Hey folks, well, here's episode one. Today, I'll be discussing Board Control, Midfield and why this is so important to the game.
To listen, click play (duh) and if you want to download, click the littly divshare, and it'll take you to a bit you can download it.
Kirby gets to put his thoughts in text cause he rocks =D.
Around the 4:30 mark Archnomad talks about our Round 3 game at Centurion. We have discussed quite a few articles around this game to help explain a lot of things but we'll do some quick looks here. First off, Billy deserved to win, particularly with time an issue (we got 5 turns in) I needed to press forward about a turn earlier than I did. Because I didn't have any real CC MCs or an Old Adversary Tyrant to make my non-CC MCs actually decent in combat, I was too afraid of the Kanz and what they'd do to my MCs. Around Turn 3 I really just needed to say fudgemuffin it and move it to support my Ravener assaults (admittedly, I also forgot the Raveners were chosen KP). The problem was I was banking on the game going for longer and being able to completely drop those Kanz and then really only having to worry about the Battlewagons' Deff Rollas (and one was immobilised). From that point on my MCs would of been very stable and hard to remove from the centre of the board.
Regardless of there being only 5 turns, I played too passively (something I was trying to avoid by going with Tyranids over Mech Marines lol) and this allowed Archnomad to setup more board control with tank shocks. He effectively pushed me off the centre of the table with the threat of his Kanz combating my MCs which allowed his wings more freedom of movement as my army wasn't able to use midfield as a pushing point. Archnomad therefore took advantage of this and was able to utilise one of pure foot armies' biggest weaknesses. Tank shocks.
Regardless of there being only 5 turns, I played too passively (something I was trying to avoid by going with Tyranids over Mech Marines lol) and this allowed Archnomad to setup more board control with tank shocks. He effectively pushed me off the centre of the table with the threat of his Kanz combating my MCs which allowed his wings more freedom of movement as my army wasn't able to use midfield as a pushing point. Archnomad therefore took advantage of this and was able to utilise one of pure foot armies' biggest weaknesses. Tank shocks.
Foot armies are very vulnerable to tank shocking which gives mech armies more board control options as they can simply move foot units off objectives. This is why the objective mission was more advantageous to Archnomad compared to the Table Quarters mission against Loriness. This meant I should of been even more aggressive to push him back as much as possible. I wasn't. If I had moved my MCs into midfield (and I wasn't going to lose all 4 no matter how scared I was on the Kanz), my wings would of had a stable platform on which to push as well as having that middle objective. Since I didn't and Archnomad had tanks with which to forcibly push me off in multiple places, he was able to take advantage of this and generate more board control. With the chosen KP aspect of the game I could of chosen some of the Trukks in an effort to stop Billy from tank shocking with them. At the same time though he could of simply held them back (or in reserve, particularly since it was spearhead deployment) and then he would of had an advantage on the KP tier (he ended up winning that 4-2 anyway IIRC).
Anyway just some food for thought in relation to what Archnomad is talking about regarding board control and also some thoughts for the future on aggression and defensive play. Here is a picture outlining how our armies looked from T2-T4.
