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One of the most important tactics of a shooty army is to shoot in the right order so that damage is maximized and
no shot is wasted. I'm wondering if anyone have worked out a chart for what guns to shoot first and so on.

From what I know, in most cases you just do the following:
1. Figure out units that needs to be shot/killed
2. Shoot short range guns that lack other important units in range
3. Shoot blast/ordinance weapons, starting with the most inconsistent
4. Shoot the guns with the lowest chance to damage the target per shot (eg. lasguns)
5. Work up the effectiveness per shot ladder until everything has been fired

The idea is to shoot the most inconsistent weapons first, and if you get a outlier result you can adjust your more reliable weapons to fill the gaps.

That normally works well enough against models since there is usually two outcomes of either losing wounds or not, however against vehicle armies there is more complications. For example, if you have already gotten a shanken result, do you still shoot at with low powered weapons or choose a different (perhaps lower valued) target? On the other hand, if you have a strong AT-unit (say 3xbroadside), do you shoot them first at high value targets first to prevent overkill as all the glancing results don't really help getting kills.

So has anyone worked out a system?

SWPIGWANG wrote:So has anyone worked out a system?

Shoot whatever poses the biggest threat at the moment. Thats pretty much it.

Hi

yea shooting priority is something that allot of players seem to overlook.
I have seen players with excellent range guessing and tactical movement skills totally mess up their shooting phase.
Either that, or their level of shooting tactics were far beyond my brain power :=)

But I think a decision tree would be far to complex for the whole shooting phase.
Generally I work it like SWPIGWANG.


These are the general rules I consider:

--Target priority
Whats my general plan?
Whats my opponents general plan?
What would benefit me more, disrupting my opponents plan or sticking to my own?

--Weapon effectiveness
Which of my weapons could get the job done?
How likely would that be?
How likely would that be against a possible alternate target?
Can my weapon instant kill?
Is there a target with wound allocation shenanigans?

--Deciding on the firing sequence
Does the weapon has an effective alternate target it can switch to if the target is already destroyed?
If it scatters can it hit an important unit of my own that has an important target?
What weapons do I have that do not have a good target but might put the last wound on something and are to weak to plan anything with them?



What this rules come down to then is usually like this:
First shooting unreliable indirect template weapons.
Second shooting the weapons that do not have alternate targets starting with the most important target.
Third shooting the weapons with alternate targets starting with most important.
And last any weapons that are left over. These left over weapons can interrupt the shooting sequence anytime for targets of opportunity. To free up a more effective weapon with alternate targets.
There is always the balance between how important is a target and how effective are my possible weapons. This can be realy tricky. I can think of no general rules for that since it is so situational.

That normally works well enough against models since there is usually two outcomes of either losing wounds or not, however against vehicle armies there is more complications. For example, if you have already gotten a shanken result, do you still shoot at with low powered weapons or choose a different (perhaps lower valued) target? On the other hand, if you have a strong AT-unit (say 3xbroadside), do you shoot them first at high value targets first to prevent overkill as all the glancing results don't really help getting kills.

This is such a tricky situation. Without more information about that special case, I can't say.

first post btw^^

Jokuhuna wrote:SWPIGWANG.

I'm not even going to ask.

Personally, I'm more of a PWINGSWAPWANG guy myself.

That aside, it obviously all depends on who you are and who they are, what their mech list is trying to do, etc.

Most mech lists involve delivering troops into assault, or into close range shooting. The transports themselves tend to be of minimal value.

Assuming a relatively static army defending, you're looking to gun down their transports at a distance. If you get a result that stops the transport moving, and there are others still moving, AND you can shoot them just as easily, shift fire to them.

Bottom line, your early shooting is trying to stop the enemy in their backfield. If you do that, you're going to win. More likely, you'll have partial success, and then have to deal with some of the guys inside the transports.

Now you want to wipe them out with multiple units, given that you didn't have to waste points on transports, you have a decent chance here. A lot of times the transports can be ignored after they unload, and should only be killed if you need KPs, they're dangerous themselves, or you've got a unit with nothing better to do and a good chance of success (say a single Crisis Suit with a Fusion Blaster).

This is something I have had in mind when playing guard since 3rd. This of course changes depending on the army you are playing.

For a shooting guard army:
1) Immobilize the enemy! Transports get the combat troops to your lines faster than walking; Shoot down jump troops.
2) Hit enemy strong points: How do your russes like the taste of that 3 rail gun broad side squad?
3) clean up the next largest threat. Be it the closest unit to assault you or the closest to taking an objective.

When deciding what to fire at:
1) do any units have only one target?
2) see what each unit has as their best target.
3) would a shot be best saved for later on? hell hound a unit that is shot out of their transport
4) what weapons might disrupt your shooting phase? Close in ordinance shots that may hurt a squad or stun a vehicle that hasnt shot yet.

There is however a whole other element to the shooting phase especially when playing IG. This is in the creation of the army list itself:

1)What scares your army most? transports? hordes? monsterous creatures? 2+ saves?
2) what are you likely to face? (what is the usual unit selection for any given army) This is aside from the meta game of which armies are more dominant in your playing region
3) what weapons are best at what?

For example I found that autocannons are statistically better than lascannons at armour 11 vehicles or lower and only marginally inferior against av12. Therefore since transports are a large threat to IG lots of autocannons is a good choice, and they are better against horde armies than a lascannon aswell.
Also having to face a potential of 4 monsterous creatures with a 2+ save (tyranids) lots of AP 2 is needed. This is the main reason by far that plasma guns dominate the special weapon selection for IG (aside from the new found love for mechanized and meltaguns in the new codex)


This is a brief outline of my shooting plan, but I cant stress enough about the "Immobilize the enemy" first. I have seen so many IG players loose the game because they wanted to take that battle cannon shot at unit X because it was a once in a blue moon opportunity to make a very large (victory point) bang, instead of shooting at the more threatening unit. Sure you can demolisher cannon those terminators that just had a bad scatter and are now in the open, but if they are 24' away, it will take them 3 turns to get to you

Phryxis wrote:Stuff...

Jokuhuna wrote:More stuff...

Tao wrote:Even more stuff...

So what you are saying is...shoot whatever poses the biggest threat first, right?

Firing order seems pretty much common place in games.
if you cant grasp the concept then your screwed from turn 1.


with highly mobile armies (evil sunz for example) you will be facing a high amount of vehicles.
pop these early on and they are left to slog it.

with nids its mainly a case of avoiding and hunting.
kill off any and all synapse creatures early on (if they have massed gaunts)
then work away at fex's and anything else that will cause a problem.

list goes on, but long story short: Pick out the biggest threats 1st.
read through the other players lists (if possible) and work out what unit(s) will be causing you trouble and get rid of them early on.

Shoot with the smallest weakest weapons first on anything bar multi-wound unqiue models (nobz, warriors).

Deal with infantry first..

Deal with anything trying to give somthing else cover first (you may make it flee & run out of the way)

Armor specifically.. shoot at the things that will stop your anti-armor shooting back. Simple really.

Liquidwulfe wrote:

Phryxis wrote:Stuff...

Jokuhuna wrote:More stuff...

Tao wrote:Even more stuff...

So what you are saying is...shoot whatever poses the biggest threat first, right?

wrong

While not specifically written about vehicle target priority, it was a pretty well written article by Redbeard about the shooting phase:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/The%20Shooting%20Phase