Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A lot of warhammer fantasy talk is about lists, upgrades, magic items, dice rolls... but in my opinion, much of the important player interaction as far as strategy is concerned, happens in the deployment phase. Of course, the movement phase is a big deal as well. Warhammer is a game of position, and sometimes very powerful troops will be made reduntant by flank charges, march blocks, or even choked out of the battle by friendly forces in a bad position.

Let's have a look at this crucial part of the game in detail. I've won and lost some very decisive games on how well or badly I deployed relative to my opponents. When both armies are set up and I see some bad deployments by my opponent, I know it will be an easy game. But if I see myself outsmarted in the deployment phase, I know that it is likely I will lose.

Number of Deployables

I think this is something every player ought to take into consideration. If you have a lot more deployables than your opponent, you can lay down a lot of less significant elements of your army early on, and by the time your main hammer units or vulnerable pieces are ready to be deployed, you will know where the enemy threats are. On the other hand, the 'choice' locations on deployment zone, i.e on hills, between forests.... may lack room for everything you want. It might become more obvious where you are going to deploy your important items, as the relevant space closes up.

How important is getting that +1 to the roll for first turn, for your army? Do you ever make changes to your list just to have more or less deployables? I think one quite advanced warhammer strategy is to count the number of enemy deployables before the game starts, and work out whether you will finish first or second. Try to figure out what your opponent is going to deploy last.

Order of Deployment

I think the general rule of thumb is that you deploy your fastest units first. In an average dark elf army, this might be dark riders and harpies. On the other hand, your slow moving, vulnerable to missile fire units may want to be deployed last. You want these directly opposite whatever they need to engage. If the enemy saves their target to deploy after you've committed them, they've immediately got an advantage.

I've been thinking about this, though. Suppose your style happens to be like mine - very conservative. You might be playing some kind of fragile gunline - high elves with no spearmen, light on infantry, but with eagles, cav, archers, RBT's. You want your long range missile section to be as far away from the enemy as possible. This could mean deploying even your hammer units, elite infantry, etc before your ranged stuff.

Of course the opposite approach serves another strategic purpose. You deploy all the artillery/ranged first. Then while the enemy is gathering up opposite that, you are now in a position to deploy your hammer cav and fast can in such a way that you can immediately move into better angles, flanking positions, march blocks etc.

Deception in Deployment

The deployment phase in warhammer is quite unlike deployment in WH40k. It is call and response - you interact with your opponent in a turn based 'minigame' that is in many ways more strategic than the rest of the game itself. There is NO luck in deployment, no imbalance, no cheese. If you can outsmart your opponent here it is decisive.

Faking a flank deployment is certainly a way to do this. You deploy several units of fast cavalry on the same flank, and your opponent unwisely takes the bait by placing a hydra, or steam tank, or elite infantry unit opposite them. You are now in a position to deploy your entire army on the other flank, and march over to the rest of your army with the fast cav in the first turn. In many cases this trick is not subtle. Good players will not fall for it. But it can be worth trying anyway - if you can keep them guessing about where the main bulk of your army is going to be, for longer, this is good.

Terrain often makes the placement of troops predictable. Big hill smack back in the middle? All of your artillery and ranged is going there. Forest on one flank? Won't see much heavy cav there. But, I think sometimes you can really use this expectation to your advantage. There is no reason ranged units can't be deployed on flat ground even though there is a perfectly good hill nearby. If you can trick your opponent by saving the units expected to appear on a hilltop, until any threats have been placed - you might find that conceding the advantage of the hill is trumped by the advantage of stationing your units in a safer position.

Planning

If you can, look at your quarter strip of the table and work out where each unit will go by default before you place ANYTHING. Your plan might change as you see your opponent's units go down. But, like the rest of the game itself, having a plan as well as a willingness to respond to your opponent is very important. If you simply place units in response to your opponent, you might realise later on that the ideal spot for one of your most important units is now taken up by other things. If the zone is choked up with impassable terrain and forests this is more likely to happen. If you have a default spot for them mapped out in your head, you are then in a position to choose between the various areas that are NOT taken up by any of the default spots when it becomes necessary to deploy something in a position that you had not initially planned it to be in.

***

Those are the main points I can think of for now. Deploying smarter improves your play. I'm sure everyone else has a lot to add and discuss as far as these ideas are concerned, so let's hear it. Essentially this is a much better topic for serious players to be discussing than things like cheese and imbalance in army books. In tournaments with good composition systems, the smartest and most experienced players will come out on top. Let's work towards being more like those guys.

Some thoughts on the matter.

How you go about deploying is very dependent on your army type.
Hoard armies will generally fill up the board. As such you will need to plan your deployments out in advance and usually stick to it. Only a few key units should react to the enemy deployment by switching places with others.
Fast offensive armies will generally ignore most of the enemies placements in favor of following their pre-chosen strategy (don't completely ignore the opponent's deployment though, it could be important)
Armies with a few heavy blocks of slowish combat units can do nothing except deploy these units unless the opponent's army is smaller than theirs (they cant risk having a big slow unit stuck in a corner).

In general most of the newish armies fall into one of the two latter categories. Either they rely on 3 or so blocks of slow infantry in which case they have no choice but to deploy those units in the middle or they have an army of fast units with light support in which case they usually go for a flanking maneuver, which side being determined by terrain.
Ask yourself this, how many drops do the average vamp/deamon armies have? How many are important?
I'm gonna wager 6-10 and 3-4

The armies that get the most out of the deployment phase are the MSU armies and the balanced armies. They have the number of units to react to the enemy without disrupting their deployment and they have the quality units that can make a meaningful impact on the game that can be saved until the enemy is out of drops.


So how do you plan out your deployment.
Well, its a pretty broad topic but here some of the ideas I usually think about.
Forests and other LOS blocking difficult terrain often make good obsticals to defend your flanks and anchor your lines. This is particularly good for armies with a few units of elite troops such as lizards.

Well positioned forests and hills (out on the flanks) make for great areas to get fast units around behind the enemy unmolested. I particularly like it when there is a hill on the flank because you can turn into the main battle anywhere, not just after you pass it.

Such terrain pieces also make great locations for shades and other skirmishers to run into and hide. A well positioned forest can make or break the game for an army with a good skirmishing unit.

Terrain in your opponent's deployment zone can be very disruptive. A piece of difficult ground can mean he has to either split his forces, risking some getting killed piecemeal and others getting left out of the fight, or ignore a valuable flank opening his army up to a vulnerable attack.

Buildings are particularly cool if you can use them. Flamers or horrors in a building are a nightmare.

Which of these ideas you chose to use depend on your army makeup.

You may notice that many of these ideas revolve around using the same terrain piece in different ways. Well, your opponent will be doing this too. That is where your flanking/harassment units come in, and where things get interesting.

Hmmmm

The problems with deployment, IMHO, are the following.

Many opponents will "counter" your deployment with their own units.

I.E. Every time I put a "dangerous" unit on the board (Ironguts, Cold Ones, etc.) my (regular) opponent will often place his best unit (Silver Helms, lol) in a position to counter them.

Now, this leads to an easy way to set up traps. Simply set up Scary thing X in a position whilst your opponent places on of his better units to counter. Then, either taking a fodder unit or more basic unit, position it in the way so that your opponent would be foolish if he tried to charge the previously Scary Thing X.

Another important thing about deployment that many players are poor at is realizing that they have been out deployed. When you are out deployed it becomes difficult, and often impossible, to implement your normal game plan. If you realize before the first turn that you have been out deployed, it is often possible to salvage a minor win or draw from a game where you should be slaughtered. Not every battle needs to be a full out blood bath.

One thing that I think is glossed over here, is the standard unit-based battle line.

9 times out of 10 the average warhammer player is looking to deploy between 3 and 5 units, shoulder to shoulder, that he intends (at best) to march forward to get into combat, or (at worst) Hang around and wait until someone shows up to kick them in the stomach.

I've found that a lot of the top tier players, and more importantly top tier armies depend on this battle line, and will deploy the line with a blind eye towards their opponent, and instead rely on terrain to cover a flank (or perhaps a board edge in the same respect) Often times the unit with the exposed flank will be a harder unit.

Another thing that a lot of top tier players will do, is use their units in Concert. Light Cav, should naturally be deployed with Ogres, or Heavy Cav, or even a chariot,
chariots will typically be deployed in concert with eachother.

I also disagree with deploying your "fast units first" as a generalization. I would always recommend your battle line first, with respect to terrain, and THEN deploying your fast units as a general strategy.

If you don't have a true "battle line" (and I would ask why you *don't) then the "fast throwaway units first" is a fine suggestion.

Gosford Gamers reposted an article I wrote about deployment a while back. I focused on the refused flank deployment, but there's some good general info. I wrote it back when 40k still used alternating deployment too, but it still all applies to WH.

http://www.gosfordgamers.net/files/The%20Refused%20Flank.pdf

As an DE player a battle line deludes you into thinking that your army can hold one. Other than black guard, they can't. A battle line for DE is a good way to get your units in the way of each other. It works for armies good at block hammer, its terrible for armies that can't do it. A mobile army with good shooting needs room to move, and needs good firing arcs. If the enemy doesn't have a clear front to work against, the opponent will either split up, sit back, or charge part of your army with too much of his own. As DE you are probably happy with any of those. The only down side is that you need good ranged attacks to draw your opponent into the trap. Bait and flee tactics are great, but not very many armies can really do it. Ogres try really hard at it, but their shooting is bad, so they have to try and get in there and try to make things work.

Some interesting points have been raised so far.

I'd like to add something about the deployment of artillery. Any army with a credible artillery threat (Empire, Dwarves, massed Bolt Throwers) know how their enemies fear this particular aspect of the army they're facing.

For instance, as an Empire player I've got access to the Great Cannon. The big hammer of smack down that can reach any part on the table as long as LoS is there.
No smart player likes to place his big nasty expensive monster or other nastyness in sight of a Great Cannon, or even two.

It can therefore be handy to deploy your artillery early (Its sometimes my first deployment) especially when you realise your opponent has more deployments than you do anyway (so you know he'll wait placing that nasty untill the end). So I place my artillery in good positions with great lines of fire.
In doing so I'm actually forcing my opponent to hide parts of his army in certain locations. Quite a few of my opponents tend to get unnerved and start bunching up their army in these locations, just to stay out of reach. Even though this hurts their movement in the coming turns.

Of course my opponent will know exactly where he'll deploy his anti-artillery units now but that isn't a big thing anyway. Most of these units are Fast Cav. or units of Flyers anyway, they have the movement to reach my artillery (in turn 2-3) anyway, regardless of their exact location.

Of course, I also deploy units to defend my artillery. Shooting units to shoot up fragile Fast Cav., Knight units or a Pegasus Captain for Mexican stand-offs, a unit just in front of the hill my artillery piece is on making it impossible for flyers to land in the space between. All of these things can help.

One last tactic is the undefended Cannon/Hellblaster. A Cannon/Hellblaster on a flank with good LoS can threaten/guard a good part of the table. It's also only 100/115pts. Some opponents assume that because I deploy one of these babies that guard units will follow quickly and deploy a pretty sizeable force across this position. But I simply ignore, the flank and go for a refused flank.

Not all refused flank units need to be able to get away, their inability to get away might just lure an opponent into ones trap, they just need to be cheap enough to sacrifice.