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It used to be that running Multiple Small Units (MSU) was a workable approach. Now, it seems, with Steadfast, MSU is no more...

Is this true? Do you think there are armies that can successfully pull off MSU at the moment? Is it a sleeper tactic, or just a dead one?

The main benefit I see with MSU is the fact that nobody is going to murder half of your army with one spell. Other than that I haven't seen it used incredibly well but YMMV.

I think only certain units work well with MSU. Usually involves a trick said unit does such as Night Goblins with fanatics or Gnoblar Trappers. Technically I guess fast cavalry tend to be MSU

I see woodelves doing this with awesome success.

I'm actually trying it right now with dwarfs and an anvil. It's 4-1, but only 2 of those was really against a "tournament competitive" list. The loss was by about 250-300 against double hydra, pendant stubborn lord on black dragon, backed by cauldron, 60 crossbows, 2 reapers and shadow magic.

The trick seems to be fleeing or sacrificing to match-ups you don't like, and ganging up on bigger units to take them down. I haven't theory hammered through very much, but I suspect certain builds will just run right over the top of the list. I kind of picture ogres being especially hard work too....

There's a thread on The Warhammer Forum that is tracking a player using MSU with Empire. It's pretty good, though it has a few issues.

Beastmen MSU is very strong IMO as are a few others. MSU takes lots of practice

Johnny-Crass wrote:MSU takes lots of practice

This! I felt like in the last couple games that there were some cool things I could be doing with double-flees and such, but couldn't... quite... get my brain around it.

My Dark Elves have a style of MSU in most of my core; 5 units of Dark Riders with crossbows and musicians.

As Johnny said, they need practice. You can't be clumsy with them, but once you can reign in the speed and agility of MSU, you can create a lot of headaches for someone who solely relies on chunky blocks of infantry.

Red_Zeke wrote:I'm actually trying it right now with dwarfs and an anvil. It's 4-1, but only 2 of those was really against a "tournament competitive" list. The loss was by about 250-300 against double hydra, pendant stubborn lord on black dragon, backed by cauldron, 60 crossbows, 2 reapers and shadow magic.

The trick seems to be fleeing or sacrificing to match-ups you don't like, and ganging up on bigger units to take them down. I haven't theory hammered through very much, but I suspect certain builds will just run right over the top of the list. I kind of picture ogres being especially hard work too....

There's a thread on The Warhammer Forum that is tracking a player using MSU with Empire. It's pretty good, though it has a few issues.

Double hydra lists are never an enjoyable fight the addition of everything else you listed just makes me feel for you D: I would not enjoy that matchup

No it isn't dead, but having about one or two big blocks around to do the heavy lifting is allways nice

MSU is the theoretical hard counter to magic heavy armies as they don't care about mega spells like armies with large blocks do. I think the main reason they don't show up very often is because of the rules of VPs. Large blocks work much better in this regard, since under the standard rules you can never get partial points for them. If you are playing in an area which has rules which give 25/50% VPs for getting a unit under 50/25% (or some variation) then MSU becomes much more viable.

The MSU I have tried a few times is smash and run. Using multiple units to tag team and crush a expensive unit and then run away and feed them chaff for the rest of the game

Acardia wrote:I see woodelves doing this with awesome success.

It take practice and knowledge to effectively pull off especially with Wood Elves. I find the "best" match us for Wood Elf MSU is elite armies WoC in particular, Ogres to a point and quiet good against crutchless High Elves (no Teclis). They are often tense battles with not a lot of destruction and the margin of victory is slim at best.

for example quick 2K battle report from earlier today

My list:
Treeman Ancient- annoyance, clustsre of radiants
Spellweaver- Lv2 (ariels, twilight host), scroll
Noble- wardancer, blades of loec
Noble- BSB, hunter's talon, pageant of shrikes
3*10 Glade Guard- 2 musicians
3*5 Glade Riders- musicians
2*5 Wardancers- champs
Eagle
7 Waywatchers

WoC list:
Lord mage- Lv4, MoT, disc, puppet, 2+/3++ (flickering fire, infernal gateway...)
Exalted hero- god knows what
BSB- MoT, disc, 2+/3++ (vs shooting/magic), 2D1 S1 shooty scream thing
~30 Warriors- FC, MoT, shields
~30 Chosen- FC, MoT, shields +/-1 to eye of gods (started with +1Ld)
21 Marauders- flails
chariot
warshrine- MoT


WoC Turn 1
The WoC started the game by repositioning their general from one side of the field to the other. The rest of the line advanced around a mysterious forest (revealed by my vanguard move to be standard), starting to form a gap between the marauders and chosen that would only grow, but then the shrine rolled a 12 :( (after a 1 point mod) and the chosen became all but unkillable with 3+/3++ stubborn Ld9. In the shooting phase his BSB screamed at my waywatchers but only killed 1 (and the same next turn), the magic phase was also a let down as I scrolled gateway on my treeman and flickering fire killed (irrisistable, rolled a 5 but puppeted to a 7, so no damage) off a couple of glade riders going up the centre.

WE Turn 1
Utterly fogettable. Fast cav kept moving round the enemy, 2 on my right flank, 1 on my left. I wasted the magic phase moving a couple of trees and then burnt my dice. Shooting was just as good... 30-35 shots at the chariot did 1 wound (the beginning of a saga) and the BSB went completely unharmed from fast cav and waywatcher fire (passing a 3++ vs killing blow).

WoC Turn 2
Ah, now the fun started... and admittedly ended (it was that sort of game). The WoC advanced all the way along the line with a charge from the chariot on some archers (taking a stand and shoot wound then breaking, but not catching the archers... who ran off next turn). In the magic phase we had a quick flickering fire at my flanking fast cav unit which killed 1, then we had gateway cast with irrisistable force doing 5-6 S 3 hits on my treeman... who took 3 wounds (DAMN), died because they were flaming (F~CK) and then the Lv4 rolled a 3 for his miscast, only got a 1 off the puppet and was quickly pulled into the warp (Ah Justice). So that was both the lords in the game dead in 1 spell.. harsh.

WE Turn 2
Another 25 shots at the chariot, 1 more wound taken (only 1 left now... after nearly 70 shots at it). More shots at the BSB, nothing happening. The eagle moves up to march block (exciting I know )

WoC Turn 3
Pretty Buggered from this point. The line advances, the chariot wheels and the shrine backs off towards the waywatchers in the WoC corner (the warriors have become stalled by fast cav and not being able to get at my line... they are forgettable for the rest of the battle rep since they really didnt do anything). The shooting phase sees the waywatchers wounded once more... who then run flee the field.

WE Turn 3
I declared a charge with a eagle, right into the rear of the shrine. The chosen had got close enough to worry my wardancers by now, so they just marched away, 1 unit forwards past the charge arc and the other away into my corner. Shooting phase another 14 shots went into the chariot... it still lives on 1W. Meanwhile a unit of glade guard backed up by the remaining fast cav on that unit kill about 8 marauders, who break and run through the advancing wardancers, the marauders keep running until they leave the board, aided by another 10 shots next turn.

My eagle took a wound from the shrine, but though it tried valiantly couldnt hit the shrine (let alone the T6, the armour save and the ward save... I couldnt even hit the bugger ). But anyway, I had charged and I was in the shrine's rear, so I won by 2... but it made its Ld test (though only just), regardless my eagle got killed in the next turn so its moment of glory was short lived.

WoC Turn 4
The chariot tried to charge some archers, who decided it would be better to lead it away from my army and so redirected (ok they ran too.) Meanwhile it dawns on the warriors and the chosen that they arent going to be able to catch any of these slippery elves...

WE Turn 4
The chariot dies... whooppppeee, only took something in the region of 80 shots to take the 4 wounds from it.
From here we skip through a couple of turns... nothing happens, twice (yes, I believe in originality).
...
WE Turn 6
So Its he last turn of the game, and I've been feeling like there hasnt been enough combat in this game. Ive turned down endless chances to charge warriors and chosen units with my wardancers since charging either is pretty much just suicide. However to make up this dirth of old-fashioned bloodletting I declare 2 charges! The general's wardancers and some fast cav charge the shrine (it is after all 50% of the non-instant death units on the board.. and the wardancers haven't had a shot at the BSB- its on a disc after all). I get the charge in the flank and the rear and even do 1 wound (utter shock) but even though Im pumping out about 20 attacks from the wardancers its the unseen spears of the glade riders who take it. The shrine responds killing 2 riders... losing by 3, failing its test even with the BSB's reroll, getting caught quite easily by the riders.

MSU are great for out deploying your opponent and general shenanigans.

I have not seen an army made of just small units.
That being said it could mean that finding the right balance of small units and medium to large units.

What is the definition of a small unit?
Minimum number of models per unit or is there another way to determine what is a small unit?

MSU can be defined multiple ways.

A few Mournfang Cavalry are technically small, but they are a lot of points.

10 archers or swordsmen 3/3 stats? Meh.

You need a real reason. Either poison or speed or lots of shots high Str or something.

The point of MSU is to give as few VP away as possible while still doing max damage

I run MSU ogres.
8 to 12 units of gnoblars, backed up with as many 4 and 6 man units of ogres and ironguts that I can squeeze in.

It is very hard to pick up significant points off my ogres.
The gnoblars go 2 wide and 5 deep, meaning that most opponents cannot throw enough attacks in one round to kill them all. They break, and run, but nobody ever panics thanks to "nobody cares" rule. If I get away, I might rally and you get no points. If you catch them, you only get 25 points.

These gnoblar swarms let me clog up the battle field so that I have time to bring my ogres to hit flanks and the softer weaker parts of my opponents army.


I've also run my dark elves as MSU, with lots of 12, 15 and 18 man units. Works great. I focus fire with repeater crossbows and magic to thin down some units, then break them in melee; while feeding the other portion of my opponents army cheaper small units.

It works, it can win, and it is a lot of fun for both players.
Way more fun then who-kills-the-deathstar-wins.


I'll be taking a serious look at Vampire MSU once the book is out (tomorrow). With the area summons, they may have a viable option.


-Matt

There is a nice discussion of MSU in 8th here:
http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=94395&sid=8f458d56499d77ea100b0acbf1728162

And the MSU Empire Army/ Battle Reports thread mentioned by Red_Zeke is here

http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=94537

There is an army on Ulthuan.net that is running as MSU with a number of Light mages. Look for MSU or Coven of Light battle reports/army blog.

MSU style armies are far from dead. In fact, a well designed and played MSU army will tend to dominate more traditional 8th ed style armies.

With that said, it is a much more difficult and unforgiving style of play. It requires a keen understanding of the worth of each unit as well as pin point execution and looking several turns ahead. Slow play is your enemy in tournaments.

I also disagree that MSU is about point denial. Rather it is about exchanging lower point cost units for higher. The whole goal is to out score your opponent.

Finally, you will rarely massacre opponents. In tournys, this can be ok since you will avoid some of the power builds until the late rounds.

Hinge

PS For the record, my MSU WoC has posted a 24-3 record in Tourney play.

Dark Elves in 8th have almost an MSU style. My regular opponent often runs double hydra, one 12 man cav unit and the dread lord. His spear men blocks are hefty, but for the most part he relies on speed and high dmg per model to win him the day, not chunky blocks. It can catch you off guard and throw you around if you have never faced it before.

Something I saw recently was that having MSU allows you to "win" deployment. Having 50% more models means that you are much more flexible in this aspect of the game-leaving 5-6 of your best units till last is a real edge-even if you don't go first.

You can also saturate shooting armies with targets. This seems to work best if you have different sized units. Does your opponant shoot at the harder to hit, but easier to neutralize, unit or try to whittle down a laarger, and easier to hit one?? Having many units makes target priority more difficult.

I think I'm going to try this once I have a few more games under my belt..

It is the natural evolution of gamers, as i did it after my first few games and i can see the newer players are picking it up too. To learn it best try to find someone expirienced to do it against you it really helps.

Hey Guys,

Just browsing through your wonderful forum here, and happened to notice this thread. The subject matter is very close to home!

Gildor777 mentioned my thread over on ulthuan.net, and I'm humbled that somebody has taken notice of my ramblings I believe that MSU is very viable in this edition, and I'll try to explain why:

Advantages

Deployment

The first key idea here has already been touched on - deployment. With a plethora of drops at your disposal, you can effectively force your opponent to deploy blind. The first models down on the board are typically easily re-deployable troops (in my case, Great Eagles) or non-committal drops. Typically your opponent will have to reveal his entire deployment strategy before you need to start dropping your heavy hitters. This allows you to formulate a game plan right from the get-go, and there is very little your opponent can do to stop you. When you're playing against armies that are sinking 600+ points into units, this ends up being a very real advantage

Movement

Multiple units means it's difficult to slow down or distract your army. With one great eagle I can delay a 1000 point block of troops for a turn without much effort. However if instead you have divided these points into 3 units, the plot thickens substantially. Having multiple units means you get to exert your will over the movement phase. It becomes quite simple to quickly eliminate the supporting units your opponent has brought to bear, then take full advantage of the relatively clear battlefield to set up combo charges.

Multiple units also means that you get to mitigate the randomness that everyone groans about through redundancy. If your deathstar rolls 2 on 2D6 and fails their charge, that failed charge has effected an enormous portion of your army. If, however, I declare a charge with 3 of my smaller units, one failed charge barely effects my overall goal.

Finally, having many small units allows you to confuse the battlefield with charge arcs, creating opportunity after opportunity to get flank and rear charges. More on the advantages of this later

Magic

Many of the lores have the option of buffs targetting all units within X number of inches. The effectiveness of many of these spells increases drastically in an MSU style list. I've looked at the Vampire Counts book, and the thought of an Invocation of Nehek targeting 8+ units within 18" makes my stomach turn. I'll let your imaginations take over here.

Combat

MSU style lists have several key advantages when it comes to combat.

First and foremost, it becomes significantly easier to get flank and rear charges. Because supporting attacks and parry do not exist anywhere but to the front, this often means your troops do more damage, and take less in return. This is absolutely critical in lists that boast smaller units and especially so for armies with low toughness. That horde's attacks are *seriously* mitigated if you can engage it on the side.

Second, multiple charges can pin characters in place. Let's say you've got a nasty Chaos character in a unit of marauders. I can effectively charge the unit's front with one eagle into the character, then send in my flanking unit of swordmasters to put all of their attacks on the squishy marauders. Odds are the casualties I inflict are also going to reduce the incoming damage due to his casualties coming off the back and reducing ranks.

Third, due to the ease at which you can accomplish flank and rear charges, MSU allows you to easily concentrate force. I bolded that one for emphasis, because it is really one of the key points, and why MSU can still exist. Any unit, regardless of how big, can only withstand so many attacks. The bigger your opponent makes his units, the more frontage he is offering you. A unit of 50 models affords you a *huge* amount of real estate to concentrate enough force to take that unit down quickly and effectively. You can essentially focus down one unit at a time, while the rest of your numerous units focus on distracting and delaying the rest of his army.

Finally, because of the advantage that you get in the deployment phase, you get to choose where the combats happen. It doesn't matter how well a list is built, it is going to have weak points. MSU gives you the flexibility you need to take advantage of the opportunities your opponent presents you.


This is really only skimming the surface, though. I do agree with the statement above that MSU takes patience and practice to be effective with. However, once you start getting the hang of it, I find it to be the most rewarding playstyle by huge measures.

I'll leave you with two threads over at Ulthuan.net for those that are interested. The first is my own, and the second is a series of battle reports from a fellow Ulthuanian (lol?) who has taken this concept to the extreme and had a great deal of success with it.

Brewmaster_D's Coven of Light Army Blog
Swordmaster of Hoeth's MSU Battle Report Log

D

This thread is relevant to my interests...
I've been wanting to do MSU as the concept seems much more fun, but been afraid to try it out since it doesn't seem that viable. How does it deal with blocks that are steadfast? In the end, steadfast blocks are still steadfast... Unless you grind it down totally to the ground. Also, do you think this is viable with the new VC.

MSU is all about damage output and flanks and rear (beastmen MSU anyway) so you deal with steadfast by ganging up and winning all your combats. As lore my lore when using MSU it is always death or shadow

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:Something I saw recently was that having MSU allows you to "win" deployment. Having 50% more models means that you are much more flexible in this aspect of the game-leaving 5-6 of your best units till last is a real edge-even if you don't go first.

You can also saturate shooting armies with targets. This seems to work best if you have different sized units. Does your opponant shoot at the harder to hit, but easier to neutralize, unit or try to whittle down a laarger, and easier to hit one?? Having many units makes target priority more difficult.

I think I'm going to try this once I have a few more games under my belt..

That's why I run MSU(25-30per block) with my Skaven. By the time I've finished placing just my Slaves, most people have finished deploying their entire armies.

Also, facing down against 300 or so Rats in 10-12 blocks looks more intimidating that it really is.

The key is, of course, to gang up on enemy blocks and have a good spread of Chieftains for LD while keeping the "important" units within range of the Bell. It's running about 10-3 so far.

The CF wrote:This thread is relevant to my interests...
I've been wanting to do MSU as the concept seems much more fun, but been afraid to try it out since it doesn't seem that viable. How does it deal with blocks that are steadfast? In the end, steadfast blocks are still steadfast... Unless you grind it down totally to the ground. Also, do you think this is viable with the new VC.

You deal with them one at a time while the rest of the enemy army is busy. My plan is pick a target, delay all else, note: never pick a deathstar

Three key ways to deal with horde units:

Option A: Force Concentration

The movement advantages you gain due to having multiple small units allows you to line up combo charges and concentrate a significant amount of force into the generous frontage these large footprint units provide you. It's pretty spectacular to see when it's done well - a 50 man unit can be ground down in 1 or 2 rounds of combat in many situations.

Option B: Ranged Support

This includes Magic, warmachine and small arms fire. Many of the spells in 8th edition seemed to have been designed with dealing with hordes in mind. Dwellers cuts most hordes in half, and Pit of Shades does a number on low initiative troops. Timewarp, when cast as a 12" area buff can combine well with Option A for some serious horde busting. Likewise more accurate artillery really sees benefits when shooting against units with big numbers, and small arms fire can help eliminate the chaff present to allow you the opportunity to line up a combo charge. Board dominance is critical to a list style like MSU

Option C: Avoid it

Certain hordes reach a size where they simply pose too much threat to engage. Luckily, for a unit to reach this point it means that the player has invested a sizeable amount of their points into that one unit. The result is that the rest of the army is typically undersupported.

I hear the term points denial a lot, and while it has some merit, it also comes with a price tag - that unit has to earn points too to justify its presence on the field. With an MSU style list, you can feed it sub 100 point units all game, and focus on taking out the remaining parts of an army. Very rare is the list that boasts an unengageable deathstar that has swallowed up enough points that you can't win the game by taking out the rest of the army instead.

Hope this helps! I think MSU is such a tactically interesting way of playing, and the matches are always so much more fun. I really hope the meta evolves in this direction, as it will definitely make for some very interesting matches.

D

Points denial via deathstar is in fact worse than points denial via MSU, since you'r units are cheap sacrificing them for the eventual win is quite efective, a nuke spell however can gobble up them deathstar points quite quick.