Is Close Combat Viable This Edition?

[Chapter Master Jake]

I'm interested not only in playing Necrons but also Orks at some point. Since Orks are primarily a close combat horde faction, I want to know if it's still viable this edition or if I should wait, hope, and pray till 40K 7th Edition?

[SquigBrain]

Define "viable"?

Can you keep up in friendly games at your local store? Sure. You won't be winning any WAAC tournaments with them, though.

[Chapter Master Jake]

Well, I suppose I mean a competitive game, yes. Not hardcore copy cat listing, but if I want to win using close combat, that kind of viable.

[ElectricPaladin]

It also depends on what you mean by "close combat."

If you mean "nothing but infantry, and none of them are shooty, and the only thing I want to do is charge into combat and be in combat as much as possible" then you are going to lose a lot.

If you mean "an army that excels at fighting in the 12'' to 0'' range, including both close combat and short ranged shooting, with some longer ranged shooting to support them" then you might have some fight in you.

[SquigBrain]

Close combat works, *if* you can get there. That is currently the big issue for ork effectiveness. Due to the increase in shooting firepower, it is very difficult to walk across the board. That means you have to go with transports or bikes to be effective....and the trukk rush doesn't really work anymore, simply because the trukks explode from a harsh glare.

Personally, even as a rabid ork fanboy, I would suggest waiting until the new ork codex gets released (sometime this summer) before making any major purchases.

[DarkLink]

The game is fundamentally heavily biased towards shooting. Assault is situationally powerful, but difficult enough to reliably reach and has suffered so many nerfs that it's not worth planning an army around it. There are a few exceptions to this, though. Certain, very fast, units can either pull it off, or threaten to pull it off well enough that your opponent will dedicate a significant amount of firepower towards killing that unit. Daemon Princes, Wraithknights, and some Beast/Cavalry units can do this. If you're not one of those, odds are you're SOL.

[Sly]

Assault is most certainly viable, if that's the question. A lot of the units that people are scared about are largely assault oriented: Screamerstar, Seer Council, Beaststar, Imperial Knights, Spawnstar, IG blobs, etc. There are a lot of scary shooty units also, but it's not as if there aren't dangerous CC units. And that's not even mentioning 2nd tier units like Maulerfiends, Daemon Princes, etc.

However, with a general increase in firepower, an "average" CC unit may have trouble getting to CC. If you look at the above scary units, all but the IG blob are fast, which is one reason why they are more likely to make it to CC. It's hard to footslog 6" per turn, against the "Oh, wow!" firepower that some lists can put out, unless you have a very tough unit. So the problem with the viability of assault, is that viability drops FAST as either speed or toughness drop. So there isn't much room in the viable range.. you have to be fast AND tough, or else extremely tough, or else you're not that good as an assault-oriented unit.

Orks can still be quite a good list, using Shoota Boyz, Warbikes, etc... basically, a shooty list that doesn't specialize in assault (it can't beat a real CC list in CC, but would expect to outshoot it), but can at least out-assault normal shooty lists. So if you're okay with shooting against CC lists, and assaulting shooty lists, they should be fine. But if you're looking to assault at all times, you will have problems... they're not good enough in CC if they make a shooty list to beat a CC list, so you'll lose that in assault, and if you go assault-heavy, you will have problems making it into CC against a shooty army.

[Wolfshade]

My ork list is trukks and boyz with each mob having a nob, then a trukk with warboss and nobz. These have managed to table my opponet a number of times.

Perfectly viable

[White Tiger88]

Works for Demonettes.....just run and charge 9pt rending speed demons!

[Charon]

CC is viable but much harder to run than "gunlines"