Getting more from your Squadrons - Splitting by Immobilisation

Today's topic will be about getting more use of the new Squadron rules, firstly because it seems a lot of players are still unaware of how much more user-friendly they are (it's almost as if GW want you to buy more models!) and secondly because I'm going to be showing how you can exploit them to their full potential. And yes I do mean 'Exploiting' the rules, but I don't have even twinge of conscience over it since it may help combat the Necron Flyer spam lists that are currently causing a lot of people grief.

Update: Just a few days after this article was published GW in their infinite wisdom change the immobilistion rules in FAQ 1.1; if a vehicle suffers an immobilisation result it now also loses a Hull Point. With this change, it becomes a lot less viable to use the tactic of purposefully immobilising vehicles in order to split up a squadron into individual components, and the Hydra is probably the only case where it might be even worth considering.

Comparison: Assault & Shooting in 6th edition

I've seen a lot of funny comments around the Intertubes which is suggesting the relationship (and who's wearing the pants) between shooting & assault isn't really understood. Particularly given the transition we've gone/are going through. This relationship is pretty much the same as what it was in 5th edition and this is what's sparking the confusion bubbles over my head in very cartoon like fashion. Enough preamble - let's decide who's wearing the pants!

Back-to-Basics: Random Charge Length

So Random Charge Length (RCL) is still something which is causing headaches in this very young 6th edition. It's part of the game now though so like it or hate it, you need to work with it and around it.

Back-to-Basics: Creating Bubblewrap in 6th edition

I sort of did this the wrong way around - I showed you how to break a bubble-wrap before how to make one within the new paradigm of 6th edition. However, with past posts and knowledge most readers should know the basic premise of bubble-wrap regardless. Showing you how much easier it is to break with just the basic old bubble-wrap concept hopefully highlights how many of the rule changes have affected such tactics. In this post we'll lay out how to get the most out of such concepts and whilst it's still easier to break than before, forcing your opponent to expend more effort to do so.

Back-to-Basics: Breaking Bubblewrap in 6th edition

Be warned ye Internet users of slow speeds, beyond be pictures!

Bubble-wrap was one of the most common tactics seen in 5th edition. It was pretty simple too - protect your more important stuff with crap stuff by putting it in front. This ensured no assaults could get through past the first unit without dealing with it or in some way bypassing it. A lot of armies used this concept as part of their core tactics such as Tau, Tyranids and Imperial Guard. The great benefit for such armies was, bypassing it wasn't very easy and good bubble-wraps were often very resilient to shooting which made combat the best way to deal with it. This meant the main army behind the bubble-wrap was protected and allowed the shooting units to continue shooting and the assault units to be protected and thereby make appropriate counter-assaults.

Look Out Sir! - Tactical Application

B&C

We should by now understand the basics of LoS!, removing models and the basic appliation of unit formations and how to deal with them. Let's look a bit deeper then on one of the 'key issues' currently surrounding LoS!, tough characters and units (deathstars in particular).

There seem to be two issues for the loudest whiners here. First, characters with good armor saves make GREAT tanks and can keep absorbing hits. Secondly, characters in multi-wound units or character units with multiple wounds have a sort of wound allocation akin to 5th edition - most people hated this and wanted to see it gone...yet there it is. Let's be clear here though, this is not as good as it was before - now you're relying on dice to allow you to transfer wounds, your units have to be a bit closer together to make sure everyone can LoS to each other and your opponent can move around 2+ LoS! characters, etc. Yes, units can reach you wounded but fighting fit but it is far less likely. So, let's look at how one can actually use these advantages and then how one can counter them.

Back-to-Basics: Dealing with Deathstars

Centives

Hello, Nikephoros checking in.  Remember in my older article about how to playtest for 6^th Edition in order to better figure out what is and isn’t competitive?  My advice was to start out playing your 5^th Edition lists and slowly make minor tweaks from there based on in game results.  I, for one, am thankful that everyone listened to that advice, and reacted to the new ruleset rationally!  Oh wait.

I admit I am guilty of bloviating on theory based opinions rather than empirical playtesting, thus feeding the noise machine that the 40k blogosphere has been for the past two weeks.  So sorry.

Back-to-Basics: Removing Models (from shooting) Part 2

Jersey General

This is a follow-on post from what we looked at before in relation to removing models and model placement. This post will still focus on shooting but look at two of the more complex processes - multiple wound models and Look Out Sir! (LoS) saves. Multiple wound models are pretty easy to understand for the most part so we'll start with them.

Multiple Wound Models:

We'll look at the same rules quote we started off with last time:

Back-to-Basics: Model Placement and Removing Models (from shooting)

One of the big changes for 6th edition is how models are removed, both in combat and shooting and how wounds are assigned to such. The inclusion of Look Out Sir! saves has also changed this. This was probably implemented to help the old system of wound allocation - which could take an annoying amount of time for individuals not intamately familiar with it to assign different S/AP wounds to different models within a unit, made units more survivable in many cases and made many multiple wound, multiple wargear models simply a pain to combat (Paladins, Nob Bikers, etc.).

Email in: Thanks for saving my Grey Knights + a question

"Hey,

I have been playing my GK for about a year now, up until today under the visage that they were a army that you would charge up the field, while shooting your way there, and get into close combat ASAP. The problem was while playing under this assumption, I usually managed to wipe out half of my opponents army, but almost always ended up getting tabled. I was really close to just rage quiting the whole army when I came upon an article you wrote regarding Purifiers in Close Combat. You made a lot of good points about why they play much better as a mid-field defense army and I am working on a list to try them out in such a way now. The main problem I see with this is though is that it appears it would leave you absolutely helpless against a long range shooting army like Tau or Imperial Guard, as you may just end up getting riddled down by their fire if you stay put, and you will certainly end up dead with all your tanks popped if you try and do a slow moving advance.

The Old Witch of Khador

Sorry this took so long to get out guys.

By request I am going to be doing todays piece on The Old Witch and Scrapjack. This is going to be a two or three part piece depending on how prolific I feel like being.

I love the Old Witch for a great many reasons. She is an extremely interesting caster due to both play style and how that play style interacts within her faction.

Now I'm going to assume that you, the reader, is aware of what the Old Witch has on her card and her spell card and I'm going to review what I consider the more important abilities and how to use them effectivly.

Army Comparison: Tyranids vs Necrons

synaps3

Has another codex hurt the Tyranid cause? Let's see.


Tyranid Advantages -

They're an army which likes to get close and nom you - Necrons are a short-ranged army with little nomming ability of their own. Super-gants, Genestealers, the array of MCs, Warriors/Shrikes, Ravengers, Hormgaunts, etc. are all going to do a number on your basic Necron. Even the tougher Necron units like Immortals or Lychguard are going to be wounded pretty regularly with lots of high-strength and/or poison attacks in combat. Once Tyranids get into combat the advantage is obviously theirs and they have some speedy units and the durability to get there against an army without lots of high strength/low AP weaponry. 

Beating the Army: Coteaz

Something I'm sure you've all been eagerly awaiting, the last installment of the GK versions of Beating the Army.

Let's not beat around the bush: Coteaz is fantastic. For a mere 100pts, you not only get a selection of some of the best psychic powers in the GK book (Santuary, Hammerhand- really, you're only missing Shrouding and Might), a Daemonhammer, rerolls on Seize the Initiative, Deep Strike defense (since you probably won't have many Strike Squads around) and oh yeah, he also gives you super-flexible troop options.

100pts? Seriously? Yeah, Coteaz is a beast.

He is still, however, only a single model, and the army he enables is good, but certainly not without its weaknesses. So let's dive right in and take a look at them.

Your Guide to: Shooting Paladins off the Board

Your Guide to: Shooting Paladins off the Board

I hate to single out a single army build, but with the interwebz abuzz with the perceived dominance of Grey Knight armies and the fact they are spreading like wildfire, I'm willing to make an exception.

Post Tournament Wrap-up: Mech Blood Angels with Mephiston

So - looking back at the tournament how did the army fair and how did I fair? I think the army still has potential locked away inside it and I didn't bring it out to its fullest, especially against the Tau & Grey Knight armies. There were serious early game errors there which I didn't have to make and these generally revolved around two things I'll discuss shortly. That being said, I still came 7th overall and if I can remember the standings correctly, was tied 5th for battle (one 5-0 player, three 4-1s) out of 32ish players. So it wasn't all bad *shifty eyes* but certainly room for marked improvement.

Again, I think the list was fine though at 1500 three ACLC Preds was overkill in some games whilst needed in others. I think at 1750-2000 those would see more frequent use but also have more issue with LoS. The Flamerbacks did what they needed to generally though I never really needed the mass flame templates (even against Tau, combat was the better option against Kroot) to help clear infantry. The ACLC Preds provided the shooting I needed without being limited to S7 - important against those Stormravens and having four double melta teams ensured enemy vehicles got destroyed.

Back-to-bascis: Pulling Punches in Close Combat

Hi all!

Jason C here and I've been wanting to write an article on the concept and tactics of staying in combat for some time, and numerous night shifts have given me the time to do so!

I play a number of 40k armies - marines of many colours, tau, eldar, necrons etc... But by far I enjoy playing my guard the most. I run a mech-hybrid psyker list (you'll see two of my recent games vs Kirby's blood angels on here) and vs assault armies, it can be pretty devastating. At Cancon this year I was in first place for battle points right up until the last game, where I played a space wolf Logan/longfang/pod support list.

Email in: need help with Tau vs Vulkan drop pod list!

"Hey there Kirby,

I have been regularly losing to a Vulkan drop pod list and I am in serious need of advice.  I play Tau, and have tried "castling" several times and reserving everything.  All the sites say that “castling up” is the way to win, but I’ve never had it work (especially versus a Vulkan list that is melta/flamer heavy).  Here’s my typical deployment vs a drop pod list:

"Castling" Deep Strike Defense: A How-To

Alright, this is something I've meant to do for quite a while but hadn't really gotten around to because, to be honest, it's rather involved. However, it's well worth doing because it's not only fundamental to fighting many armies that have the capacity to deep strike, but can singlehandedly defeat some strategies or even entire armies- most especially Chaos Daemons.

So today we're going to look at the techniques of castling and deep strike defenses for both "safe" deep strikes (like Drop Pods) and "risky" ones (like most other units that don't get a special exemption to the mishap rules.) I'll try and show how to set up to protect yourself from various kinds of threats that can deploy from DS and how you can maximize your space and time to fight an army that intends to use DSing to get in close with you as well as how to play the odds against them.

Combat in 5th Edition

5th edition has been very beneficial to shooting. This may seem contrary to many rule changes which would seem to benefit combats armies and units. The addition of Run!, no cap on leadership modifiers in assaults, universal cover of 4+ (which is both beneficial [survivability] and a negative [opponent's survivability] for shooting), etc. would all seem to point towards combat armies/units doing better. However, without the ability to consolidate into assault and the general increase in firepower most armies now bring (high strength/low AP guns are less important now with weight of fire being more important to break the universal 4+ cover), combat armies/units often get in a punch and then die.

Back-to-basics: Gameplans

Tim

One of the most game defining aspects of most tactical games, and 40k is no exception, is devising a game plan. Along with deployment (an extension of your game plan), this is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the game we enjoy. If you're going into a game without any idea of how to beat your opponent or how to simply win the game (i.e. kill more, claim more objectives), you're going to have a hard time playing well.

A battleplan gives you a framework in which to base your actions upon and you should often have a basic battleplan for your army before you even see your opponent. The opponent and mission simply adapts the plan to what is most suited for that particular game. For example, an army list based on 24" firepower will want to get to midfield more often than not, particularly against ranged opponents. Against an aggressive opponent though, moving to midfield and then retreating or simply not moving into midfield dependent upon mission, is going to be an adaptation of this generalised strategy.