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My question to you (Dakka) is how do you prioritize your targets? What are your deciding factors when determining it?

I understand some situations will dictate your targets, but in ideal situations with any and all choices available, who do you target? Also, how do you target them? Ranged fire? Your hammer unit? Throw away unit? Anvil unit? Extra alternatives for those less than ideal situations when you don't have a cannon aimed at a giant with a target painted on him. Some armies are sorely lacking in the shooting phase and have to prioritize their targets differently.

Thoughts?

Playing beastmen my prioritizing envolves what I want to charge and what I wanna stay away from. Like anything with terror I will charge just to keep them from chargeing me.

Asking how I prioritize units is basically asking, how do you win games. I play a very shooting heavy dark elf army, and sometimes run shooty ogres.

1) If I can take it in melee, shoot something else.
2) If I can't take it in melee, only shoot it if I can reduce it to the point I can take it in melee.
3) If I can't shoot it down to an effectively reduced level, shoot something else.
4) Shoot more immediate threats first. (i.e. target units you can't avoid, are very fast, or can't feed throw away inits.
5) If you have a good shot at shooting dead important heroes (wizard lord, BSB, General), then do so.

My dark elves rely on speed to plink away over several turns. It needs finess, because I need ~4 turns of shooting for the shooting to really shot it's power. Target selection to allow for more turns of shooting is more important than short term return on shooting.

My ogres work very differently. I can't avoid anything and shoot all game long. Instead, it's all about two massive shooting phases, followed by melee. My leadbeltchers are known for wiping out entire lances and attached characters. What they lack in mobility, they make up in devistation.

-Matt

I tend to prioritize enemy units based solely on their impact on my units. An enemy unit near me might be a higher priority than one farther away, even if the farther unit is much more dangerous.

Example, slaves that will be in charge range next turn have a more urgent priority than the A-bomb who's a couple of turns away from hitting my important units. In this example, I would probably send a throw-away unit at the slaves to take them out of position in order to be able to maneuver towards the A-bomb with something that will kill it.

I give priority to enemy units that are going to do severe damage to my army, then I go for easy Victory points(like a HE lord on a dragon, suicide when staring down the barrel of 2 Ironblasters)

While I play my dwarfs and DE in different styles (for obvious reasons), my general priorities, in order, go as is:

1(tie). What poses the biggest threat and/or what will be easiest to kill
3. What is potentially worth more VP
4. What can be killed before it reaches combat (for my shooty units)
5. What is in my direction/vicinity/is an obstacle to my goal of other priorities
6. What would be the most interesting combat to see (yeah, I've charged my solo unstoppable killing machine Dwarf Lord against 6 rate ogres and a horde of ghouls, so what?? )

of course, the opponent, deployment, and situation can all affect my decision making.

I think the cop-out answer is that it depends on your army and its composition.

An all shooty TK army and an all melee Ogre army are going to have about as different an answer as possible.

But one thing I learned from my early days of gaming with NSA mathematicians is: don't get emotional. Like they would position a lot of high-value targets to sponge hits, also knowing they could shrug off the majority of them.

Think about it like a stock market or Vegas gambling point of view. If you always go for the 15% chances of instant victory, you're probably going to lose an awful lot. If you go for the slow grind good matchups with 55% victory, you'll come out ahead in the long haul. Sure, you'll lose some unlucky times, but that's dice.

As I play and MSU Wood Elf army so, really whatever is more mobile than myself will get target priority.

I send the Git Beataz aka Black Orcs to 'da tuff gits' and they (usually) get the job done! The rest of the ladz get the smaller stuff.

Thanks for the thoughts and replies. It's nice to see other people have that mental checklist they go through to help them determine their targets. My checklist is pretty similar.

1) Which unit is the most harmful to my army? This could mean a "beat face" cc unit or a highly mobile unit that will wreck havoc.
2) Which unit will my shooting be most effective against? Can I destroy the unit? Can I reduce it down to a more manageable size? Are my shots strong enough or plentiful enough to cause damage? Will I hit?
3) Lastly, I will look at VP or if it is late in the game and I think I can snag some extra points.

So are there any targets that just jump to the top spot anytime you face them even if they don't fall into the top spot of your checklist?

boogeyman wrote:Thanks for the thoughts and replies. It's nice to see other people have that mental checklist they go through to help them determine their targets. My checklist is pretty similar.

1) Which unit is the most harmful to my army? This could mean a "beat face" cc unit or a highly mobile unit that will wreck havoc.
2) Which unit will my shooting be most effective against? Can I destroy the unit? Can I reduce it down to a more manageable size? Are my shots strong enough or plentiful enough to cause damage? Will I hit?
3) Lastly, I will look at VP or if it is late in the game and I think I can snag some extra points.

So are there any targets that just jump to the top spot anytime you face them even if they don't fall into the top spot of your checklist?

Aye, the bigger the target is the more excited my Black Orcs gets. No but really though, I usually send my Black Orcs to give my enemy's strongest unit a proper beating. Once i've done that I scan the battlefield and send my Night Goblins and Orcs around to get their job done.

I run a list very similar to HawaiiMatt's for Dark Elves, where the bulk of my shooting is in the form of 5 units of Dark Riders with repeaters. In no single turn will they reap a tally on anything, but over the course of the game, However, as the turns roll on and the impact of small shots and movement disruption grows.