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I've watched some games reccently at my FLGS and I've noticed something...in pitched battle why do people think it's neccessary to deploy their forces along the entire board? I mean I saw some armies that could easily load up one flank instead of spreading out their firepower. Is that not something you do in 40k? Am I missing something?

Refused flank is a pretty common tactic.

Okay, good. So it's just the games I've watched then.

For objective grabbing, etc. I've piled all of my stuff in a corner before, although it didn't work out to well.

When I play a tyranid swarm against very mobile shooters, like Tau or certain variants of (dark)eldar I sometimes spread more than what would seem neccessary, just to make it harder for my opponent to circle around me. But that's pretty rare.

As the inverse of the previous poster - when playing DE I sometimes (if going first) spread out my line as well. Partly to take advantage of available cover for my Raiders and partly so my opponent will spread out as well to 'counter' me. I then use my greater speed to swing over to one flank or the other anyway so I can fight part of his army with my whole army.

Some standard deployment tactics

Castling - deploy everything in one flank. Good for armies like space marines with few troops but good quality troops as your enemy will struggle to get enough of his weaker but numerically superior troops close to you to overwhelm you. Also a standard defence against deep strike (everything you drop I can overwhelm) and fast armies (the same principle).

Refused Flank - set up across the entire board or across a large area then turn 1 swing all your forces from one side of the board to another. Hopefully your opponent deployed in a similarly spread out fashion initially so now you have your entire army fighting half of his. Good for armies that are very fast (orks, DE, Eldar).

Ninja - don't deploy, everything enters from reserve. Good for armies that have special abilities that let their reserve forces get into the fight faster (Tau, Daemons, Drop Pod Marines, Nids)

Twin Castles - deploy in 2 corners and leave the centre completely open. Good for shooty armies and particularly numerically superior/static shooty armies with good range (so guard). your opponent either has to split his force or dedicate his force to one castle. In the first instance you concentrate your entire firepower on one side of his army which will die. The other side will eat one of your castles but then has to slog across the open middle to reach the remaining castle and gets shot down in the process. If he doesn't split his army you do the same thing, lose a castle but hopefully wipe him out with your remaining castle as he struggle across the longer board edge.

Flanks/Pincers/Hammer and Anvil - fast stuff up the side, slow stuff in the middle/on one side. The idea being that as you advance all your army hits one side of his at roughly the same time. Good for a fast numerically superior force (nids, orks).


The basic principle behind all of these strategies is to try and get all of your army fighting a small part of his. With luck being equal if you can bring a greater pts value of models to the fight than him you win and you accomplish this by deploying and manouvering in such a way that more of your force is concentrated in an area than his is.