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Well, I'm pretty sure it's been said before, it comes up in YDMC at least once a month, and I'm sure everyone knows it, but...

DAWN OF WAR IS A STEAMING PILE OF GAK!

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, here's what happened:

Set up terrain.
Roll mission/deployment. (We started playing "by the book" missions again so that we wouldn't be out of our element in tournaments)
Get Dawn of War and Kill Points. I look down at my IG army and curse loudly. The Eldar player asks if I want a reroll on the kill points. I say no.
I get first go, but I don't want just two troop choices/hq on the board waiting for him to steal the objective and wipe them out by themselves (aka, my first mistake)
He deploys two conga lines of dire avengers across the board along with Eldrad at the 24" mark.
I deploy nothing initially because things would be worse than before.

Without going into the long of it, I'm still picked off like shooting fish in a barrel because of the fact that the 6 x 4 table is now effectively a 6 x 2 table.

Now, there were things I could have done much better, but that doesn't change the fact that this deployment type seems to have an inordinate amount of impact on the overall flow of the game, such that I would wager to say that having a crap list or tactics is backseat to simply going at an advantageous time.

There was this other time I played a Tyranid player. He rolled first deployment, conga lined at 24". I placed conservatively, but I stole initiative and then my IG washed over his guys and I lost about 90 points worth of my 1000 point list and tabled him.

One note about that 1000 point list. I showed up with a 2000 point list without realizing that they changed the tournament to 1000 point format, so I had to last minute scratch off 1000 points worth of it. It was not a good list and the rest of the games that day illustrated that fact.

So DakkaDakka, how do you feel about DoW? Do you bother playing it when it comes up? Honestly, everyone I've talked to about it hates it, but most of the local games formats use it at least once.

dawn of war is my favorite mission... I have one or two tactics I pull in dawn of war that I think are fairly unique actually.

one of my favorites is when I go first, deploy 2 empty rhinos at the 24" line... and then use them as spotters for the rest of my army on the first turn. most enemies are not cautious of their vehicle placement / facings first turn, because they think "he won't see them through nightfight"... but the bamn, I pull out 2 spotting rhinos and the gak hits the fan.

Its just a different type of mission, and you can't think about it like an objective mission.

your eldar opponent doesn't sound very good, either. conga lining dire avengers is NOT a great idea... when you have first turn. couldn't you have just cut them down with heavy bolters?

and why didn't you deploy to push him back? guard have lots of great troop choices to put down... you could throw down 2 chimeras (if you have dedicated chimeras) or hell, 3 chimeras if you have a dedicated one to your command squad... and do some serious damage.

Yea... I love Dawn of War too.
Those players that conga line.... they do realize they don't 'HAVE' to that right?

DoW is (I guess many would agree) an improvement over the previous Escalation 4.0.

Poor decisions made by players is a not a good basis for complaining about anything IMO.

Part of the issue was that I was running a different list than I normally use. I'm normally all about outflanking stuff, but this time I tried to do a more tank heavy brute force option, and I thought I could break through. The dire avengers were predominately there to break through any infantry I ran with. We have a policy of using more cover than 25% and being completely open with lists at the start of the game. His Avengers had cover and he saw that I had one troop choice chimera, and it had a heavy flamer and multilaser, so he figured he'd take his chances. I agree with pushing him back. I should have gone first when I had the chance, but that's kind of the focal point of my whine. If the equivalent of a d6 roll at the start of the game can make or break the game, why bother playing beyond that point?

*EDIT* He conga lined the troops because it allowed him to reduce my deployment zone to 6" across my side of the board, keeping me out of any cover I could have used.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sanctjud wrote:Poor decisions made by players is a not a good basis for complaining about anything IMO.

Maybe so. In this case I suppose I have no one to blame for deployment but myself. OTOH, what if he rolled first turn? I'd be in the same boat and it wouldn't have been "Poor decisions" that put me there. Also, should external factors impacting deployment negatively impact overall play such that a game is won or lost at deployment?

I still don't know what the problem is.
If the opponent goes first or second and you deploy nothing and he goes for a conga line or as close as possible, you will have your whole army to deal with 2 troops and a HQ...

I don't see a problem here.

Force Concentration and creating an uneven distribution of points in certain areas to kill the opponent is a legitmate tactic.
If the opponent walks into it, it's their fault, there's nothing wrong about that.

You can choose NOT to deploy stuff in the manner they are doing, esp. with no support elements to back them up.

Dawn of War gives each player options as well as limits them. Whatever decision you make, putting stuff on the board in DoW is prob. the most hazardous thing you can do...esp. vs. a fast army that starts off the board.

If the opponent is out shooting you, then pick some longer ranged options if you will be castling when coming into the game.

Sanctjud wrote:I still don't know what the problem is.
If the opponent goes first or second and you deploy nothing and he goes for a conga line or as close as possible, you will have your whole army to deal with 2 troops and a HQ...

I don't see a problem here.

Well, the problem is that since everything walks on the board first round and he went first, he had 2 troops, HQ, a Wave Serpent, and just barely now in range artillery at the 24-36" range mark with time to make cover that my entire army got to deal with. Skimmers move quite fast. My point isn't in this case that I made the bad decision, the point is that my bad decision mirrored one of the probable outcomes of a single dice roll and he had his entire army within firing range of the entire board at the start of his second turn.

What's the problem...?
He goes first, which means you get to react when your WHOLE army comes onto the board as well.

This is more powerful that going first in most cases. You can maximize force concentration.

His entire army is within fire range of your entire board edge, but when you come on... your units are all in range at whatever they are best at killing.

You see where I'm going with this.
Having an army with weapons trained on a whole board edge isn't that threatening.
Esp. when you come on to react to it.
-you can place weapons with ideal targets
-you can place fragile stuff away from the stuff that kills them good.
-you can dictate where the real fight happens, castling up to force the opponent to then react to your moves. Hitting where it hurts the opponent most, taking aim at mass kill points.
-etc.

I LOVE getting second turn... I'm only annoyed when my opponent gives me first turn.
If I go first in DoW, I just turbo boost side ways and hover around 12-18" into the board.
If I have anything on the board, it's generally just to be there as a buffer for enemy infiltrators trying to block the board edge.

I thought for the purpose of deploying the two troops and HQ transports were considered their own unit and would take up one of the allocated slots? (I'm refering this to the comment about bringing on 3 chimeras for the imperial guard along with the ccs.

You are correct Duce...
Literally only 3 units can be on the board...

Eldrads and the 2 squads of DA.
Their serpant can't start on the board if the second DA squad wants to be on the board.