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Grey Templar wrote:
Tanks however may "Tank shock" onto the board.

Tank shocking onto the board is somewhat dubious rules-wise.

Fetterkey wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:
Tanks however may "Tank shock" onto the board.

Tank shocking onto the board is somewhat dubious rules-wise.

I'm rereading the rules and I don't see why...

Could you please elaborate? It would seem to me that you declare where your vehicle is moving and declare a tank shock... Easy Peasy.

How to prepare for outflankers relies on your knowledge of the opposing army.

If they are stuff on foot like genestealers trying to outflank, it can be viable to do the fodder block at the very edge (Guard can block 76.6 inches of board edge using 130 points of 1 troops choice. Hardly the worst investment ever against heavy outflanker people considering just 9 genestealers cost as much, and your guard are earning their cost back if they make the stealers have to footslog where they can be shot up. This flank-blocker squad can also be used to hold an objective at the end of the game because it's got over 70" of influence. A move and a Run Run Run on final turn could win something.

In other cases, use terrain to your advantage. A big impassable piece of terrain cutting the flank-side in half lets you use half as many troops to block the flank. The opponent is forced to come on the bad side of the flank which could stop him from assaulting completely on that turn and give your army a chance to rearrange and aim the guns.

If you know the opponent has no outflanking bikers/jump packs/fleet of foot things, then it's often a good idea to set up some rapid fire or assault gun goodness 13" from the flank so that his squad runs on, takes 8 plasma gun shots to the face, then is no longer a threat.

Against faster forces, you might want to consider deploying your army away from that table edge.

If the board is like
NW______________NE
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SW||||||||||||||||||||SE

and you know he can come in from the short sides, always consider hypotheticals like how well your army would do if you deploy in the bolded area instead. (As far away from both enemy and short-side as possible.)

Then against an apathetic opponent, someone might actually let you put several pieces of terrain on that short edge such that any squad walking on has to be bunched up tightly to stay in coherency (since he can't have a guy on each separate side of the tower, etc.)
For guard with move-and-shoot ordinance like demolisher cannons, an enemy might be suicidal to outflank if he allows you to make unit-bunching terrain placements.

To the OP, if your opponent has outflankers, it is not in your best interest to allocate forces waiting for them to show up, as they might go elsewhere and waste your investment in defense. Besides closing off a boardedge except for the far end, your best bet is to simply move away from the edges.

For example, if your opponent will be outflanking a nasty CC unit that you want to protect your lootas from, deploy centrally. If you cant deploy centrally, then have 1 loota unit on one side and 1 unit on the other side. This way, he cant get both units at the same time. You can minimize the outflankers impact in this way.

Ailaros wrote:wait, why is deploying at the edges douchery? Do you think that spacing your models 2" apart to avoid casualties from blast and template weapons is being a douche? Is castling up to keep deepstrikers away from vehicles or objectives being a douche?

I fail to see how keeping some troops near the rear and flanks in order to prevent surprise mobility is a sign of poor form, it's just common sense.

Or would you have been one of those ancient generals who decided that your baggage train didn't need defending?

Deploying a unit, properly spaced, inside the board on each rear flank isn't a douche move. Nor is deploying infantry across the flanks of your armour, to get in the way of any planned assaults.

Deploying on the edge of the board so that the enemy can't deploy on the board at all through the 1" rule is a douche move. The 1" rule is there for ease of play, and nothing else.

Thing is, if you're playing WAAC tournament level stuff then by all means play by the rules as written, and exploit them to your heart's content. But don't pretend it's a perfectly reasonable strategy, or any way representative of real world defensive tactics.


Really GW should have a rule that states; "You can move onto the board within an inch of an enemy unit, and that if you do so you are deemed to have assaulted it, move the enemy models back far enough to fit all the attackers in. And please stop goofing around with the rules."

@TheBloodGod,

Thank you. Your post was very informative.

The picture is actually from the ETC, and it actually happened this year too. A foot ork player went all reserve and was blocked off the board Should think that people would stop falling for that trick.

Agreed with ailaros, blocking the sides of the board is no different from castling to lessen the impact of deep strikes. It's not douchey.

If you're up against an opponent with lots of outflankers, or one really big and scary outflanker (Al'rahem/many genestealers). It can be wise to deny a flank. Deploy your force on one flank, line that board-egde with sacrifical/blocking units and hope that you enemy rolls up the wrong side. Even if he rolls the right one, he will probably not be in the best possible position, and your entire army should be in a position to strike back after he has taken out you sacrificial units.

Another option is to deploy in the centre, against cc outflankers, this should give you at least one turn of firing before any outflankers hit your lines. The downside is that there is no wrong tableegde for your opponent to enter.

If you go second, having some killy outflankers yourself is a good counter. I played with an Al'rahem blob for a while, and my worst nightmare was going first against an eldar player. He had both a unit of scorpions and a unit of warwalkers in outflank, so when I came onto the board before him, I had to really consider that my outflankers were about to be outflanked themselves. It limited my set-up of my outflankers, and the first turn on the board was usually spent running away from the board edge

@Illumini,

Wow, good stuff. Thanks for that.

sebster wrote:Really GW should have a rule that states; "You can move onto the board within an inch of an enemy unit, and that if you do so you are deemed to have assaulted it, move the enemy models back far enough to fit all the attackers in. And please stop goofing around with the rules."

Actually no. That solution would be unnecessarily complicated. KISS principle is always the best solution. Unless you can Tank Shock, fly over or jump over the blocking enemies you are destroyed. Period. Nice and clean.

If my opponent has a conga line of troops along two table edges i can use my infiltrating/out flanking Striking Scorpions mounted in their dedicated transport WS to fly over them to enter the board?

As long as i don't finish the move on top of any minis that ok to do?

Vet Sgt Ezekiel wrote:If my opponent has a conga line of troops along two table edges i can use my infiltrating/out flanking Striking Scorpions mounted in their dedicated transport WS to fly over them to enter the board?

As long as i don't finish the move on top of any minis that ok to do?

Yes

Thanks, I was pretty sure thats ok but i wanted a second opinion.

and to note too, it's actually really hard to block off an ENTIRE board edge to prevent anyone else from outflanking on that board edge. So long as there is even a 2" gap ANYWHERE on the short board edge, they can get people on the board.

Plus, the thing I think that everyone is missing here is that these kinds of problems only affect someone who keeps basically their entire army in reserve. For everyone else, if you really want one of your particular units to arrive on a particular board edge, you can always attack the unit that's setting up the screen. Once again, a single casualty is all it takes to get your guys on the board.

Of course, deploying against the board edge causes inconvenience for the outflanker, just like castling does against a drop pod army, but the only time it will be horribly make or break is if you're bad at playing with reserves. Apart from attacking screener units at all, there have already been mentioned several things which counters the screen.

Oh, and condolences to your al'rahem, Illumini.

"Yeah! We totally just snuck up on them and... wait, weren't there supposed to be a bunch of scorpions or something here?"

A-P wrote: Actually no. That solution would be unnecessarily complicated. KISS principle is always the best solution. Unless you can Tank Shock, fly over or jump over the blocking enemies you are destroyed. Period. Nice and clean.

Unnecessarily complicated? The hell? It's one sentence, and no more complicated than your own - instead of 'is destroyed' you have 'can assault troops on the board edge'. Your suggestion promotes the stupidity that is lining guys up against the edge of the world, stopping the enemy from appearing there through the use of a rule that has no place being used for such a thing. It's a terrible, terrible idea, and the only possible reason to support it is because it helps you win games.

I suspect that in future editions of the game they will simply say you must be 3 inches away from the board edge unless falling back/arriving from reserve. They already dont let friendly units/impass. terrain within 1 inch in fantasy.

DevianID wrote:I suspect that in future editions of the game they will simply say you must be 3 inches away from the board edge unless falling back/arriving from reserve. They already dont let friendly units/impass. terrain within 1 inch in fantasy.

I doubt this will ever make it into the actual rules. I mean, apart from a few anecdotal stories, this isn't a big issue in real gameplay. The situation of "I auto-win" only occurs when all the following conditions are met:

1) Army A starts its entire force in reserves
2) Army A contains no vehicles
3) Army A contains no jump troops
4) Army A contains no units capable of flanking
5) Army A conatins no deep striking units
6) Army B contains infiltrators, and enough of them to block an entire board edge

This simply doesn't happen enough for it to be a serious issue in need of a rule.

As for blocking flanking units from appearing anywhere on the board edge, I'd consider this a valid strategy and no need for "fixing" of any kind.

Monster Rain wrote:

Fetterkey wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:
Tanks however may "Tank shock" onto the board.

Tank shocking onto the board is somewhat dubious rules-wise.

I'm rereading the rules and I don't see why...

Could you please elaborate? It would seem to me that you declare where your vehicle is moving and declare a tank shock... Easy Peasy.

Tank shock requires you to turn the model before moving, meaning you would have to position a model off the table in order to declare the tank shock. It's also unclear what happens if someone Death or Glories you, since you have to stop off the table.