or shoot next turn and is effectively locked out.

IMO, CQC should be something specialists do and are good at, and to some degree this is true, but really, regular units are also adequately good at it since it just requires having bodies and making your charge to be considered "Adequate".

In any unit is a specialized melee unit, it's nobz. They are completely terrible right now, because they have no chance to cross of crossing board without help, and unless if you sink 150 points worth of killsaws into them (290 points for the unit), they struggle to kill a ten man unit of primaris or a rhino. If you jump them turn one, they get stuck in some sort of screening unit that is worth a fraction of them. If I put them into the tellyporta (an option other armies don't have), the don't arrive before turn 2, and still have to get past screening units.
And when they do, they suffer overwatch and then die next turn because the enemy just fell back and shot them down. Unless the got shot down on the way there or after failing the charge.

Instead of nobz, for 240 point I can have flash gits who can start killing things from the very first turn, thus reducing the damage my army takes, they can shoot targets behind screens and have zero risk of not being able to shoot. They are a great unit.

I don't see how a combat is supposed to be good when you have to pay 29 points for a melee specialist that you can expect to kill a unit of non-specialists once every other game, while a shooting specialist for 17-24 points will reliably deal damage multiple times per game costs the same or less.

Currently, in order for close combat specialist to deal enough damage to justify their high risk, they need to be able to one-shot a unit that is twice or more times their own value and have a mechanism to dodge getting shot - either deep strike or being a character.

Outside of some very few extreme durable outliers like plague bearers, I don't think there are any melee units without deep strike or character protection seeing play.

The problem you are having is that your enemy's non-specialist are bogging down your non-specialist - a problem that can be played around. It's also a problem some armies simply don't have because many shooting specialist also have the FLY keyword, stratagems or chapter tactics which basically allows them to ignore the one thing melee actually has going for them.

Not that initiative wouldn't change a thing about this - initiative was handed out based on the race, not based on whether you were a combat specialist or not.

Something that can't be repeated often enough:
In 8th edition, the value of a melee unit is solely decided by it's ability to get into combat, not by it's ability to actually fight in combat.