List with no melee - fun?

Do you guys think that lists with no melee elements are as fun to play (or play against) as ones with both shooting and melee squads?

I ask because I tend to find all-shooting armies less involving to play, and am just curious as to whether anyone else feels the same way.

Shooting is fun in some way.
But seeing your opponent flee from combat is far more interesting and chalenging.
I`ve usualy run almost all-close-combat units with heavy support. And its very fun to win. Especialy if my opponent rely on shooting phase a lot

How do you do that?

CTC, multiple Grotesqueries.

That's a lot of points...!

Better a lot of points then a lot of wasted points.

How many grotesquerie formations do you take?

Two

Basically 2x 5 Grots in a lance Raider and 2x 6 Grots on Foot with Haemis and WWP
The CTC gets Haywire

Not really competitive and you are pretty screwed against some lists but its all melee and pretty good at it.

You run the grotesques in the Raiders with no character to help their leadership? Hope you don't get psychic shrieked!

Or stunned in your vehicle

Stunned shouldn't be a problem because they are fearless turn two.

I rate CC as being more exciting than shooting, but not necessarily as practical.
You do get satisfaction from decimating enemy units with withering hails of splinter fire, but its nothing compared to the image of Incubi severing limbs and heads with sweeps of their Klaives. Or Grotesques tearing things apart with a muffled roar.

Rasp wrote:

You run the grotesques in the Raiders with no character to help their leadership? Hope you don't get psychic shrieked!

Did I somehow manage say "this is a very good list and in 60% of time it works everytime"?
I remember

Quote :

Not really competitive and you are pretty screwed against some lists

so yes, against shriek heavy list you are pretty screwed.
But on a sidenote, the two units without a character sit in an assault vehicle and the two units who do not, do have a character.

flakmonkey wrote:

I rate CC as being more exciting than shooting, but not necessarily as practical.
You do get satisfaction from decimating enemy units with withering hails of splinter fire, but its nothing compared to the image of Incubi severing limbs and heads with sweeps of their Klaives. Or Grotesques tearing things apart with a muffled roar.  

Yeah, for me melee just feels more involving (even if, as you say, it's less practical than shooting).

Rasp wrote:

You run the grotesques in the Raiders with no character to help their leadership? Hope you don't get psychic shrieked!

It's debatable whether the character would help against Psychic Shriek. Most TOs rule that the majority LD is used, since the rule for subbing the character's LD score is restricted to specific circumstances.

And for the times it WOULD matter, they are Fearless by turn 2 anyway, which negates most of the things that should worry you.

Yes, I forgot that the covens power from pain is fearless turn 2. My mistake.

If GW didn't make assault continuously suck for 3 editions straight, we would be having another discussion.

HERO wrote:

If GW didn't make assault continuously suck for 3 editions straight, we would be having another discussion.

Only 2 editions, for that it's worth. Assault was pretty good in 5th.

Shooting was probably still better overall, but the gap was much narrower and assault fulfilled two very useful and very necessary roles:
- Massed AP2
- Clearing units out of cover

Then 6th and 7th dropped, and shooting units (except for ours, obviously) were suddenly swimming in AP2 and Ignores Cover weapons. Meanwhile, a lot of melee units lost their AP2 weapons, in addition to combat being nerfed in various other ways (random charge length, overwatch etc.).

At the very least, you still saw a great deal of melee units used in 5th, and most of the top-tier armies were semi-melee (most notably GKs, BAs, SWs).

The Shredder wrote:

HERO wrote:

If GW didn't make assault continuously suck for 3 editions straight, we would be having another discussion.

Only 2 editions, for that it's worth. Assault was pretty good in 5th.

Shooting was probably still better overall, but the gap was much narrower and assault fulfilled two very useful and very necessary roles:
- Massed AP2
- Clearing units out of cover

Then 6th and 7th dropped, and shooting units (except for ours, obviously) were suddenly swimming in AP2 and Ignores Cover weapons. Meanwhile, a lot of melee units lost their AP2 weapons, in addition to combat being nerfed in various other ways (random charge length, overwatch etc.).

At the very least, you still saw a great deal of melee units used in 5th, and most of the top-tier armies were semi-melee (most notably GKs, BAs, SWs).

But better in 4th. It started going downhill from 5th (that's where I started counting from).

I think at least some of the changes were necessary though. Consolidating into new combats was a bit silly.

However, I think melee in general needs a massive revision (so do all the 40k rules really). As it stands, it's a huge, nonsensical mess. And it doesn't help that GW have basically added a load of arbitrary, nonsensical nerfs to balance out the arbitrary, nonsensical buffs.

Yes, all shooty lists can be fun but my prefernce is always for a mixture of the two.

I typically run an all shooty list with DE, very much a mobile shooty list...mainly for the fact that my other army is GK and i spam NSF terminators. polar opposite lists.

My Dark Eldar list is mostly shooty, but I have actually gone back to using Incubi in it. They accompany my Succubus in her precision deep striking Raider, so they choose what they charge and don't have to go through terrain to do it. Of course, whatever they do charge has already been decimated by shooting, I'm not crazy Running a shootier list is definitely less fun than running a mixture, or running a combat heavy list. It's easier and requires less thought tactically, because you're not trying to support units who are coming into the enemy range so they can get a charge off, and all your stuff is probably equidistant from the opposition. That's why I started collecting Daemonkin. All melee, all the time

It's unintentionally ironic that with this edition of a wargame set in the year 40,000, armies are adopting the approach of sitting in a straight line and taking it in turns to shoot one another. It's the redcoats all over again. Not the Butlins kind. Anticipated it

Mr Believer wrote:

That's why I started collecting Daemonkin. All melee, all the time

If you have enough models, the chaos daemons release is pretty sweet and can literally be 100% melee pretty easily.  They've given daemons a near immunity to the daemonic instability and the warp storm table (while still reaping the benefits of both), so daemonkin don't bring a whole lot to the table anymore besides mediocre CSM units and blood points.

Mr Believer wrote:

It's unintentionally ironic that with this edition of a wargame set in the year 40,000, armies are adopting the approach of sitting in a straight line and taking it in turns to shoot one another. It's the redcoats all over again. Not the Butlins kind. Anticipated it

At least we CAN shoot - forced swordplay is common to the point of boredom in sci fi.  I blame Frank Herbert.

i think melee makes the game a lot more enjoyable, but as has been said cc isnt really good for DE. I almost always include 1-2 units with cc for variety. Sometimes shooting just doesnt cut it down as fast as a bunch of grots hammering faces in