Hi,
Ron from FTW asked me and a couple of other FTW members our insight on mechanised armies so here we go.
Atleast here in Finland we've seen a big shift into mechanised armies. Almost any army that can have transports is fielding them. For me it started when I stumbled upon a blog about Blood Angels and a blogger called Jawaballs. He wrote about using assault marine squads in rhinos so that they never leave their transports. He really opened up the concept to me personally, and this is where the Templars overhead come along. I was in the middle of making a Templar army and I realised that they had the old smoke launchers. This along with the new damage chart made the rhino's indestructable for a turn.
It is exactly this damage chart that has made transports worth it in 5th ed. In 4th ordnance would just blow everything apart, and the transports would become death traps. Plus there was entanglement and the old emergency disembarkation, but suddenly in 5th ed APCs became what they were meant to be, an extra turn of safety fot the men within it.
This plus the drop in the prices of transports point-wise has really made them worth it. IG don't even need to leave their transports, as up to 5 men can shoot out of a chimera, and it doesnt count as open topped.
Also worth noting is that cover saves for vehicles have greatly nerfed long range anti tank fire. 50% doing nothing IS a big deal. I dare not guess what the future holds, maybe mech will stop being the main trend, but with Spearhead just around the corner, it really doesnt seem like it.
5th edition is more of a Tank Battle game, where you have a limited number of unit's you must keep alive to hold objectives at the end of the game, meanwhile manouvring a dozen tanks trying to kill off your opponents scoring units. I'm not going to complain, but it does cut down on the visual side of gaming. All armies look the same now, just tons of Rhinos.
Though then if you don't pack the tanks you may be at an advantage, purely by playing the metagame. I've found, at least for me, that mixed mech works better than full mech. Everyone packing meltaguns? Good, that won't do much against a 30 man blob squad.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. and that's also why we shouldnt forget anti-infantry and fully gear up to take on mech. However with the new Blood Angels codex I do feel GW is pushing more and more tanks.
ReplyDeleteOh and I almost forgot. Thx for the comment!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Max - if facing a pure horde tyranid or daemons army, all those melta guns start looking a little less useful. I think plasma guns will start to come back in to fasion :)
ReplyDeleteWith the rate GW is lowering points-prices on their models, the risk of the plasma weapons overheating is becoming less of a pain, "Oh well luckily I have 15 more of them there somewhere ;).
ReplyDelete