Terror Tactics
We’ve all seen it and felt it. You set up your army and right in front of you there’s a big nasty monster. It might be a bloodthirster, a carnifex, Malekith on his dragon or any of the big monsters of the warhammer universe but the fact is that there is something in front of you that can probably annihilate almost anything in your army. And you need to deal with it.
Most players have over the years developed tactics to fight those abominations. For most people this means including strong units or weapons that can take down a monster. A giant isn’t so scary when you fire 2 cannonballs a turn at it and a carnifex can only survive so many lascannon hits before it dies. Other go sneaky and use magic items/wargear or dedicated anti-monster units. For example, the warhammer40k force weapon is a classic example of a weapon that isn’t that great agaisnt normal troops but can take down a monster really quick.
In fact people are becoming so good at dealing with these that I see a lot of players shun those high points units, afraid they are going to end up splattered and losing the game.
I think they are missing the real usefulness of these monsters. I’ll take the example of ‘’fluffy’’ my carnifex. Fluffy is a close combat armed carnifex designed to be able to take down multiple models down each turn. He’s equiped with claws and scything talons giving him 1d6+1 strenght 10 attacks. He’s also tusked to give him +2 attacks on the charge, tail sythe for more attacks agaisnt large squads and has +1T and +1W when I can afford it. With a toughness of 7 it means strenght 3 opponents cant even wound him. Fluffy costs around 200 points.
I’ve played around 10 games with fluffy and so far. Quick chart of his efficiency :
-got in close combat : 6/10 (60%)
-got shot to death : 2/10 (20%)
-killed his own point worth : 1/10 (10%)
-killed a major character/general : 1/10(10%)
-tanks destroyed : 2
Yes, it doesn’t look very good for such a high point investment. Only once I got his points back in killing and about half the time he doesn’t even get in combat and when he does it’s usually late in the game. I think Fluffy was the game winning model only once due to a particulary lucky rampage spree. So why waste points on him ? Why not put more lictors/ raveners/ gaunts/ etc… ?
Because the real value of fluffy is not what he does but what he makes my opponent does. When Fluffy is on the table my opponent is faced with a simple choice. Either he deals with Fluffy before he reaches his lines or he doesn’t and runs the chance of a healty Fluffy reaching him and rampaging his army. If he wants to deals with Fluffy in close combat he will have to use his super close combat units. So by putting Fluffy on the table I can already begin to tell my oponent plan and dictate the pace of the game. Fluffy might not kill 200 points of troops each game but if he ties up my enemy heavy weapon shooting(and normal too sometimes) for 2 or 3 turns then it means the rest of my army will reach the enemy relativly intact. Priceless for a Tyranid. If I can draw the terminators/generals and close combat specialist toward him then they won’t be hitting the rest of my army.
Fluffy like most of the monsters of warhammer player is a great terror weapon. And there’s no better way to win a game than making your opponent play to your tune.
jeudi 14 juin 2007
mardi 12 juin 2007
Toothless army
I’ve always been a fan of the undead. I love the idea of the dead rising up from their graves, of screeching spirits who can rob a man of it’s soul, of creatures so dark and evil that their names are not spoken. So it’s not wonder that a last year I started building a vampire counts army. Now a year later the army has grown to a respectable size and I’ve started playing a few games only to find out what I was suspecting when I was reading the army book, the vampire counts army has no teeth !!!
Sounds weird saying that about an army where you general might actually have some of the meanest teeth of all the game (with the exception of a few chaos generals maybe) but what I’m saying is that vampire counts have no punch, no uber units that can smash aside all oposition. I’ll get to characters later but if you look at the other units you can see that they are inferior or equal to mostly everything else in the game. Zombies and skeletons ain’t good for much, dire wolves turns to dust at the slightest gust of wind and the wights (Black knights and grave guard) are only a real threat to other ‘’normal units’’ and will get butchered by any kind of elite units. Sure they cause fear… but compared to their actual combat prowess and the fact that fear doesn’t have the same impact in the game anymore than it used to have, you can’t count on them to accomplish much on their own.
Put characters in your units!!! I hear you say. After all the army was designed with this set-up in mind after all. Even the strategy section at the end of the book says so. And I did have characters in most of my games so why am I strugling ? I think I’ve finaly found the answer in the way I tend to use characters. Normally when I play I use characters as a way to tip a few critical battles my way. They stay a bit at the back and join in whatever fight I need to win or they go to plug a hole in my lines or stop a unit from breaking through.
Now this works really well with armies where the units can fend for themselves a few turns if need be and where they don’t need a character to accomplish something. With VC that ain’t the case and I need to learn to use my characters foward and to actualy win the battle with some backing of my units, not the other way around. So anyone has experience with this kind of setup that can give me a few pointers ?
I’ve always been a fan of the undead. I love the idea of the dead rising up from their graves, of screeching spirits who can rob a man of it’s soul, of creatures so dark and evil that their names are not spoken. So it’s not wonder that a last year I started building a vampire counts army. Now a year later the army has grown to a respectable size and I’ve started playing a few games only to find out what I was suspecting when I was reading the army book, the vampire counts army has no teeth !!!
Sounds weird saying that about an army where you general might actually have some of the meanest teeth of all the game (with the exception of a few chaos generals maybe) but what I’m saying is that vampire counts have no punch, no uber units that can smash aside all oposition. I’ll get to characters later but if you look at the other units you can see that they are inferior or equal to mostly everything else in the game. Zombies and skeletons ain’t good for much, dire wolves turns to dust at the slightest gust of wind and the wights (Black knights and grave guard) are only a real threat to other ‘’normal units’’ and will get butchered by any kind of elite units. Sure they cause fear… but compared to their actual combat prowess and the fact that fear doesn’t have the same impact in the game anymore than it used to have, you can’t count on them to accomplish much on their own.
Put characters in your units!!! I hear you say. After all the army was designed with this set-up in mind after all. Even the strategy section at the end of the book says so. And I did have characters in most of my games so why am I strugling ? I think I’ve finaly found the answer in the way I tend to use characters. Normally when I play I use characters as a way to tip a few critical battles my way. They stay a bit at the back and join in whatever fight I need to win or they go to plug a hole in my lines or stop a unit from breaking through.
Now this works really well with armies where the units can fend for themselves a few turns if need be and where they don’t need a character to accomplish something. With VC that ain’t the case and I need to learn to use my characters foward and to actualy win the battle with some backing of my units, not the other way around. So anyone has experience with this kind of setup that can give me a few pointers ?
lundi 11 juin 2007
Lono's art of Warhammer
Welcome everyone to my new blog ! I love warhammer , both 40k and fantasy and I especially love the tactics/strategy aspect of the game. I’ve read a lot of warhammer forums and websites but found too few that talked about the strategy aspect of the game. So I’m starting this blog with the idea of talking about strategy, game related topics and also whatever crosses my mind. I’ll try to keep it game related.
Who am I?
Like I said in my introduction I’ve been playing warhammer since 1999. I originally started with a skaven army for fantasy but soon started playing 40k as all my friends where getting into it. My first ‘’real’’ army was a Dark Angel army that I still play to this day and that remains in a way my main army. Since I started playing I’ve been playing in numerous tournaments(both locals and rogue traders) and I even worked as an employee in a gaming shop(kinda like a GW store). For me the strategy/tactics aspect of this game is what keeps me going and I love nothing more than to discuss tactics with other players. And for those wondering I’m from Québec, Canada.
Are you a gaming mathematician?
Talking with a friend of mine the other day about his army composition and why he was struggling I started to explain to him that his army lacked enough low AP weapons and had not enough transports for his troops. As we talked I realized something. I was explaining to him that Howling Banshees, with their high armor save are very vulnerable to shooting, especially from dedicated anti-infantry weapons. I was giving him examples telling him how on average banshees on foot would be assaulting on the third turn and how much he could loose based on his opponent dices. I would say that a predator destructor would kill about 4 to 5 banshees a turn wich meant they would probably all get killed. Hence the need for a wave serpent wich would protect them from small arms fire and would require heavy anti-tank weapons plus would expose them only to fire for a turn, less if he kept them longer in the transport.
I was explaining all this and I realised that he wasn't seeing his banshees in terms of numbers and oposing army. For him banshees are elite warriors who can slice and dice their way through an entire army and wouldn't even take a hit because of their superb agility. Where I was considering the army thinking about numbers he was thinking of fluff.
I realized with this that there's is two opposite way of thinking when building an army. First you can think in numbers and mathematics, consider that unit X when in situation Y will have a Z perfomance ratio. On the other hand you can say that a Leman Russ is the best tank in the galaxy and whoever says otherwise gets a shell in the head. Of course the first approach tends to yield better results in the long term. Heck, you need to at least consider it when you build a serious army. Going only with fluff reasons is more often than not a sure road to defeat. But at the same time I've experience countless times where a unit chosen for fluff outperforms it fellows and in the end is the game winner piece. How's that possible?
Mathematicians will tell you that since it's a dice based game any model has the potential, no matter how slim, to win the game by itself based on pure randomness. Even had a psychology student tell me that because we focused on a particular element we uncounsciously put him in position to perform and that we saw in a better ligh its contributions to winning while ignoring the other models contributions. I suppose they can both be right.
For my part I'm much closer to the mathematician approach to strategy than the ''fluff'' approach. I can tell you for sure that deploying 1'' from the starting line is a good idea to get out of the 24'' reach. I can tell you that 10 bolters rapidfiring on space marines results in a 2 death average. And this approach made me win more game than loose them. By constantly looking at success chances and so forth I can recover better when I hit a string of badluck.
On the other hand I've always had a soft spot for the Deathwing and I cannot count the number of times they survived against impossible odds when I send them charging alone... makes me wonder if pure maths are the way to go.
Welcome everyone to my new blog ! I love warhammer , both 40k and fantasy and I especially love the tactics/strategy aspect of the game. I’ve read a lot of warhammer forums and websites but found too few that talked about the strategy aspect of the game. So I’m starting this blog with the idea of talking about strategy, game related topics and also whatever crosses my mind. I’ll try to keep it game related.
Who am I?
Like I said in my introduction I’ve been playing warhammer since 1999. I originally started with a skaven army for fantasy but soon started playing 40k as all my friends where getting into it. My first ‘’real’’ army was a Dark Angel army that I still play to this day and that remains in a way my main army. Since I started playing I’ve been playing in numerous tournaments(both locals and rogue traders) and I even worked as an employee in a gaming shop(kinda like a GW store). For me the strategy/tactics aspect of this game is what keeps me going and I love nothing more than to discuss tactics with other players. And for those wondering I’m from Québec, Canada.
Are you a gaming mathematician?
Talking with a friend of mine the other day about his army composition and why he was struggling I started to explain to him that his army lacked enough low AP weapons and had not enough transports for his troops. As we talked I realized something. I was explaining to him that Howling Banshees, with their high armor save are very vulnerable to shooting, especially from dedicated anti-infantry weapons. I was giving him examples telling him how on average banshees on foot would be assaulting on the third turn and how much he could loose based on his opponent dices. I would say that a predator destructor would kill about 4 to 5 banshees a turn wich meant they would probably all get killed. Hence the need for a wave serpent wich would protect them from small arms fire and would require heavy anti-tank weapons plus would expose them only to fire for a turn, less if he kept them longer in the transport.
I was explaining all this and I realised that he wasn't seeing his banshees in terms of numbers and oposing army. For him banshees are elite warriors who can slice and dice their way through an entire army and wouldn't even take a hit because of their superb agility. Where I was considering the army thinking about numbers he was thinking of fluff.
I realized with this that there's is two opposite way of thinking when building an army. First you can think in numbers and mathematics, consider that unit X when in situation Y will have a Z perfomance ratio. On the other hand you can say that a Leman Russ is the best tank in the galaxy and whoever says otherwise gets a shell in the head. Of course the first approach tends to yield better results in the long term. Heck, you need to at least consider it when you build a serious army. Going only with fluff reasons is more often than not a sure road to defeat. But at the same time I've experience countless times where a unit chosen for fluff outperforms it fellows and in the end is the game winner piece. How's that possible?
Mathematicians will tell you that since it's a dice based game any model has the potential, no matter how slim, to win the game by itself based on pure randomness. Even had a psychology student tell me that because we focused on a particular element we uncounsciously put him in position to perform and that we saw in a better ligh its contributions to winning while ignoring the other models contributions. I suppose they can both be right.
For my part I'm much closer to the mathematician approach to strategy than the ''fluff'' approach. I can tell you for sure that deploying 1'' from the starting line is a good idea to get out of the 24'' reach. I can tell you that 10 bolters rapidfiring on space marines results in a 2 death average. And this approach made me win more game than loose them. By constantly looking at success chances and so forth I can recover better when I hit a string of badluck.
On the other hand I've always had a soft spot for the Deathwing and I cannot count the number of times they survived against impossible odds when I send them charging alone... makes me wonder if pure maths are the way to go.
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