Trapped in the eye of terror

"And he watching us all through the eye... of terror!"

Trapped in the eye of terror

Just in case you were worried (I dont think you were, you probably didnt even know I was gone) I am not dead, I am just trapped in the eye of terror. Actually, thats not entirely true, what really happened was my play group moved from tuesday nights to saturday nights. Which apparently worked out best for everyone, except me. So I havent had any games of late and thus have not had any new revelations of what to do with chaos in 7th ed. I also wanted to include something about the new space wolves, and how they can upgrade practically any power weapon to +1 Strength for 5 points.

They did lose their stupid psychic defense, only grants Adamantium Will, but do get a dread with a storm shield.

Overall it looks like a decent book, but only time will tell. Personally Im looking forward to the new nurgle stand alone book which has been rumoured.

Until then I have to go before my Boss catched me:!

Giving your opponent turn 1

Heads I win, tails you lose.

Giving your opponent turn 1

Now most of us around here that remember 5th edition remember that turn 1 wasnt necessarily the game changer that most of us have seen since 6th ed. Its not really a rules change, or even a codex change, as much as a change in the meta. See 6th edition and to some extend 7th, the idea was the best defense was a strong offence, and spent the entire game trying to wipe the opponent off the board with glass cannon units rather than tough units that could hold an objective for a few turns. With the new maelstrom mission, tougher units are slowly making a come back. But, if your opponent is trying to destroy you as quickly as possible, why would you give them the first turn?

Well it all depends on army composition. Sometimes its really wise to go second.

I know most of you will scoff, remember that time that the guys Eldar army took 1/2 of yours of the board turn 1, and roll your eyes and say what would he know. But maybe you and your opponents armies were not suited for you to go second. Which also means his army is likely to be equally screwed if you went first.

If your opponent has a really long range army, going first could mean they deploy out of your range, which makes you have to advance, which gives them a free turn of shooting. Giving you 1 less game turn, and they still shoot you first. 

This is common of turtling armies, like a lot of tau builds, where they look for where you deploy and pick the opposite side. If you deploy bottom right, they deploy top left. If you spread your army across your board edge, they pick a corner and have to deal with half your army at a time as the opposite corner units spend their first few turns getting into range.

Alternatively, if you have the long range army, you can let them go first and see how they deploy and counter it. If they spread out (most players do) then just pick the corner which appears the fastest and deploy in front of it. Yes it does mean they close the gap faster, but it means their slow stuff, like their vindicators, spend turns 1-3 getting into range.

Now if you had turn 1, yes you would have an extra turn to shoot them before the vidicator got there, but! For every turn you get, your opponent also gets one. Which means if your opponent wastes their turn 1 advancing the distance you made by deploying second, you just got an extra turn at the end of the game.

I know it seems counter intuitive. But if you assume the game lasts to turn 7. Then deploying first means they shoot you for 7 turns, but you get the alpha strike. If you let them deploy first, and gain a turns worth of movement by deploying right, sure they made that up in turn 1, but now you only weather 6 turns of shooting from them. 

Now this is harder if the enemy is really mobile, in which case this tactic doesnt work as well. Unless your opponent is only semi mobile. If you read some of my previous posts, you'll see that making them split their army up and take you wave by wave makes life a lot easier for you.

If you are the shorter range army, then deploying second also helps. You wait to see how they deploy and take the shortest route. If they take the middle of their edge, follow suit, if they deploy top left corner, take bottom left. If they spread out, find their weakest point and aim for that 

Going second also helps in the mirror match. You put your antitank infront of their tanks, and your antiinfanty infront of their infantry. If they bunch in the center you can deploy in the 2 corners, with the bulk in one corner, and a unit or 2 of long range sniping units in the other. This means if they focus your main army they get shot by snipers who arent worth dedicating a portion of the army to deal with. And those snipers go a whole game without being harassed. If they spread along their edge, then you pick a corner and deploy there aim for the same corner on your opponents board edges (top left if youre bottom left) and then walk right dealing with their army in waves. 

There are plenty of other situations I will get into in the future but for now Im going to play some games!

Redundancy and Overkill II : the revenge

"So these Jedi, they can see the future, can shoot lighting from their hands, have swords
which can cut through armour. Now where have I heard that before..."
Chief Librarian Leorge Gucas

Redundancy and Overkill II : the revenge

So for those of you who read yesterdays post, you may have seen a few things that may have lead you to rethink your current list building. Some of you would have scoffed and continued to build the same way because its been winning for you. Thats fine, keep doing what you like, I dont write rules for 40k I merely suggest changes.

Now some of you would have seen the latest from BAO tournament, seen the guy who won, and regardless of whether or not you agree to him cheating or not, noticed his bike list kind of goes against what I said in the last post.

For those of you who arent aware, the guy who won, used a white scars biker list. Basically Khan leads the way with a command squad and apothecary while the bike squads (now troops) load out with dual grav guns, dual melta guns, dual plasma guns etc. Notice he doesnt bother with flamers, as the bikes pack enough anti infantry as it is. The issue is that he takes an attack bike, with a multimelta in every squad. This includes the grav-gun and plasma gun squads. Which kind of contradicts what I was saying yesterday. However multimelta, plasma and grav guns all have the same range, so at least he has this going for me, the combination of grav-gun (anti monstrous creatures) with multimeltas (anti-tank) kind of goes against the idea of making your squad do the one thing and do it right. 

Personally I dont know why he used the upgrade option to buy attack bikes rather than just buy a squad of attack bikes, but not having looked into the Space marine codex in too close of a detail, I cant really comment, but the overall reason behind this decision is almost certainly due to with the lists he knew he would be facing. BAO allows for far more super heavies than your standard 40k game, due to the amount of forgeworld "unlocked" and really you need as many multimeltas as you can to take down the potential only titans list.

Thats one of the beauties of this game, is that the current meta can make or break a list that was strong before. D weapons have really hurt those deathstar units relying on rerolling inv saves to stay alive. Super heavy vehicles have also meant that certain star units now struggle to take down a tank that doesnt die to a single antitank gun with a lucky roll.

They do die to a million glancing hits so necrons are back in the game, if not just to keep the titans in their place.

Slipping in a 10 point multimelta into a bike unit is often a good strategy to spend those few extra points to give you an out against tanks. It also works nicely on a stormraven, as your speed negates the difference in range between the lascannon and the MM. And is usable on a Land raider, due to the split fire ability thanks to the machine spirit.

Bikers also have relentless, so if youre moving about to get your other guns in range you dont snap fire the heavy weapon in the same way a lascannon in a squad of tacticals would. So yeah there are some rules and those units and weapons which break them. Does this mean I was wrong, no. Does it mean you should listen to everything you read on the internet, also no. 

My posts on tactics are designed as guides not rules. I think you should make your army with the theme of either combat or shooting, and not a bit of both. Does this mean a half shooty half combat army wont work, no, but in general mixing and matching is hindered by the rules which disallow shooting into combat. Once again certain units, like bikes or oblits, serve as multipurpose and can shoot well and then provide decent close combat back up. Most space marine HQ choices cant shoot well at all and serve purely as close combat. But when you are using one of these units, like a daemon prince, Khan, mephiston, the nightbringer (sorry the generic shard of the nightbringer c'tan or whatever) you need to have the rest of the army support that unit. Usually by pushing up hard and fast with them. And 99% of the time, you must have a unit or 2 able to help it out in close combat.

So yeah, this is not gospel and im sure you will find a list somewhere that contradicts everything I write, but I believe, for the most part at least, that these tactics are fairly sound and apply to most lists, for most games. Deal with it.

Redundancy and overkill

"Only one marine may be equipped with heavy weapons per 10 man squad. But it doesnt say how many he can take"
-Sgt Kronus debating the rules in Roboute Guilliman's codex

Redundancy and Overkill.

It seems obvious to most players out there, or at least it should, but I still see so many people making the same mistake over and over again. Taking a single weapon in a squad which makes the rest of the weapons redundant, useless, or just a waste of points.

Take your standard tactical marine squad. Each man has a boltgun (24" S4 Ap5) which is designed as a medium range anti infantry weapon. Now the guns also get better at 12" so the marines want to be mobile enough to move into the ideal range and spray bullets at some infantry. "This is not new, not some genius unnknown wisdom, its obvious" I hear you shouting down your monitor at me. Well then, if this is so damn obvious, why do you keep taking that lascannon as a heavy weapons choice?

Seriously the amount of lists I see where people will do this, is astounding. If the squad has bolt guns, then the specials/heavies you should take should compliment them in some way. Or at least have some use when being fired at the wrong target.

For example, Plasma guns have the same range, are also rapid fire and are used to beat infantry. Plasma guns works really well in marine squads. As do flamers, as despite their shorter range, they operate on the same principles of get marines up to the enemy and fire while closing the gap. A lascannon on the other hand does not help. It has twice the range of the other guns, so you really want to use this range to its advantage, it its predominately an anti-tank weapon, and is heavy. Meaning to get the bolters in range, you are moving and snap firing the cannon. Now while you may think "But Dan, now this unit can shoot both tanks and infantry" well yes it can, but you are playing for that squad, plus the heavy weapon, and suddenly a triple las-pred is cheaper, gets more shots off, and can even move and shoot fairly well.

Now this doesnt mean you should never take lascannons on marines. Devistators are welcome to take them. Havoks, go nuts! If you are playing templars and your 5 man squad can get both a multimelta, a melta and a combi melta in a 5 man squad, well then you clearly have a short range anti tank unit. If thats the case, you can build them this way. Because your points are devoted to antitank, which is what the squad will do, and the 2 bolter guys are just cannon fodder (or ablative wounds).  

The same problem I have seen with weapon load outs on dreadnoughts. 2x autocannons, great! Auto + Missile, not as good but still gets the job done. Multimelta + Lascannon, no. Lascannon + CCW, yuck. Multimelta + CCW. Better, but still not ideal. You go from being good at shooting OR combat to average at both. Yes tanks will fear you, which is possibly the only thing going for it, but you should really look more into equipping it to cover the weaknesses in your army. Not everything can be the fabled Chaos obliterator, who is good at all ranges and fills any spot in your army. Sorry guys you dont all get one of those units.

If your army is full of power armoured marines, then you dont have to worry about taking anti-light infantry. Your army is full of it already. Take some plasmas in your marine squads. Unless your army is terminator heavy, and the only reason you have any power armour is to fulfill the 2+ troops slot. In which case, consider flamers, because you might need some anti ork boy stuff. If you army is mostly cc, do you think that sniper squad is really that helpful? Sure you can pick off something at range, but all those points could be something else designed to actually achieve victory in your preferred method. If snipers are your only shooting unit, its a lot easy to ignore them and focus your assault marines. If you have more squads of assault marines, who do they focus?

Its easy to make these mistakes, as not only do GW seem to work to make you make these mistakes (by releasing devistator kits with one of each heavy weapon) but also with the mentality behind Marines (both loyal and chaotic) that they are the swiss army knives, able to combat, able to shoot etc. White dwarf battle reports also further this trend of mismatching equipment.

So please stop taking reaper autocannons in 5 man terminator squads. Please dont take lascannons in 10 man tactical squads. That one missile in your boyz squad sounds like fun as it could pop a tank or marine. But firing its loses a turn of running, which means that boys squad is slowed down a turn for a 1/3 chance to hit. On average you slow down 3 boys squads to kill a marine, or 6 squads to pen a rhino. Use those points to buy another few lootas, or tank busters. Thinks designed to kill tanks.

I know this seems counter intuitive and even seems to go against a lot of ideas behind other people on the internet, in their blogs. But this is not saying "dont take a power fist on your Raptor Champion" or "Dont take a 3 man combimelta terminator suicide squad." its saying "dont take a powerfist on your havok squad just in case they get into combat." and "dont take a Devistator squad with 2 lascannons and 2 plasma cannons" as well as "dont take Chosen with 2 flamers, 2 plasmas and a melta." Yes the melta would be nice if you came up against a tank, but it seriously hinders that squads ability to perform at the task you bought it for. Which is pouring out plasma shots. Dont take a reaper on terminators. If youre in range of the enemy with all your guns, the combi plasma would have been better. If youre not, you just spent almost 200 points on a Aegis defense turrret.

As always comments are welcome. In fact encouraged. Maybe you have had success with a single weapon before. I want to hear about it. Maybe you have a tactic you want to share. I want it! Maybe you need a tactic for a situation. I will share it, and write about it next post!