Mech isn't dead

[creep]

Can't help myself about wanting to facepalm every time I have to read it.... "mech is dead" "no one plays mech any more"

Well.
In the reality I live in everyone still owns a mech army. So they field it at least until they purchased new models or they just don't change their army ...whatever.

I don't know - where do you count Flyers in? I would say a Vendetta or Night Scyte is mech for sure.

At last transports were ridiculously cheap for their points in 5th. With an included lucky chance to be indestructable, I had to fire my whole armys firepower (Tau) at a single Rhino once resulting in about 10 crew shaken/stunned results and a destroyed Stormbolter. Its not fun to be able to do that beeing just a 35 points Rhino. Thats what transports were. Possibly immortal with some good/bad rolls. Exactly the reason why all those people who don't understand anything now claim that "mech is dead".
No it's not.

Look at a Rhino. No pen results just glances. What do we get?
3 Hullpoints AV 11 against shooting.
You need to be S 5 to hurt it on a 6. S8 hurts on 3+. Thats slightly better than T 7 equvalent because S 4 can't scratch you.

Against glances a Rhino is a T7 W3 MC. For 35 points. You can ID it with pens, it has no saves exept cover and it gets eaten very fast in melee. But still its 35 points. Thats still cheap as hell.
If they would cost 50 points you would maybe consider buying more bodies. But they don't and a Transport is worth a lot more than an equivalent of 2 more Tactical Marines for most Armies.

Nids had huge issues with AV in general so you might overestimate the buffs you got.
To have a fair chance against something which was overpowered before, is not the same as claiming something to be useless just because it doesn't scare the (please do not swear) out of you anymore.


Mech is alive and kickin your butt quite fine, You just got some tools to deal with it besides Hive Guard now.


And just to add something to think about, Flyers besides Vedettas are not overpowered and you can deal with them if you want to. Don't blame the Flyer for your mistake to try to shoot him down while you have easier targets on the ground.

[Jabberwocky]

If people around you still spam AV11/12, just spam brainleech devourers until they swap. Simple.

[Deleted]

Its not just hullpoints that nerfed vehicles. It is also things like they can no longer contest, disembarking got nerfed, templates hit at full power even at edges, they are super easy to hit in assaults now, etc. No one is saying they are going away but they will be far less effective overall, especially non-flying transports.

[wisdomseyes1]

Against glances a Rhino is a T7 W3 MC. For 35 points. You can ID it with pens, it has no saves exept cover and it gets eaten very fast in melee. But still its 35 points. Thats still cheap as hell.

You know why comparing it to monstrous creatures fails? Becaus monstrous creatures do something.

Vehicles ant contest
Vehicles can't score unless you get pretty lucky or your taking landraiders on "big guns never tire"
Disembarking is (please do not swear)
No assaulting out of most vehicles.
No such thing as defensive weapons
Ap2 means a lot more than before. Ap1 is even scarier.
Hull points are the equivelent to "wounds" yes, and it's lunacy to say they are so much more powerful because s4 cant touch their front armor. It never could and it wouldn't make sense.
Ap- lost its penalty
Close combat with vehicles is a joke.

Mc Devourers before were a joke Before. Really, they didn't do much. They were anti infantry and glance to death weapons. Glancing to death is leggitamently something you can do.

the only good vehicles are very heavy ones like landraiders (and only sort of against our army, who gets into combat with it and destroys it) and fliers who har tons of benefits and no army has real answers against them save fliers.

Why are necrons winning all the the tournaments right now? Because they have high volumes of fire, vehicle killing abilities with no issues, ad some of the most powerful fliers around. Vehcile spam, in you opinion may not be dead, but I laugh at any vehicles placed on the table now knowing it takes next to nothing to kill them f it is even worth killing them (and it usually isn't because most transports do nothing now for a lot of the above reasons)

[Lanesend]

@ creep, I don't know where you come from, as I don't seem to understand anything, but out here Mech is dead...

[creep]

Jep vehicles have disadvantages, thats why they just pay points for beeing durable.
You can buy stuff to sit in for the saved points. A Mc is at least 150 points.... Keep in mind that you just pay a fraction of those points.
Hull points and the change to vehicle damage chart isnt a drastic change. It just limits survival to a maximum you can take, statistic endurance doesnt change that much exept for melee.
Well hich armies won the Golde Throne tournamnet...

Necrons, GK, DE, Sisters of battle at the top
All of them mech. Its still faster than foot and its still cheap to get some transports.

If you hate to admit its not dead as you claim, at least admit it is still viable.
Your tiny local group isnt a reference you can count on.

[Anggul]

I agree with creep. People have massively over-reacted to the hull points thing, so they've decided that Mech is dead and stopped using it. If one of those people were to still bring a (at least partially) mech army, they would fine that their opponents were struggling.

Transports still do exactly what they're meant to do, and that's protect the contents. 35pts to prevent those 10 marines from being shot to hell straight away? Yeah, yeah I'd take that. Very few units can actually destroy a Rhino in one turn by themselves, and those units are generally heavy support or just generally big and expensive, in which case have fun firing that expensive unit at that 35pts box.


Just because they aren't always as tough as they were (sometimes it works out tougher), does not mean that they're now bad. They were annoyingly good before, now they're just good and useful, which is what they should be. Only fools and sheep look at the new vehicle rules and jump to 'mech is bad'.

[Lanesend]

@ Creep, You are right of course. I think the reason I understand so little, is because my local gaming group is so tiny.

It's just me and that one mech player, who's constantly kicking my butt. And I don't seem to understand why, as I hate to admit that mech is dead.

I have a good reason for this of course. When I was a kid, one of my friends changed from DUPLO to normal LEGO. As I'm one of those people that can really not stand any kind of change (as you probably have rightly guessed by now), I told him that LEGO was dead. It took me four days to claw my way out of the LEGO fortress he built around me and I was hospitalized for a week. I was very crossed when I came out of the hospital, so I fed my nemesis the remains of the LEGO fortress. I think he just stopped shitting bricks a few months ago.

Now, Rhino's are a lot bigger than LEGO bricks and I have a pretty good relationship with my one gaming friend (although he sucks at being ANY kind of reference), so could you please give me a few tips on how to tackle those Rhino's, without having to resort to inserting spammed Hive Guard?

Lanesend

PS. I still don't know in which reality you live. Is it the one with the unicorns? I like unicorns.

[l0rdf1end]

Mech is far from dead, Tactics will just change.
Maybe we will see an increase of Land Raider usage as you can still assault from that right?
Possibly Rhino's getting wrecked and aiding with cover.
Flying veichles will be in a lot of armies looking at the current fresh meta.

[Jabberwocky]

People will still try to spam cheap mech, it just isn't scary for us like it used to be.

The tactic may be dead competitively but that doesn't mean the lists are.

Just adjust your own game according to what you expect to face.

[WestRider]

Aug 9, 2012 11:52:55 GMT Lanesend said:

Now, Rhino's are a lot bigger than LEGO bricks and I have a pretty good relationship with my one gaming friend (although he sucks at being ANY kind of reference), so could you please give me a few tips on how to tackle those Rhino's, without having to resort to inserting spammed Hive Guard?

DakkaFexen are much better now at dropping Rhinos/Razorbacks. Even ignoring the small possibility of Penetrating Hits blowing it up, they've got about a 50/50 chance of dropping one in a single volley.

It's much easier to take them down in Assault, too. It only takes something like 8 Stealers or Adrenal Gland Hormies or a dozen AG Gargoyles to have a better than even chance of killing even an undamaged Transport. If you stripped a couple Hull Points earlier with a DakkaFex, it's a gimme.

There's virtually no chance of blowing it up there, either, so it's much easier to swarm around them and take out the Unit inside at the same time, too.

There are still no guarantees, but we've got the tools we need outside of the Elites Slot now, which opens up a whole bunch more options.

[hyv3mynd]

@ wisdomeyes - ap2 is actually no better than last edition against vehicles.

[Bot]

Aug 9, 2012 15:35:18 GMT hyv3mynd said:

@ wisdomeyes - ap2 is actually no better than last edition against vehicles.

That's not true. AP2 gives you +1 to the Vehicle Damage table in 6th edition.

[edit]

As for the Mech spam being dead? I don't really know yet. They are not gone in my area... They are not as good as they were back in 5th edition that's true, but they are still here. Hopefully they will fade away with time.

[creep]

As mentioned before people won't stop playing mech just because Nids can deal with it now.
Its not that Mech got a huge nerf at all. It just got balanced to act less random (example in my first post).
Everybody plays mech, everybody got nerfed, so no one got nerfed at all. Same stuff for anybody only exeption is Nids and Demons.
I hope we agree that both of those armies suffered from (please do not swear) balancing and are now able to win a game instead of struggling to get a draw.

think about it as Math

Mech was +X
Nids were -Y
if you add -A to Mech and +B to Nids that will bring them closer together.


In Addition some "Foot" lists seem to be viable now.
10 Orks/Marines can shred Vehicles quite easy now for free in CC. They couldnt do that reliably before. Against an army with tons of vehicles that indeed is a huge buff. Fearless has no downside (okay... you can't go to ground and also cant flee automatically from stuff you cant scratch).

Lets say mech as a concept could get some real competitors, maybe even including some Tyranids... who knows...

[killme304]

While mech did take a hit, the old MSU lists are for sure dead. 6th gave us so many reasons to mass firepower, having a 5 man marine squad is significantly worse, since that 35 point bubble doesn't do much else.

I would for sure say you wont see an army (other than maybe necrons, their "transports" are good enough to be real units imo) going the MSU route anymore, but Landraiders still require dedicated AT. Don't drop all your AT just because vehicles are less of a threat, they are still not terrible.