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Another story thread.

What tactics or strategies have you employed to try and salvage a losing game out of sheer desperation and how did they work?

For me my lootaz are swiftly turning into a reserve assault force for the rest of my army.

In a tournament game that was going very poorly for me (capture and control) I had no troops left near my home objective whereas my opponent had an assault squad on it (BA so scoring) but I did have troops on his objective. At the beginning of turn 7 my only units eft were a mad dok, and a bike squad on his objective and some lootaz and a trukk near my own.

Now I could have used the lootaz to try and shoot the assault squad off the objective but he had a rhino with a squad inside fairly near, if he got overcharged engines he could move troops in easily. I could have used the lootaz to shoot the rhino but that would leave the assault squad scoring. Or I could assault with the lootaz putting a contesting unit on the objective. If my bikes and mad doks held I could even salvage a draw.

So I tried it and amazingly my lootaz cleared the assault squad away in one assault phase! I was drawing!
Sadly he got his over charged engines (although my biker, amazingly, lived) so a 1-0 loss.


In another recent game the result was already decided. At the bottom of turn 7 I had a squad on my objective and he had one on his. Nothing was going to change. The only units I had left were some shoot boyz (sensibly sitting on the objective) and the lootaz. the lootaz had line of sight with 3 of their number to 5 ymgarl stealers. However they also almost certainly had them in assault range. More for mischief than anything else my lootaz decided to charge to cthulu-esque mutants and much to our surprised whiped them out in the first round of combat. Never forget that lootaz charge better than a space marine assault squad albeit with poorer init and saves.

I have assaulted a sizeable chunk of Necron Warriors with a unit of two Broadsides in order to get close enough to contest an objective.
I trusted in my 2+ save.....and it worked.

A very simple thing: I consistently roll 5+" on the first fleet move of my outflanking genestealers. I suppose it is bad for my tactical sense or some such thing. But it's wonderful each time it happens.

I allowed a full unit of hormagaunts and a unit at half strength to attack my Crisis HQ with two bodyguards and two shield drones since I knew I couldn't shoot them all and they were out of synapse range. I made all 15 armor saves and proceeded to route and catch/kill both units. Who says tau suck in melee combat?

I fired an Assault cannon at a Battlewagon hoping to simply stun it so it wouldn't steam-roller me with its deathrolla. I got all hits, all rends, and all but 1 penetrated. It exploded in a spectacular fashion, much to my surprise! The nobs inside didn't suffer any wounds, but at least that deffrolla didn't flatten my entire tac squad!

I had a full group of fire warriors 10 inches from my already reduced Power Armour Grey Knights, the front rank was in Rapid Fire range and the pure volume of fire would have whiped the remaining troops off the map. I shrugged, and then my opponent reminded me to roll for the Shrouding. I said there wasn't much point since I needed three ones, but did so anyway...and got three ones. There was stunned silence for about ten seconds after.

Charging a unit of chaos terminators with a squad of fire warriors, took down a termie and the little guys held the termis for a round until the big guns couls get a shot.

Wiped them off the map, my opponents face was amazing when i declared a charge

going all-reserve with my land raider spam space wolves vs tank spam IG that fully deployed.

(killpoints primary, 3 objectives secondary)

Wolf Scouts armed with meltabombs scared him to move up more than 12" from his deployment edge, none of my reserves came in on my turn 2, so his turn 3 was spent still doing mostly nothing, he moved a couple of scoring chimeras to a position where they could move 12" on to the center objective, and to the objective in his deployment zone.
my turn 3 everything came on, rolled a godhammer land raider onto my objective behind some cover, rolled the others full speed forward 12" at the objectives and popped smoke. Scouts ran in and did nothing because he was over 12" from the edge.
his turn 4 he finally has something to shoot at, so he nuked the scouts to oblivion, and failed to scratch any of the land raiders.
my turn 4 I moved up another 12"
his turn 5 he wrecked one land raider (out of 4) and killed the guys inside, he now has 4 kill points and has 2/3 objectives, I have 0 killpoints and 1/3 objectives.
my turn 5 i move the remaining 2 land raiders up, disembark the units inside, land raider firepower cracks both his chimeras, my units double and triple assault into his tanks/troops and kill everything on both his objectives.

The game ends on turn 5 with me at 8 killpoints, him at 4, me with 3/3 objectives. another turn would have seen another 2 killpoints for me, and he may have cleared one objective of my guys, earning 3 killpoints (he had no more scoring units though, so I would have still primary and secondary, just not by such a large margin.

in the end he had 2 turns of shooting, one of which involved me having all smoked land raiders, the one turn that he could actually have an effect on my army was too little too late, with me being right next to him with an entire army of assaulty units.

I had a trio of Necron Destroyers assault a squad of Marines so they would not be able to move up and contest an objective.

I tankshocked Necron Heavy Destoryer squad off the board to cause Phase Out. Won me the Tournament.

Tank shocked 3 space marine squads on the last turn of an annihilation mission. First unit passed, but lost a guy to a failed Death or Glory attempt with a melta gun, so the unit took 25% casualties.

Second unit passed.

Third unit failed.

At the end of the movement phase, the unit that lost the guy due to death or glory failed their morale check for 25% casualties, and they fell back too.

Game ends, units that are still falling back count as destroyed, the two KPs put me over the top for a win. My first win ever with my Eldar vs. my friend's White Scars.

How about times where what seems like a sure thing fails you utterly? Had two Necron Warriors sitting on an objective. Guard player Assaults them with Three squads of Guardsmen. They completely biff their rolls, the Warriors kill One Guardsman, and two of the three squads break and run.

once used 2 rhinos to tank shock things to death. They killed a bezerker and a chaos terminator due to death or glory. Not much but I think it was worth it because they had nothing inside them.

I fired a lascannon shot from my dreadnought at a monolith. I was expecting to just assault it, but I fired the lascannon instead of running that turn. Cue the monolith exploding on the 2nd turn of the game.

I was in a big 2v2 objectives game. I had a looted wagon with a boomgun that got it's gun blown off first turn. I sent my big mek (who I attach to my lootas so they can get a bosspole) out after it. He chases it down as it keeps rolling the "don't push dat!" roll of a 1, causing it to move 12". Big Mek finally catches it, and on turn 6 it's finally fixed. It fires one shot, and blows up a chimera. The chimera was blocking the line of fire to squad of 3 enemy guardsmen sitting on the objective. My buddy's Maugan Ra then had a clear shot at the 3 guardsmen, and gunned them down. While this wasn't a particularly terrible tactic; taking a looted wagon as a whole is a little suspect, and the Big Mek was chasing it as a joke for the most part.

Brother SRM wrote:I was in a big 2v2 objectives game. I had a looted wagon with a boomgun that got it's gun blown off first turn. I sent my big mek (who I attach to my lootas so they can get a bosspole) out after it. He chases it down as it keeps rolling the "don't push dat!" roll of a 1, causing it to move 12". Big Mek finally catches it, and on turn 6 it's finally fixed. It fires one shot, and blows up a chimera. The chimera was blocking the line of fire to squad of 3 enemy guardsmen sitting on the objective. My buddy's Maugan Ra then had a clear shot at the 3 guardsmen, and gunned them down. While this wasn't a particularly terrible tactic; taking a looted wagon as a whole is a little suspect, and the Big Mek was chasing it as a joke for the most part.

OK, this visual of the Boom Wagon running away from the big mek made for LOLs. Guess they didn't know how to put it into reverse.

Brother SRM wrote:I fired a lascannon shot from my dreadnought at a monolith. I was expecting to just assault it, but I fired the lascannon instead of running that turn. Cue the monolith exploding on the 2nd turn of the game.

I was in a big 2v2 objectives game. I had a looted wagon with a boomgun that got it's gun blown off first turn. I sent my big mek (who I attach to my lootas so they can get a bosspole) out after it. He chases it down as it keeps rolling the "don't push dat!" roll of a 1, causing it to move 12". Big Mek finally catches it, and on turn 6 it's finally fixed. It fires one shot, and blows up a chimera. The chimera was blocking the line of fire to squad of 3 enemy guardsmen sitting on the objective. My buddy's Maugan Ra then had a clear shot at the 3 guardsmen, and gunned them down. While this wasn't a particularly terrible tactic; taking a looted wagon as a whole is a little suspect, and the Big Mek was chasing it as a joke for the most part.

heh that last one is hysterical.

"stop trying to fix it!"

"mebbe if we press dis button" ZOOM

"stop pressing stuff I'm comin ta fix it!"

"s'okay boss we got dis" ZOOM

"leave it the alone!"

"hey I think I gots it!" ZOOM

" "

I think I put this story up some time ago in a similar thread, but it's always nice for me to type it up again.

A brood of 10 hormagaunts (4th ed codex) got shot up. 1 survived (out of synapse). He then passed his IB roll and proceeded to charge a squad of IG in cover. IG player then fluffed his attacks and I had to make 1 save. Passed. With return attacks I killed 1 guardsman, whose squad promptly failed their LD check and got run down by the little guy. I like to think he got promoted to Hive Tyrant after that encounter (he also survived the battle).

I had to DS a 5x Stormtrooper unit with 2x meltas to get rid of an Oblit as the rest of my army wasn't in a position to shoot it. It worked and then a Lash sorcerer broke off from his unit to get rid of them. 2x rounds of combat later the Lash sorcerer was dead and had taken only 1 stormtrooper with him.

Aduro wrote:How about times where what seems like a sure thing fails you utterly? Had two Necron Warriors sitting on an objective. Guard player Assaults them with Three squads of Guardsmen. They completely biff their rolls, the Warriors kill One Guardsman, and two of the three squads break and run.

Reminds me of the good ol' days when that's sort of how Necrons were imagined to be fielded. You usu. 'discovered' a small group of them and they and a handful of scarabs tore stuff up. They weren't so much an army as a cool scenario force to play against. How long can your Imperial guard platoon hold out? sort of thing

OK this one is a warmachine post but this is general not 40k so i think im safe.
i once chose to slam and knock down a warjack rather than wreck it to get at my target behind it.
the knocked down jack didnt grant my target a defense bonus but a wreck would have. its a bit counter-intuitive to leave the opponent alive and not just kill his model when you can.