Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

40k is likely one of the worst, if not THE worst setting for you if you don't like melee lol.

Melee is just fun and makes for epic moments.
Warhammer is about heroes and villains clashing eye to eye.

Complaining about or disliking it is just as useless as going to a Civil War reenactment group and complaining about the lack of Gundams.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Surely this is trolling...

Anyway, there were wars/battles where this 'taboo' was utilised, might want to look at well, world war I in general - running at guns basically and the charge of the light brigade.

On a completely side note, you need to look into empathy and the value of human life...

No I do not.

Because an endless war with a subsequent cut and run in which now the civillians will bear the brunt of revenge is all about empathy and value of human life. The doctrine was a great success clearly having achieved nothing except a fairy tale story.

If you fail to break the will of the enemy or at the very least sue for peace you fail at war. One example of useless modern doctrine after another. The failure was a failure to root out the enemy and break him. utterly. Suing for peace couldn't even be achieved. The history books will not treat this debacle kindly.

good luck with the MIC fairy tales though

Many modern armies are able to achive to complet pacification of enemy population. North Vietnam vs South Vietnam, China in Tibet or Russia in Chechnya. Fully succesful war ending in their victory .

Quasistellar wrote:
Literally no one thinks that.

Agreed. It's a false premise.

"Of course, melee combat shouldn't be important. It's barbaric and old-fashioned; a relic from more primitive times. Societies and civilizations must advance into more cultured behavior and solve their military problems as they should be dealt with: dedicated firepower. Nothing speaks more about how one could be a brutish simpleton than trying to skewer or bite your enemy."

So said the Ethereals, so it shall be true.

 Vector Strike wrote:
"Of course, melee combat shouldn't be important. It's barbaric and old-fashioned; a relic from more primitive times. Societies and civilizations must advance into more cultured behavior and solve their military problems as they should be dealt with: dedicated firepower. Nothing speaks more about how one could be a brutish simpleton than trying to skewer or bite your enemy."

So said the Ethereals, so it shall be true.

Translation: We will hire vassal fighters who eat people to do the dirty work, meanwhile our symbol of office is a bladed weapon itself....

 GoldenHorde wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

There is no taboo on hand-to-hand combat, it's just nearly irrelevant to modern combat, regardless of what weird ideas space fantasy fans have cooked up. It's fine for 40K to have a melee focus because it isn't particularly trying to be realistic to the modern day.

What weird ideas space fantasy "cooked up" that wasn't already shown in the brutal trench warfare where sharpened spades, clubs, maces, knives and even knuckle dusters made a serious comeback?

What's that game which had WW1+WW2 influences eg. land raider, leman russ, savage city fighitng eg eastern front etc.,

What is not normal for us, could very well be normal in the 40k universe. "Modern warfare" is not savage, but 40k is.

No one carried trench clubs or improvised weapons at the start of the great war. The germans never anticipated brutal hand to hand combat on the eastern front in ww2, yet it became a common thing. Those degenerations occurred in the span of a year or two of savage warfare and since 40k is often savage total war all of the time.....why are you projecting ?

Er... what?!

Everyone anticipated melee combat in WWI! Every major combatant entered the war issuing bayonets to soldiers, usually long sword-bayonets to make up for the shorter rifles coming into use (such as the SMLE). Officers carried swords. Cavalry used swords and lances. The reason no one carried improvised weapons was because they carried issued weapons.

The specific nature of the melee combat was unexpected, and as such long bayonets turned out to be less useful than a short club with a nail through it, but every soldier had a weapon to use from the beginning. Officers also lost their swords, it would appear largely because of marking officers as a target for snipers rather than their efficacy as a melee weapon.

In fact, the British learnt from this and changed to a short spike bayonet for their WWII-era No.4 rifle to make it more useable in confined melee. Interestingly, they also changed their close quarters shooting drill during WWII from a melee-focussed stance based around bayonet use to a shooting-focussed stance based around having the gun in the shoulder, presumably based on operational experience that repeated shooting was generally preferred in close quarters over being prepared to stab someone after the initial shots are fired. Note that this is using a bolt-action rifle, and shooting was still more effective in general.

WWI also showed that repeating firearms make great CQB weapons- revolvers and repeating pistols were favoured trench raiding weapons for their close range firepower, but obviously not every soldier could get one. Trench guns and SMGs took a similar role later on. The spades and clubs were backup.

Yeah I don't get what is going on in this thread. Are we supposed to "Affix Bayonets!" more when we encounter a sniper or some position with automatic weapons?

Does that win the war more?

Maybe in the next war we can improvise some trench shovels to sink enemy DDGs...

 Haighus wrote:

 GoldenHorde wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

There is no taboo on hand-to-hand combat, it's just nearly irrelevant to modern combat, regardless of what weird ideas space fantasy fans have cooked up. It's fine for 40K to have a melee focus because it isn't particularly trying to be realistic to the modern day.

What weird ideas space fantasy "cooked up" that wasn't already shown in the brutal trench warfare where sharpened spades, clubs, maces, knives and even knuckle dusters made a serious comeback?

What's that game which had WW1+WW2 influences eg. land raider, leman russ, savage city fighitng eg eastern front etc.,

What is not normal for us, could very well be normal in the 40k universe. "Modern warfare" is not savage, but 40k is.

No one carried trench clubs or improvised weapons at the start of the great war. The germans never anticipated brutal hand to hand combat on the eastern front in ww2, yet it became a common thing. Those degenerations occurred in the span of a year or two of savage warfare and since 40k is often savage total war all of the time.....why are you projecting ?

Er... what?!

Everyone anticipated melee combat in WWI! Every major combatant entered the war issuing bayonets to soldiers, usually long sword-bayonets to make up for the shorter rifles coming into use (such as the SMLE). Officers carried swords. Cavalry used swords and lances. The reason no one carried improvised weapons was because they carried issued weapons.

The specific nature of the melee combat was unexpected, and as such long bayonets turned out to be less useful than a short club with a nail through it, but every soldier had a weapon to use from the beginning. Officers also lost their swords, it would appear largely because of marking officers as a target for snipers rather than their efficacy as a melee weapon.

In fact, the British learnt from this and changed to a short spike bayonet for their WWII-era No.4 rifle to make it more useable in confined melee. Interestingly, they also changed their close quarters shooting drill during WWII from a melee-focussed stance based around bayonet use to a shooting-focussed stance based around having the gun in the shoulder, presumably based on operational experience that repeated shooting was generally preferred in close quarters over being prepared to stab someone after the initial shots are fired. Note that this is using a bolt-action rifle, and shooting was still more effective in general.

WWI also showed that repeating firearms make great CQB weapons- revolvers and repeating pistols were favoured trench raiding weapons for their close range firepower, but obviously not every soldier could get one. Trench guns and SMGs took a similar role later on. The spades and clubs were backup.

You're downplaying the actual importance of trench weapons.
A> they were lifesavers as in the tight confines of a trench you wouldn't have the time to reload in a melee
B> they were highly valued in night raids

There is a reason why these weapons were so desperately improvised and were prevalent.

The reason no one carried improvised weapons was because they carried issued weapons.

There was a ton of self made hatchets, maces , spikes clubs, knuckle busters etc. Half the stuff looked as if taken live from XIIth century battlefields.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah I don't get what is going on in this thread. Are we supposed to "Affix Bayonets!" more when we encounter a sniper or some position with automatic weapons?

Does that win the war more?

Maybe in the next war we can improvise some trench shovels to sink enemy DDGs...

It does. Russian took care of Chechnya that way. You just need to use the bayonets against the entire population or decide that for what ever reasons, you claim all the enemy population to count as enemy combatants. With ground and air superiority, there is no population in the world, even in favourable terrain that can whitstand that, unless they happen to have nukes.

40K has always been space fantasy... it has Knights, Daemons, Goblins, Orcs, Elves, Ogres, Halflings, and had Dwarfs at one point.

I am still astounded by people thinking it is a sci-fi shooting game.

40K is not sci fi, yes it is in space, yes it has futuristic weapons, and big space ships... those are the things that highlight it being a space fantasy.

Hence why Melee will always be a big thing in 40k.

ccs wrote:

I generally despise melee in my sci-fi games full of guns, bigger guns, crazy sized guns, death rays, lasers, rockets, orbital bombards, & other shooty stuff. I'm not alone.

I get where you're coming from on this one.

For my part, I don't mind some melee in sci-fi. A lot of people find swords (and their sci-fi equivalents) cool weapons and there's something more meaningful about actually facing down a foe from just a few feet away. On a more practical level, I think melee can definitely have a place in sci-fi:
- As you already mentioned, alien races like tyranids and zerg tend to include a lot of creatures that are incapable of carrying guns and so simply try to claw enemies to death.
- From a practical standpoint, whilst engaging such enemies with guns is obviously preferable, it may also make sense to equip troops with bayonets and/or other close-quarters weapons so that they're better able to deal with any such creatures that close.
- Sci-fi also opens up the possibility of advanced stealth/teleportation/mobility technologies. For example (though never well-represented in the actual rules), Dark Eldar Mandrakes can literally step out through another creature's shadow. For this reason, it would make a lot of sense for them to have a focus on melee combat as that is where they would naturally end up (it would also open the possibility for stealthier killing). Lictors are another example as they represent exceptionally stealthy foes, adept at either lying in wait to ambush enemies at very close range.
- Finally (as has been the case in real life), some battlefields might severely restrict the ability of soldiers to kill enemies at long-distances. Fighting in cities, on starships or on densely-packed alien worlds will severely limit the effective range of guns and offer a myriad of places for enemies to lie in wait or infiltrate close and then ambush them.

What I'm getting at is that if designers want melee in their sci-fi game then there are some options they could take without breaking verisimilitude. 40k though . . . tends to go a bit beyond that. As above, I don't mind some melee and I get that rule of cool is a thing, but at the same time it is a little weird to see stuff like Terminators abandoning all their guns to instead waddle up the battlefield with big hammers.

 GoldenHorde wrote:
Why is sentiment even a thing that people have?
Why do people believe the idea of a clean war when the common contemporary military doctrine is a complete and utter failure to topple a determined and entrenched asymmetrical foe who is extremely outgunned and has no aerial support and limited supply lines? The taliban for example could be taken out swiftly if our modern taboos were eschewed.

You're not necessarily wrong but I fail to see what any of this has to do with the title.

Let's say for a moment that western forces decided that the Taliban needed to be destroyed at any cost and were prepared to shrug off all war crimes, civilian casualties, damage to infrastructure, bad press, international outrage, rules of warfare that they signed etc.. In the event that they adopted such a mindset, why on earth would they make use of melee combat? Surely, if they abandoned sentiment and took a 'by any means necessary' approach, the solution would be along the lines of massive nuclear strikes or similar ordnance? "Yes, that entire country is now uninhabitable, irradiated desert and we inflicted 99.9% civilian casualties but we beat our enemies!"

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah I don't get what is going on in this thread. Are we supposed to "Affix Bayonets!" more when we encounter a sniper or some position with automatic weapons?

Does that win the war more?

Maybe in the next war we can improvise some trench shovels to sink enemy DDGs...

Melee and CQC =/= bayonet charge.

FWIW what wins more is taking the fight to the enemy, not letting the enemy constantly melt away and come back at their leisure

Ever heard of the 42nd street charge in Crete by any chance since you ridicule bayonet charges?

Karol wrote:
Many modern armies are able to achive to complet pacification of enemy population. North Vietnam vs South Vietnam, China in Tibet or Russia in Chechnya. Fully succesful war ending in their victory .

This is the single best post If read in Dakka.

To be fair hand to hand combat is a bit excessively depicted in the 40K lore even taking into account the science fantasy tone of the setting... but it is part of its identity (violence in 40K tends to be cheeky just like the recent and excelent "The Suicide Squad").

If taken in a true serious manner 40K would be the most depressing setting out there, but it is ment to be a satire.

Gamewise, melee is a positive and dinamyc elemente of the game... its nice that in 9th ed is more relevant... poor Taus will have to wait for the codex to see how they balance out.

BTW... in Infinity there is quite a big amount of melee but its not easy to do it in an effective manner... Infinity is also a very cinematic game.

 vipoid wrote:

Let's say for a moment that western forces decided that the Taliban needed to be destroyed at any cost and were prepared to shrug off all war crimes, civilian casualties, damage to infrastructure, bad press, international outrage, rules of warfare that they signed etc.. In the event that they adopted such a mindset, why on earth would they make use of melee combat? Surely, if they abandoned sentiment and took a 'by any means necessary' approach, the solution would be along the lines of massive nuclear strikes or similar ordnance? "Yes, that entire country is now uninhabitable, irradiated desert and we inflicted 99.9% civilian casualties but we beat our enemies!"

Hold your horses matey, because war crimes were already committed WITH the failed doctrines. so your argument is invalid.

The current doctrine fails to bring the fight to the enemy. An enemy that can melt away at will. It was a complete failure. The entire strategy was a total miscalculation. I could say more but its off topic

. In the event that they adopted such a mindset, why on earth would they make use of melee combat?

Because unless you use nukes, there is a too high chance that part of the population survives, meaning in a shorter or longer time you have the same kind of a problem back again. Nukes are too hard to use, you would have to find a country which is both your enemy or target, be important enough for you, yet somehow unimportant to all the other nuke armed powers. Such countries don't exist on the planet right now. That is why a ground offensive supported by use of regular and chemical bombing is a lot more efficient, if you decide you want to grind the other side to death. And it works the Turkish, Syrian and Russian coalition, supported by Hezbollah were and are really good and eliminating any problems to the Assad regime . Although one does have to say that his father, was more efficient at doing the same thing. Had same style of rebelion, but delt with it without mass outside help and the war taking up years.
Took the rebels over 30 years and the promise of US military help to even think about rebeling again.

 GoldenHorde wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Let's say for a moment that western forces decided that the Taliban needed to be destroyed at any cost and were prepared to shrug off all war crimes, civilian casualties, damage to infrastructure, bad press, international outrage, rules of warfare that they signed etc.. In the event that they adopted such a mindset, why on earth would they make use of melee combat? Surely, if they abandoned sentiment and took a 'by any means necessary' approach, the solution would be along the lines of massive nuclear strikes or similar ordnance? "Yes, that entire country is now uninhabitable, irradiated desert and we inflicted 99.9% civilian casualties but we beat our enemies!"

Hold your horses matey, because war crimes were already committed WITH the failed doctrines.

Your argument is invalid asf.

The current doctrine fails to bring the fight to the enemy. An enemy that can melt away at will. It was a complete failure. The entire strategy was a total miscalculation.

US doctrine in Afgansitan or Irak is a complete failure and it is not humanitarian at all (it is based after all in ussing cover operatives and lawless mercenaries en masse)... that dosent mean that the only alternative is the Russian way in Checheniya (which needed two very costly wars and many years to be pacified).

"Victory by any means " is an idiotic axiom... many nations have been broken by this type of victories (IE: Habsbourg SpaIn during the XVI and XVII centuries).

Karol wrote:

The reason no one carried improvised weapons was because they carried issued weapons.

There was a ton of self made hatchets, maces , spikes clubs, knuckle busters etc. Half the stuff looked as if taken live from XIIth century battlefields.

I know, I meant specifically at the start of the war. GoldenHorde was insinuating that melee was some great rediscovery during WWI because improvised trench weapons were developed after a year or so, but actually melee was anticipated from the beginning, and it took awhile for improvised weapons to appear because first the soldiers had to find out their issued melee weapons were unsuited to fighting in the confines of a trench. The point was that melee was always there in some form.

GoldenHorde wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

 GoldenHorde wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

There is no taboo on hand-to-hand combat, it's just nearly irrelevant to modern combat, regardless of what weird ideas space fantasy fans have cooked up. It's fine for 40K to have a melee focus because it isn't particularly trying to be realistic to the modern day.

What weird ideas space fantasy "cooked up" that wasn't already shown in the brutal trench warfare where sharpened spades, clubs, maces, knives and even knuckle dusters made a serious comeback?

What's that game which had WW1+WW2 influences eg. land raider, leman russ, savage city fighitng eg eastern front etc.,

What is not normal for us, could very well be normal in the 40k universe. "Modern warfare" is not savage, but 40k is.

No one carried trench clubs or improvised weapons at the start of the great war. The germans never anticipated brutal hand to hand combat on the eastern front in ww2, yet it became a common thing. Those degenerations occurred in the span of a year or two of savage warfare and since 40k is often savage total war all of the time.....why are you projecting ?

Er... what?!

Everyone anticipated melee combat in WWI! Every major combatant entered the war issuing bayonets to soldiers, usually long sword-bayonets to make up for the shorter rifles coming into use (such as the SMLE). Officers carried swords. Cavalry used swords and lances. The reason no one carried improvised weapons was because they carried issued weapons.

The specific nature of the melee combat was unexpected, and as such long bayonets turned out to be less useful than a short club with a nail through it, but every soldier had a weapon to use from the beginning. Officers also lost their swords, it would appear largely because of marking officers as a target for snipers rather than their efficacy as a melee weapon.

In fact, the British learnt from this and changed to a short spike bayonet for their WWII-era No.4 rifle to make it more useable in confined melee. Interestingly, they also changed their close quarters shooting drill during WWII from a melee-focussed stance based around bayonet use to a shooting-focussed stance based around having the gun in the shoulder, presumably based on operational experience that repeated shooting was generally preferred in close quarters over being prepared to stab someone after the initial shots are fired. Note that this is using a bolt-action rifle, and shooting was still more effective in general.

WWI also showed that repeating firearms make great CQB weapons- revolvers and repeating pistols were favoured trench raiding weapons for their close range firepower, but obviously not every soldier could get one. Trench guns and SMGs took a similar role later on. The spades and clubs were backup.

You're downplaying the actual importance of trench weapons.
A> they were lifesavers as in the tight confines of a trench you wouldn't have the time to reload in a melee
B> they were highly valued in night raids

There is a reason why these weapons were so desperately improvised and were prevalent.

Sure they were prevalent. No one wants to be caught short and a club is pretty easy to carry overall. Plus, most soldiers were still limited to bolt action rifles. However, given an either-or choice, I think most soldiers would prefer a revolver, trench gun, or MP18 if they could. By WWII that is exactly what you see- more semiauto and automatic weapons being used in the close assault.

I don't understand the idea that melee doesn't happen in modern warfare. A lot of Iraq occupation was melee-based, that's why the M4 became the standard weapon during that deployment. It's not the perfect melee weapon (that'd be an SMG or a shotgun), but it offers good balance between ranged combat capability and melee.

Cronch wrote:
I don't understand the idea that melee doesn't happen in modern warfare. A lot of Iraq occupation was melee-based, that's why the M4 became the standard weapon during that deployment. It's not the perfect melee weapon (that'd be an SMG or a shotgun), but it offers good balance between ranged combat capability and melee.

The discussion is less "melee happens" and more "melee with a club or blade happens instead of with a carbine". The latter does happen nowadays, but it is very rare with modern automatic weapons being prevalent.

 GoldenHorde wrote:
The taliban for example could be taken out swiftly if our modern taboos were eschewed.

If unethical methods were adopted, the US would use nerve gases or nuclear approaches, they wouldn't send people into caves with swords. The big controversy of drones is the human element is removed, so it's the complete opposite of what you're stating. So if the 'gloves were taken off,' you would never see the enemy that is killing you.

Got to laugh at people using real world incidents of melee... when did real world military have to engage in conflict with Daemons in melee?

40k is far removed from the real world, stop using the real world as a comparison.

Well 40k is not Looney Toons level of absurdity... It has fantasy elements, very heavy ones indeed... But basic phisycs and military elements should be still appliable in the setting.

There are some cursed posts in this thread. Ah Dakka, never change.

It must also be understood that a lot of 40k Lore is sort of inspired by RW history.

Its no just "crazy space magic".

I know, I meant specifically at the start of the war. GoldenHorde was insinuating that melee was some great rediscovery during WWI because improvised trench weapons were developed after a year or so, but actually melee was anticipated from the beginning, and it took awhile for improvised weapons to appear because first the soldiers had to find out their issued melee weapons were unsuited to fighting in the confines of a trench. The point was that melee was always there in some form.

Ah the western front. I was more thinking what was going on on the eastern front. Because of the not high enough levels of ammo production, Tzarist troops were often sent to the front without it, often without any weapons at all, which led to them fighting with improvised weapons. I guess it did look different on the western front.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Primagen wrote:

 GoldenHorde wrote:
The taliban for example could be taken out swiftly if our modern taboos were eschewed.

If unethical methods were adopted, the US would use nerve gases or nuclear approaches, they wouldn't send people into caves with swords. The big controversy of drones is the human element is removed, so it's the complete opposite of what you're stating. So if the 'gloves were taken off,' you would never see the enemy that is killing you.

Only that wouldn't work, the main source of taliban success is the fact that they can have recruitment and bases in Pakistan controled territory. The US could, technically nuke afganistan, assuming the people controling the opium trade were somehow okey with it, but they can't nuke Pakistan who has nukes of its own.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vatsetis wrote:
It must also be understood that a lot of 40k Lore is sort of inspired by RW history.

Its no just "crazy space magic".

True. 50 years of any period in europes history, and nothing that happens in w40k seems to be suprising or wierd.

Karol wrote:
Ah the western front. I was more thinking what was going on on the eastern front. Because of the not high enough levels of ammo production, Tzarist troops were often sent to the front without it, often without any weapons at all, which led to them fighting with improvised weapons. I guess it did look different on the western front.

Ah, the Tsar. A massive idiot who put himself in charge of a war his nation was losing.

Only that wouldn't work, the main source of taliban success is the fact that they can have recruitment and bases in Pakistan controled territory. The US could, technically nuke afganistan, assuming the people controling the opium trade were somehow okey with it, but they can't nuke Pakistan who has nukes of its own.

TBF, Afghanistan is a notoriously difficult place to fight (I don't believe the Death of Empires trash, just stating a fact) and it didn't help that the Taliban had formed from the mujahadeen, who the USA had been supplying weapons to in order to get rid of the Soviets.

True. 50 years of any period in europes history, and nothing that happens in w40k seems to be suprising or wierd.

Stories work better when based on real events and it's not a 40k exclusive idea. A Song of Ice and Fire takes a lot of inspiration from the War of the Roses for example.

Vatsetis wrote:Well 40k is not Looney Toons level of absurdity... It has fantasy elements, very heavy ones indeed... But basic phisycs and military elements should be still appliable in the setting.

Would you care to explain the physics involved in the use of psychic powers?

Locking this, way too many alerts are being generated here and some of the posts are just..