Sorry I am behind here but; as I warned we are all busy bees around here getting ready for the NOVA open this week. I got some great practice this weekend at the Time Machine in Manchester CT by participating in an RTT there, it was great fun.
Shameless half naked female attention grabber: Good you found your way here!
Anyway here a brief article on how to play a melee army in 6th edition which is almost a taboo and often shunned topic. It really upsets me when people say the only valid melee list is FMC daemons but they in reality aren't even a melee army. FMC daemons are really only successfully played as a stay in the air, fly off the board and pick off units type army. If they try to fight in melee they will either smash through their target and get blown to pieces or get lucky enough that the unit actually stays but then you have to hope you definitely break them next combat or you get shot to pieces then. If you don't believe me take some time and watch Goatboy or Nick N. play their Daemons and see how many and which kind of combats they get into.
As usual with these articles folks lets start with our list design and for a pure (or melee heavy army) to work you are going to go by one very simple design philosophy; target saturation. Think about that for a minute; if you provide one target or very few targets to shoot at it makes target priority a no-brainer for these static or even worse, very fast gun line armies. This eliminates FMC and deathstars and please keep in mind this is with a all-comers, GT winning philosophy in mind. Yes FMC and deathstars can not only win games but win GTs with the right pairings but we are focusing on melee here.
The armies that do target saturation the best are the Tyranids and cavalry based Daemons. What is most interesting is that they both provide target saturation in very different ways.
The Daemons are doing target saturation by using multiple fast units that are immediately in the opponents face. This makes an army that forces immediate decisions that every decisions is correct but it is just not enough to stop all of it so at the same time each decision is wrong.
Tyranids are more of slow moving wave type of target saturation. Tyranids slowly move up with their big nasties while throwing their fast gribblys in your face. While the obvious answer seems to be kill the big nasties this is also the wrong decision as you quickly find yourself engulfed in more gribblys than you can deal with. If you kill the gribblys, by the time you kill enough to make them not a threat the nasties are at your door.
The common theme here is you are forcing multiple decisions; all of which are wrong which you can read more about in my article about adaptive play style.
Ok you have your list now you need to learn how to play it. Just like a shooting army; you are going to win or lose your game in the movement phase. You need to make sure you position yourself defensively as you advance up the field or offensively as you get closer to your target without leaving yourself completely vulnerable. If you have to make a choice between an offensive and defensive movement; always choose the defensive. It is still a dice game and if shit goes wrong you want to be safe.
Don't forget to play to the mission; it is fun as hell to run screaming up the field but if the terrain is no bueno for you to survive with than keep the fuck back. There is never an excuse to run face first into missiles. Get into the safest position possible for you to jump on objectives or into quarters to stay out of range to conserve kill points. I have had many games where I literally hide for 5 turns. It is boring, it sucks but most of those games I have won.
Now that you read all this great stuff time for the bad news; melee armies or even units are extremely difficult to play. It is easier to play gun line armies I am not going to lie but playing melee armies will 100% without a doubt make you a better 40k player in 6th edition. Take your lickings, keep your head up and learn to mitigate the damage, the fine art of eating overwatches (hmm that gives me an idea for another article), and making the charges so you stay in combat until your opponents turn.
One last thing; table quarters and objective missions are generally much easier for armies that actually leave their deployment zone.
Any questions? Ask away!
Posts
I think that credit should be given to the 2++ rerollable melee armies. The prime example of this would be the screamerStar.
ReplyDeleteI've seen this list in action, and unless your opponent has the right tools to mitigate the effect, the screamerStar can cause its opponent to bleed KPs while the rest of the army just flies on and off the board all game long.
The screamer list is certainly powerful but I'm not sure it's a rock solid melee army. No matter how you slice it you are relying on psychic powers which can easily fail and a grimoire which can fail even with that reroll from fate weaver. It is powerful but not solid in my humble opinion.
DeleteThe list has some horrendous matchups as well and forget it if they don't get first turn against wave serpents.
It is fail of me not to at least mention it as a viable option. It is super easy to play, very powerful if it works and is straight up fun.
Its interesting how that one is 'easy to play' yet others are not. I agree with you, that the screamerStar pretty much plays itself.
DeleteI'm not sure how easily is it to fail though. Your probably going to have 2 casters with the 4++ invuln power, so the biggest weakness is is the grimoire, which will fail once in every 1.5 games.
This sounds like a lot, but if it fails on turn one, or near the end of the game, it does not matter as much. If it fails on turn one, just move the screamers to the side and hide. If it fails on turn 6, its probably already done its deed.
Oddly enough when I'm facing a screamerStar list -- well, I don't worry much because seerStars are a beautiful counter -- but I'll actually try and go after Fateweaver first. The reason is that fateweaver is easier to kill than the scremaers.
Lets say I'm shooting all 4 serpent shields on round one. I will get ~14 shots with them, hitting ~9 times, wounding ~8 times, and killing 2.5 screamers.
Or...I could have killed fateweaver... Needless to say, removing the reroll and making the grimore fail 2/3 of the time is the better solution.
Now one big problem scremaers have is 'Shadow of the Warp' and runic weapons. Both of those are kicks in the jimmies to any list that requires psychic tests to win.
Very good Article again Bill.
ReplyDeleteAs for the screamerstar you are essentially killing a unit a turn in shooting and with some luck if you playing a cavalry demon list you should be able to get in there and deal with the grimore asap.