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I play IG and I keep going back and forth on whether I want to try to bring an advisor to affect reserve rolls for myself or my opponent. I am hoping you guys can slap some sense into me here and that Im just over thinking this.

I would say I generally have 4 or 5 units in reserves in the 2k point games we play. My regular opponents use a similar amount but theirs are generally going to be drop pods or deep striking terminators / obliterators / demons that sort of thing.

[+1 to my reserve roll]
Pros: My units get on the board more quickly and if I outflank I can reroll if necessary. Less likely to "trickle" my army onto the board.

Cons: The units that I reserve are general reactionary units that I am either keeping out for their safety (vendettas) or that im going to deep strike to try and counter my opponents moves (storm troopers with plasma, etc). If I bring my units on more quickly I am less likely to have his units on the board (his reserves that im reacting to) or out of their transports (troops in rhinos etc). If my stuff comes on too early I lose my A HA!

[-1 to his reserve roll]
Pros: Better chance of his units trickling onto the board. Gives me more time to attempt to deal with stuff he deploys and to take on his army piecemeal.

Cons: Less time for me to deal with his beefy units hell be dropping. Lets him better react to my deployment and take advantage of late game stuff (i.e. its turn 4 or 5 and nobody has managed to get over to this point yet ill just drop my pod on it and grab and easy point). Less chance of me getting the drop on him.

I just cant decide whether its a good idea or not.

If anybody has any thoughts id love to hear them. Ive never seen anybody talk about the advisors in a negative light before so maybe im just crazy and thinking about it too hard.

Thanks.

Well with -1 reserve roll it decreases his how you say "trickiling" because his units stay in reserves longer. This is a good thing as they have less time to kill things but you are likly going to fight the majority of his force in the late turns of the game all at once. However it also increases the chance of something staying in reserves the entire game giving you a free kp.

I say affecting his units. I play with drop pods. if i drop pod on IG. I will win every time.

vagorin wrote:I say affecting his units. I play with drop pods. if i drop pod on IG. I will win every time.

That's funny... and no where near the truth.

If IG uses an =I=, all deep striking armies die as soon as they hit the table...

When IG doesn't use an =I=, they start in reserve against drop pods and burn the enemy as their forces come in from reserves, without the enemy getting to shoot back...

Honestly, when ran by a decent (not even a great) player, IG is the WORST army to ever use drop pods against...IG has easy counters for all deep strike lists.

@OP
Always get the OotF if you have the points; you never know when you will be facing a reserves list. Also, if you ever plan on using reserves/outflankers get the Astro; he will make your life alot easier. I personally run both in all my lists 1500 points or higher.

I've decided to not use DH allies until they update the codex... if they keep it around, then ill use them. If not... I try to just stick to the IG codex. (Mainly this is just because I got sick of hearing my brother complain).

I tried the all-in-reserve approach to my brothers drop podding last night in a dawn of war annihilation game but got destroyed. All my stuff came in piece meal and it worked out horribly.

I take full credit for the reserve screw up... I still just havent figured out a good counter for an aggressive drop pod force.

I haven't tried it yet, but counters to assault are power weapons on sgts and commissars. Drop pod shooting armys should be countered by spacing out troops to avoid flamers and shooting them up. Allies will be removed from any new codex. They got rid of them in the rest of the armys they will get rid of it for them as wel.

I like astropath better than the OotF. Many opponents keep soft, scoring units in reserve, so the OotF will just help them. Others have fast armies, or can deepstrike where they want, and can do late-game objective grabs much better than IG, again, the OotF helps your opponent. IMO, his pay-offs are too small in comparisson with the downsides + price.

I like the astropath most for the re-roll outflank, the +1 to reserves is not always awesome (like if I want my outflankers to enter after my opponents outflankers). I do bring him in my current list because of the side re-roll ability

The modifiers to reserves are a double-edged sword, especially the one that gives your opponent a negative.

This is doubly true against a fast, mobility-oriented force. When I face a list that has that guy in it, I drool. I run a highly mobile army, and the later my army comes onto the board, the better. I can use my final turn to turbo-boost my bikers, deepstrike my Terminators or Assault Squads, or send my Speeders flat-out into you. I've only got to weather a turnor two of shooting, which typically won't evaporate these late-game contesting or attacking units.
Folks don't typically place things in reserve that can't do something special when coming onto the board late. So, the later you place them into the game, the better it is for the opponent. Be careful with the negative modifiers.

Let me point out the flip sidee of all those that say the OotF is bad. He is one of the best 30 points you can spend, if you know how to prepare fore reserves lists.

He keeps people's units off the table longer...that is the point.

As for late game objective grabs by opposing units, the IG player has had 3-5 turns to get into position before they arrive. With the porper list build, deployment and movement, there should be little concern over late turn objective grabs, because the IG player should have units blocking the objective and/or units inposition that are cacaple of destroying such contestors with only 1 round of shooting.

The OotF punishes reserve Mechdar, bikes, etc, because their units trickle in and die to the firepower of your whole army on turns 2-3, then they don't have enough units to come in full force in turn 4-5. By placing your tanks/vends/valks in the right place you negate their ability to tank shock you off the objectives, and you can use your vehicles to disallow bikes/etc from getting within 3" of the objectives.

So, again, with proper list building and play, any negatives that come from using the OotF can be mitigated

I played around with both of them when the codex came out. As the OP has already pointed out, the biggest problem with both of them is that the use of either (or both) tends to lead to the arrival of IG counter-attack elements before the enemy shows up. Allowing the enemy to Drop Pod or Deep Strike next to the IG counter-attack elements and destroy them before you get a chance to use them.

Illumini wrote:I like astropath better than the OotF. Many opponents keep soft, scoring units in reserve, so the OotF will just help them. Others have fast armies, or can deepstrike where they want, and can do late-game objective grabs much better than IG, again, the OotF helps your opponent. IMO, his pay-offs are too small in comparisson with the downsides + price.

I like the astropath most for the re-roll outflank, the +1 to reserves is not always awesome (like if I want my outflankers to enter after my opponents outflankers). I do bring him in my current list because of the side re-roll ability

Wanted to address this point:

There are three kinds of reserves:

1. Reserves your opponent keeps out of play so that you can't kill them as a safety precaution.
2. Reserves caused by the army being built around them (daemons, drop pod armies, BA)
3. Reserves kept in reserve as reactionary forces to attempt to impact the game later via outflank/deepstrike/etc.

OotF works best when you have serious firepower - a gunline. You have enough hellish firepower to throw down range that you can annihilate a good bit of the enemy army in any given shooting phase. The OotF gives you a significant advantages in scenario 1 and 2. A mechdar player who fully reserves his army so that he'll get to shoot first is now going to get fewer units onto the table - and he'll either turbo-boost or engage you at full range....hopefully have you hydras. Daemon and drop pod armies are going to be forced to engage you with half their army - literally 1000 points vs. 2000 points; the damage they cause will be returned two-fold by your own army, and their reserves are going to suffer, meaning that you'll kill more stuff more quickly.

Getting to kill a piece of the enemy with your whole army is GREAT! I love when my enemies reserve parts of their army (or even the whole thing) because it means I've got less shooting at me, and less I need to worry about killing every turn.

With type 1 reserves, the OotF can be harmfull too. Say you are playing against eldar, and your opponent has one 3-man jetbike unit in reserve. Loosing that one unit does nothing to impact his damage potential, but if it comes on late, it may grab an objective and win your opponent the game. This is especially true if he went second, where a situation may occur where you won't get a single round of fire at the jetbikes.

Also, many armies doesn't have the resilience to weather 5-7 turns of IG firepower, but those armies might be able to weather 2-3 turn, and still have enough left to take the objectives.


There are also situations where OotF is harmful with type 2 reserves. Say a deamon army get's his first wave with all the big hitters, they keep the IG army busy, and the OotF makes sure that the IG player won't get enough rounds to wipe out the troops.


While delaying enemy reserves might preserve your army and allow you to take out bits at a time, it may also make it more likely that the opponents key units are in position to take or contest objectives, loosing or drawing the game

IMO, there are too many situations were the OotF helps you opponent to justify using him.

Illumini wrote:With type 1 reserves, the OotF can be harmfull too. Say you are playing against eldar, and your opponent has one 3-man jetbike unit in reserve. Loosing that one unit does nothing to impact his damage potential, but if it comes on late, it may grab an objective and win your opponent the game. This is especially true if he went second, where a situation may occur where you won't get a single round of fire at the jetbikes.

Also, many armies doesn't have the resilience to weather 5-7 turns of IG firepower, but those armies might be able to weather 2-3 turn, and still have enough left to take the objectives.


There are also situations where OotF is harmful with type 2 reserves. Say a deamon army get's his first wave with all the big hitters, they keep the IG army busy, and the OotF makes sure that the IG player won't get enough rounds to wipe out the troops.


While delaying enemy reserves might preserve your army and allow you to take out bits at a time, it may also make it more likely that the opponents key units are in position to take or contest objectives, loosing or drawing the game

IMO, there are too many situations were the OotF helps you opponent to justify using him.

See my above post as to how IG can make sure that it is impossible for the opponents reserves to contest objectives in the late game with proper placement and movement...

IG has large enough vehicles/number of vehicles to form a blockade that keeps opposing units more that 3" from objectives. This eliminates late game grabbing, and forces the opponent to destroy the IG before they can contest...with only 1-2 turns to do so.

In the hands of a good general there are almost no negatives to using the OotF, and those few negatives are easily mitigated

If you play against a good general with a good list as well, blocking off those objectives will be very hard. In my example above, you are playing against 95% of your opponents list, so he reserves do not impact his ability to take on your forces. In a seize ground mission, there will likely be some objectives your opponent can grab with his reserves, in a KP mission, he is denying you his easiest KP's and in a capture and control mission, reserved scoring units can often easily force a draw

Get master of ordnance...

My buddy uses the officer of the fleet frequently, I can see him being useful against outflankers who can't improve their own reserve rolls, but it can also backfire.

I sometimes run a double autarch list, giving me an optional +0, +1, or +2 blanket modifier to my reserve rolls. One time, against him, I started completely in reserve, naturally, because he won first turn with a with a list tailored to shoot down my skimmers. He placed his own vendettas in reserve, as well as a couple Leman russes, so my fire dragons wouldn't have anything worth shooting before their tanks got shot down. Turn 2 half his stuff came in, and when I rolled for MY reserves, after his OotF's modifier, only a few units would have come in if I added any bonus to my rolls from the autarchs. So I added +0, making nothing come in at all. Turn three, all his stuff came in, then, despite his Ootf, i was able to add the +2 to my reserves and made everyhting arrive on a 2+, with all his units already set up.