BA and melee

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

If you read my last post on my last game you’ll see that I gave all the credit for the win to my shooty units for the most part.

my DC, and SG, both died without doing a single wound to the enemy, and in all the game I’ve played since returning no melee units outside of aggressors have had anything resembling success on the table.

is this a general BA issue, or more of a me problem poorly deploying and utilizing these units?

if you go to the 3rd picture in my BA vs UM post I put the SG behind 2 squads of devs behind the terrain at his end of the board.

G man turned around came and shot them up, leaving the SHP alone, there didn’t seem much other option but to charge the G man my next turn. Got at least 1 wound on him lol.

[Majkhel]

BA and melee? Yes

It seems your experiences vary drastically from the rest of the community. If your SG did not manage to reach combat at all (not sure what your DC unit did) I don't think you can draw the conclusion that they are not good in combat. 
Also both units work noticeably better if you stack some bonuses on them. For example DC - against marines they loose a lot with their CSs reduced effectively to AP0. So it's good to have a Priest nearby at the beginning of the turn to put them into Assault Doctrine. Same goes for SG who have less attacks.

Also, it seems you were trying to do charges from deep-strikes. It's a risky thing. Period.
Our native +1 to charge roll is barely helping. You need to increase those to +2 at least and even then be prepared for the what-if scenario where you have to weather the storm

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

9 hours ago, Majkhel said:

BA and melee? Yes

It seems your experiences vary drastically from the rest of the community. If your SG did not manage to reach combat at all (not sure what your DC unit did) I don't think you can draw the conclusion that they are not good in combat. 
Also both units work noticeably better if you stack some bonuses on them. For example DC - against marines they loose a lot with their CSs reduced effectively to AP0. So it's good to have a Priest nearby at the beginning of the turn to put them into Assault Doctrine. Same goes for SG who have less attacks.

Also, it seems you were trying to do charges from deep-strikes. It's a risky thing. Period.
Our native +1 to charge roll is barely helping. You need to increase those to +2 at least and even then be prepared for the what-if scenario where you have to weather the storm

If a melee unit can’t get into melee is it a good melee unit?

my SG failed a 9” charge and DC failed a 6” charge.

sure that’s partially a bad rolling issue.

I’ve gotten them both into combat in previous games, and they just didnt seem to do particularly good in those examples either.

A 3 man unit of aggressors has out performed the melee specific unique units we have.

maybe mine are just cursed 

[ShibeKing]

I can understand your sentiments regarding melee. I think BA have the best lore in the game, have the best paint scheme, the greatest Primarch of all time, and one of the better communities. However, I cannot bring myself to paint my Marines as BA or play using their rules. Melee never goes well for me and I have grown to dislike it and instead focus more on shooting units. (Oh god this must be how Tau players are born)

 

Honestly though I think you just got unlucky here. SG are pretty vicious from what I've seen on other tables.

Edited September 19, 2022 by ShibeKing

[Karhedron]

Any unit can fail a charge roll but that tells you nothing about its melee capabilities.

With AoC and a Priest nearby for a 6++ and healing/resurrection, I find that Sanguinary Guard are very durable and take a disproportionate amount of effort from my opponent to remove while dishing out out a lot of hurt in combat,

The only time they have underperformed for me are vs Harlequins who his hard and have 1W and a  4++ which completely nerf the SG's loadout. But since Harlequins are pretty much top-tier, I am not too salty, I should just have brought DC where buckets of S4 Ap-0 attacks would have torn the Harlies apart.

[Blindhamster]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

A 3 man unit of aggressors has out performed the melee specific unique units we have.

How did a 3 man aggressor squad manage to out perform sanguinary guard? SG are widely thought of as one of the absolute best marine melee units.

their native 2+ with AoC makes them durable, they have good melee weapons (same damage as aggressors, wounding as easily generally due to being blood angels), they hit more frequently, they're way faster...

would love to get some elaboration honestly

[tychobi]

Yay powerfists! or whatever the prim marines are calling em now.  You are suffering from tiny sample sizeitis. Failed charges will loose games.  If you position better you may not have to rely on charge dice as often!  Don't forget you have a +1 bonus and you can command reroll a failed charge.  Get stuck in!

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I picture the gravis marines springing up the table past jump pack death screaming “ERE WE GO !! ERE WE GO !!”

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

How did a 3 man aggressor squad manage to out perform sanguinary guard? SG are widely thought of as one of the absolute best marine melee units.

their native 2+ with AoC makes them durable, they have good melee weapons (same damage as aggressors, wounding as easily generally due to being blood angels), they hit more frequently, they're way faster...

would love to get some elaboration honestly

Every game I use my aggressors, they make it into combat, and when in combat they make kills.

my SG have failed to get into combat in 50% of the games ive used them, and when they do, They might get 1 kill. Again this could just be cursed dice, but it’s really put me off on them.

2 hours ago, tychobi said:

Yay powerfists! or whatever the prim marines are calling em now.  You are suffering from tiny sample sizeitis. Failed charges will loose games.  If you position better you may not have to rely on charge dice as often!  Don't forget you have a +1 bonus and you can command reroll a failed charge.  Get stuck in!

Yep, wanted to charge devastators after deepstriking behind them. Rolled 1” short, the. Guilliman shot the whole unit off the board.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

4 hours ago, ShibeKing said:

I can understand your sentiments regarding melee. I think BA have the best lore in the game, have the best paint scheme, the greatest Primarch of all time, and one of the better communities. However, I cannot bring myself to paint my Marines as BA or play using their rules. Melee never goes well for me and I have grown to dislike it and instead focus more on shooting units. (Oh god this must be how Tau players are born)

 

Honestly though I think you just got unlucky here. SG are pretty vicious from what I've seen on other tables.

Yeah spamming masses if S4-6 shots with captains for rerolls gave me much better results than bringing two unique melee focused units did.

1 hour ago, Black Blow Fly said:

I picture the gravis marines springing up the table past jump pack death screaming “ERE WE GO !! ERE WE GO !!”

The death company were dead by then lol.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

I get that we’re mostly a codex compliant chapter, but we’re known both in lore and tabletop for our melee, yet possibly the most crucial part of melee (charging) ability gets the tiniest saddest little boost.

An advance and charge rule would be nice.

i feel like this would be like a shooting chapter that only had access to guns with 18” range, with +1” to range and get +1 to wound when making a shooting attack.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Morticon]

Will give more detailed thoughts soon, but....

 

and i say this with the greatest of respect, 

 

your terrain is awful and is 95% of the issue. 

Terrible, terrible, terrible terrain. If every player here had to play on the same terrain, theyd come to the same conclusion you have!   

[Cleon]

Just to add to what's said above. It's nothing to do with the model quality of your terrain, but the way it interfaces with the rules. It's all either line of sight blocking or open - there is no way for you to get cover and even worse it's pretty much all in the deployment zones leaving the centre empty so you just get murdered on the advance with no options to protect yourself or really do anything but charge across an open field.

Some ruins/woods in no mans land to give you some options on how to advance would do wonders for your assault troops.

[Karhedron]

15 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Yep, wanted to charge devastators after deepstriking behind them. Rolled 1” short, the. Guilliman shot the whole unit off the board.

I almost never charge out of DS if I can help it. Even with our +1", you will fail 58% of the time. The only time I charge out of DS is if I can get at least +2" and preferably a reroll. I sometimes do this with 3 x MSU Death Company and a Chaplain with "Canticle of Hate" and "Icon of the Angel". 

For expensive units like SG, take the time and care to move them up the battlefield, making use of cover. You can still normally manage a T2 charge against most opponents.

[Morticon]

16 hours ago, Cleon said:

Just to add to what's said above. It's nothing to do with the model quality of your terrain, but the way it interfaces with the rules. It's all either line of sight blocking or open - there is no way for you to get cover and even worse it's pretty much all in the deployment zones leaving the centre empty so you just get murdered on the advance with no options to protect yourself or really do anything but charge across an open field.

Some ruins/woods in no mans land to give you some options on how to advance would do wonders for your assault troops.

 

This!! 

Apologies for the rushed and terse sounding response, but this is exactly it.  

 

The positioning (and type/keywords) of the terrain is the issue - and how its an issue is covered excellently by Cleon above! I would have at least two of those bricks in no mans land. 

 

If not, you have to build to static style shooty armies with a little deepstrike support and pray for those 8" rolls.  

[Karhedron]

This post from Warcom last year shows how GW envisage terrain being used. As you can see, the assumption is that there will be multiple LOS-blocking pieces of terrain in no-mans-land. Shooty units are supposed to need to manoeuvre for find line-of-sight. If you have a big, open killing ground in the middle then melee units are artifically weakened and shooting units are stronger than they should be.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/06/29/metawatch-warhammer-40000-building-beautiful-balanced-battlefields-for-grand-tournament-play/

[Jolemai]

I missed that before. Link added to Resources 

Or at least it will be once the bugs from the new site have been swatted....

Edited September 21, 2022 by Jolemai