The Force Org & You - A Mini Series

Hiya, Smurfy here...I have floated various 40k online habitats so I hope that many of you will recognize me. I float 40kforums.com, heresy-online.net, warseer.com, miniwargaming.com, 40kOnline.com, dakkadakka.com (lurk that one), and travel the 40k blogosphere (Including Fritz 40k, Yes The Truth Hurts, 3++ (here), Whiskey & 40k, and well, just about anything providing I have time.) for modelling inspiration/tactical inspiration/ hilarity at nerdrages.

But one thing I personally do, and avoid as much as possible, is Nerdraging. Unfortunately, I find it necessary to go back to basics like Kirby has in a few of his articles, so I will contribute my piece of the pie. I have a notorious bad habit to pull out a sailor's mouth at times when I post tactica online, mostly to give the read a bit more of a thrill/laugh, but also probably because I get lazy. Kirby note: keep the swearing to a minimum please since we are on "family friendly" blog networkss <3.

Anyways, here's the beginning of a series of Articles I'll be working on:


The Force Org Slots & You
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The Force Organization chart are categories for your army. Rulebook sez that each are important which is true, but you'll find more often than not that many players favor their Heavy Support and Elites sections more than others.

Reason behind this is well-founded but still, is something we want to try to avoid. Why? We'll get to that, but basically force balance.

So some tenants of the force org and a good army list -

1. Spread it out. 1 HQ, 3 Elites, 2 Troops is your army? Try again.
2. Do not let Kill Points affect your army composition.
3. It has expendables.
4. Redundancy.
5. "Wild Cards"

So let's touch on each of those points now before we dive into the specific slots shall we?

What do you mean by spreading it out Smurfy

- Stelek @ Yes The Truth Hurts does this really well, and I have always followed this mantra when I have played. TRY TO MAX OUT YOUR FORCE ORG CHART! This seems silly obvious in learning the game, but once gamers get a few games under their belts, they fall for the slots they love so much. (Heavy Support, generally, unless you're Orks, Chaos Space Marines, and etcetera miscellaneous likings.) Trying to spread the love around the Force Org slots ensures you have A: More units, and B: Army flexibility by design.
In this series of articles I'll cover each Force Org Slot, roles for each,how I've seen people use them, and why each slot is important.

Why not worry about Kill Points?

This mostly applies to if you're playing a mobile mechanized army with a ton of Kill Points to give up. Do not worry your Dedicated Transports give up tons of them "easy" For one, this isn't exactly true (A easy vehicle kill outside Open-Topped? Puh-lease.) and secondly, the amount of benefit the mobility/controllable terrain gained by using Dedicated Transport is plentiful. If you're not mech, if you have a 6 Kill Point army (6 Un-Combat Squadded Tactical Squads for example) vs. a 12 Kill Point army (6 Combat Squadded Tactical Squads) the 6 Kill Point army is considerably more unwieldy in using their squad's effectivenesses than the 12 Kill Point one.

What are expendables?

Comes down to the mission at hand and your decision from seeing what your opponent's army is. Most often, in Objective missions, ironically enough to me all my Troop units (other than my Biker army.) save one unit are expendable. This is to test people's target priority, if they shoot at my eventual winners of the game and not the immediate threat that are my devastating other choices, I think I am pretty well off. On the flip side, your expendables could simply be those Dedicated Transports in a mechanized list. Dedicated Transports are a ideal example with their typically low point costs and vehicle status letting them be "controllable terrain" for their army's general. Controlling terrain is a awesome gift to behold in pulling off more advanced strategies.

Redundancy? Like Attack of the Clones?

Um, sorry to burst your bubbles if you don't believe in this, but it is completely necessary at times to have two or three or even more of the same unit role/composition to deal with threats. Don't you just hate it when you lose your solo squad dedicated to dealing with Tanks vs that Armoured Company? Ya, not taking any duplicates or other units to pick up that unit's slack is why you lost . This is quite clear in a good Eldar list, which needs as many Bright Lances/Fusion Guns(Melta) and Strength 6 as it can get to try to fit in the modern Codexes/rulebooks environment. Sorry, there aint no Craftworld devoted to Fire Dragons I know, but I still am gonna take 2/3 squads of them regardless.

What do you mean by "Wild Cards"

Wild Cards are something I develop a sixth sense for, and it's most often in the subtle little package of, again, a Dedicated Transport, particularly the Rhino. We shall use this lil' frigate as a example.

The Rhino isn't simply a cardboard box on treads, it can be -

- A Multi-Melta pillbox.
- A newly erected "Frigate You" wall to your enemy's world.
- A bunker with the help of a second Rhino. (Squad inside one of them piles out between them, sets up a firing lane between the two while the Rhinos guard their asses from being charged.)
- A poor man's bomb. (Ya Orks with a Power Klaw Nob just made the thing explode? 30 Str 3 hits now please!)
- A annoying fly that is in my objective zone to contest it. ("I win, my Rhino contests" "Fuuuuu")
- Cover to that tank behind it. (Famous Last Words: "...Hey...that's a Predator turret behind that Rhino?")

And much more. If you don't get it yet, the "Wild Cards" are the units that even a seasoned general has trouble predicting accurately, simply because they are so versatile in their options. Basically, all the Space Marines units nowadays fit this bill, as they all have Frag & Krak Grenades automatically makes them above average against the standard units in opposing armies in CC (Cuz, frankly, anything not ready for CC is gonna suck balls if it can't use that Cover bonus to it's advantage against Space Marines.) and Krak Grenades have the potential to pop any Armour in the game outside AV 14 if you get lucky. ("Well, all my Melta somehow missed...Time to dive in with 50 Krak Grenades as well...Oh, it did something! Yay!")

So that's the start to the Force Org Tactica, hope you like my contributions and stay smurfy!