Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

diesel7270 wrote:Well, as mobile of an army as Eldar surely are, what is the point of, say, trying to close the gap with Striking Scorpions or Howling banshees in a wave serpent, if they can't assault as soon as they dismount? They just stand there with their johnson in their hand for a shooting and assault phase. If someone knows that they're going to lose the valuable squad that the Eldar are standing next to if allowed to live through their next turn, they're probably going to do everything they can to kill most of them. Sure, it is distracting at the least, but it's like handing your opponet free KPs or VPs.

If the transport hasn't moved when the unit inside disembarks, then the unit can still move and assault after getting out. So you don't drive up and disgorge an assault unit, you drive up and pop smoke so they still have protection. Next turn, they get out, move, and assault. No johnsons hanging in the wind this way. You do run the risk of getting encircled and destroyed, but that would only be to an army with enough MOBILITY. (see what I did there?)

diesel7270 wrote:I have seen few dynamic results of transport vehicles, fast attack, outflank, scout, infiltrate, and deep strike. In a game where most units can shoot at least half-way across the board, and when Outflank is random, Deep Strike messes up more often than not (and you can't assault after), you can't move or assault after you dismount a vehicle, bikes take dangerous terrain tests on any terrain, vehicles could get immobilized on any terrain ...it just seems counter-productive. Let me explain why I think this.

No one said that mobility was without price. Also, deep strike messes up more often than not if you're doing it wrong. I deep strike melta storm troopers and I'd say a good 75% of the time the spot I land in suits my purposes BEFORE the reroll. As far as dismounting and terrain, those are situation that are avoidable and often times knowing when to do so is the strategy part of using them.

Deep Strike: The only reason you'd probably want this is to be able to shoot an enemy for one shooting phase, providing you don't appear in impassable terrain or enemies (or board edges)... which can happen, often. So you get your shots off with them and are immediately creamed by the 6 enemy units you just teleported next to.

I deep struck a full 10 man squad of vanilla assault marines. It let me get 3/4ths the way across the board to a static gunline IG without worrying about their basilisks. By having my long range stuff shake the basilisks, I didn't have to worry about them shooting either. I only had to stun them one turn for the deep strike vs needing to preoccupy them the 2-3 turns it would have taken to move the troops there across the board. Also, suicide deep strike units are worth their weight in gold if you use them right. I enjoy stopping that Crusader BEFORE it gets over to my squishies. DS lets me do that.

Scout: This is less useless than most, but if you've got snipers or other units that reach all the way across the board, then chances are one of the pieces of terrain in your deployment zone will work just fine.

Scout is nice because it let's you outflank. It also lets you get a theoretical first turn assault. I'm not sure what more could really be said at this point.

Infiltrate: Same as Scout, except I've almost NEVER seen a squad be able to get within 12" and not bee seen. And even so, they have to move out of there to shoot, and will probably be immediately shot at and destroyed before any more infantry can advance to support.

The most I typically get out of infiltrate is the ability to outflank, though it could be nice for setting up heavy weapons turn one.

Outflank: Unless you're playing a game mode like Dawn of War, this is almost pointless. Come out of reserves on a random table side. Early in the game it means that they will get a shot off, and then be attacked mercilessly immediately after. Late in the game, everyone's packed into the center of the board so an initiative isn't really gained here.

Outflanking is awesome. If you think you like it in DoW, think about how awesome I can be in spearhead? You get to chase behind them right on the edge of their deployment zone! We're talking move/shoot/assault too. What armies do you normally play?

Fast Attack (Jetbikes) usually have great weapons and MEQ armor saves. Which means you turbo-boosted to the enemy just to sit there and wait for a response, or you came in for a couple of shots and then get wiped out by AP4/3 or power weapons. If you go into cover to prevent this, you've got to take dangerous terrain tests. When you get there, and when you leave. Which is great (sarcasm) for a unit that costs so much more due it's mobility. And sometimes you don't even need the mobility. Necron Destroyers, for instance, have long range, high power weapons. So what's the point of a 12" move, if you can hit them right off of the deployment? Half them time I end up deploying them in difficult terrain for the cover save, and never move them again so I don't have to take dangerous terrain tests.

Or you just turbo-boosted to land on the objective 36" away. Plus, turbo-boosting should already give you a cover save, I'm pretty sure, so moving into cover shouldn't protect you from the AP4/3 anymore than you are already. I'm starting to believe you play Eldar. I recommend a fortune before you go taking off to do anything risky just to drive home how hard to kill you could be. Play with more terrain too. You should be able to squeeze out a cover save from methods other than entering terrain as well.

Transport: Either your non-fast Razorback costs less than a decent walker, and gets dropped by a good roll from a Strength 5 weapon, or you pay 360 points for a monster Land Raider that would be better suited at being a twin-linked flamestorm cannon with a AV14 than a transport (with the exception of the "assault vehicle" rules, which are the one thing that's ever made transport really worth it). Transports can rarely hold a full-sized squad of what you really want, and then again, you dismount, get a set of shots off, and are immediately vaporized by anti-infantry fire.

That's the tradeoff. Vehicles are hard to kill and easy to kill, all at the same time. Also, if a S5 weapon is killing a Razorback, then the Razorback's getting hit from the rear by it. The funny thing about this whole thing is that the only way I can picture that happening is through the use of outflank or deep strike. Also, Razorbacks are the only transport I can think of that DOESN'T hold a full sized squad of what I really want, although, now that you mention it, I could go for a transport capacity 31 Chimera for my power blobs. Assault ramps or GTFO though.

The act of flanking itself seems kindof pointless to me. Instead, movement seems to me to be largely focused around getting into cover, moving into or out of firing range, or into or away from probable assaults. A turn of movement and running will put most units on the board in range and sight of almost everyone else. So I really don't see the point in using fast-movers to flank around enemy targets to hit units on the side of the board when they would do it just fine somewhere around the center.

Flanking can be really awesome if done right. Get a bassie in each corner sufficiently hidden from direct fire. All of a sudden, the enemy now needs to either divide his forces while you can hit him anywhere, or waste time concentrating on one while getting that much further away from the other.

If the transport hasn't moved when the unit inside disembarks, then the unit can still move and assault after getting out. So you don't drive up and disgorge an assault unit, you drive up and pop smoke so they still have protection. Next turn, they get out, move, and assault. No johnsons hanging in the wind this way. You do run the risk of getting encircled and destroyed, but that would only be to an army with enough MOBILITY. (see what I did there?)

To the question of "Is moobolity worth it?", the answer is a resounding "YES!"

Mobility IS the game. Here is why:

2 out of 3 games are about objectives, not KPs....you need to move to take objectives.

Mech is king, atm, and most vehicles have lower side/rear AVs, meaning that side/rear shots are more effective.

Mobility allows you to choose where/when firefights and assaults occur, rather than allowing your opponent to fight on his terms.

Mobility forces your opponent to react, rather than act, thus allowing you to control the flow of the game.

diesel7270 wrote:I'm not sure. I mean, frankly, I play mostly Necrons and they're not the most mobile race, but I am getting into Eldar and wondering what is a cost effective use of points.

This is what I see in my mind, in a relatively full board of say, a 1750 point match:

If I were to place a decent shooter unit of, say, Tactical Marines in a rubble pile right against the deployment limit, then on my first turn I could move 6" forward and engage with Rapid Fire any jump infantry, bikes, or the like that approach. Otherwise I'd stay in cover. But if I were to get those shots off, which in the middle of the board would cover quite a bit of it, and seriously cripple the bike squad (or anything else with an armor save that approached), then not only may I have destroyed as much or more points than my tactical marine squad is worth, but I would have been able to do it in the first turn without wasting the points to buy a transport to perhaps get it to somewhat tastier (but all equally worth points) non-vehicles, and then risk losing two kill points with my squad and my vehicle in the returning fire.

In the same token I can move and run an assault squad in the first turn, then move and assault in the second instead of waiting a turn outside the door of a parked transport that I paid 180 points for. I could have bought another squad that would at least be able to kill more things if the opportunity presented itself.

Sure, I may have had more options with more range, but at the points cost, perhaps I would have been better off just buying offensive armor. Or more infantry. More bang for my buck.

I'm beginning to see from you guys' point of view that I at least need to experiment with it more before I make up my mind, but I am by no means convinced that mobility is worth it.

I think the problem is that there are very few single units of decent shooters that you can use in your aforementioned senario, that a more mobile opponent won't avoid. And remember that move+rapid fire only gives you 18" of range. And a TAC squad of rapid firing bolters and a special weapon is not a decent shooter against many targets.

Oh, another thing to remember is that mobility is constrained by two factors - time and space. Your opponent may be highly mobile, but it doesn't matter if they're faster if there's no where to run to, and it doesn't matter how far they can move in a single turn if they only have a single turn to move in.

That said, mobility is still useful for exploiting weaknesses and for achieving local killing power superiority. Otherwise, you have no choice but to get into a grinding battle of attrition, which may not be your style.

Once you have played games with highly mobile units, and adapted to use the advantages of such an army well you will see the pros and cons a lot more clearly.

Outflanking genestealers? This will more than likely keep your opponent from parking infantry within 13" of the sides.

Outflank a baal predator with a flamestorm cannon to burn or tank shock a unit off an objective in the late game?

Using shrike to infiltrate a unit of fleet TH/SS terminators to right in reach out and touch someone range?

Mobility of any sort gives you options, which in turn make your army more adaptable. Being more adaptable means you can handle the unexpected better. Not to say a low mobility force is not good, but it's a form of limitation you need to be aware of while you play.

Mobility is sort of a red herring.

People in this thread are talking about transports protecting squads, outflanking, or infiltrating. That's not mobility.

An outflanking unit isn't extra mobile, it just gets to start somewhere else. And that somewhere else was a complete mystery to both armies before it happens. Genestealers are not more mobile than anything else (without Fleet). It would only be extra mobility if you got to remove them from the board, then have them come in from the side.

Mobility, as a concept, only applies to moving one unit from where it is in play to somewhere else.

Outflanking isn't a "complete mystery" to both players: there's a 67% chance that it comes out on the side you want it (but your opponent probably doesn't know which side that is). And that's if you're not playing guard with an astropath in the command squad, where it's around an 89% chance of appearing where you want it. And that only applies if you only want it on one particular flank, and can't find a use for it on the other...

And it is an example of mobility for the army as a whole, if not for individual units. It means you can put a unit where you normally wouldn't be able to get anything. Counting its entrance position as compared to a theoretical movement from your deployment zone, it's extremely mobile on the turn it enters.

Heh, never really considered scouting a chimera with my Storm troopers. I'd discarded it at first since it doesn't really bring anything to the table but on the topic of mobility it could make for a nice little hit and run.

I used to play a very static gunline, I know the advantages and disadvantages of sitting back. You'll be able to bring nearly every heavy weapon in your army to bare. The downside is if you don't deploy right any opponent worth his salt will make piece meal out of you. If you outright refuse to move then you need to have a serious look at your formation. Fast armies like eldar can run rings around you if your not careful. Make sure your forces arn't spread out too thinly. The best way is to deploy in a classic refused flank formation which consists of picking a corner and making your force into a triangle. This prevents you from having any vulnerable flanks. The downside is if things get messy, theres no where to run and it will limit your options for taking objectives. In KP missions though you can simply sit tight and pop them while staying relatively safe in your corner.

On the other hand theres tactics which you can use with very little mobility in an aggressive manor. I tried enveloping which doesn't really work in 40k. Or at least not for me but a good flank works wonders. From your force, select the units you want to push up and send them up on either the left or the right. They need plenty of support. You want to use it to force the enemy down the opposite side of the board. Adding demolishers for meqs or hellhounds can work wonders. Once the enemy is close enough to your main line, bring you flank into them from the side. You can now move around to negate cover, get the rear units which were not a viable target before and also cut them off from their deployment zone. Your opponent doesn't always see this coming either even though its as clear as day. A fair few times they thought I was going straight to their deployment zone to either grab an objective or to wipe a fire base out.

40Ks a hard game without mobility unless you adapt to turn it from a weakness into a strength. Formation and deployment are much more important since you can't correct your mistakes in the movement phase as quickly. If you can master that you can start to adopt little ruses and traps in your formations which your opponent can't see. A good example would be Guards killzones in the 4th ed. Making sure the infantry lines were a certain distance apart so when the first line got assaulted, the next line couldn't be charged. I've seen this used with mortars and snipers to pin the assualting unit which was a nice little play on things....it didnt work nine times out of ten but it looked the part lol.

40k is a game of maneuvers. Mobility improves maneuvers. Therefore mobility wins most games, counter productive or not.

Yuber wrote:40k is a game of maneuvers. Mobility improves maneuvers. Therefore mobility wins most games, counter productive or not.

Not nessesarily. As Ailaros said, mobility relies on time and space. A stationary player in a solid formation can give you all the time and space you want. What they won't give you is the time or the space to get close enough to launch an effective attack. Either you mess around flying about up and down the board all game or you charge into what will simply be a meat grinder. Armies that can do this well are tau and guard. They Have the range to sit back. Guard imparticular can pull this off well in 5th ed. Either sit back and try outshoot them which is a big no no, or you can charge and try your luck with 50 man blobbed sqauds with power weapons. Not to mention what will happen if theres demolishers in the formation.

Deceiver wrote:

Yuber wrote:40k is a game of maneuvers. Mobility improves maneuvers. Therefore mobility wins most games, counter productive or not.

Not nessesarily. As Ailaros said, mobility relies on time and space. A stationary player in a solid formation can give you all the time and space you want. What they won't give you is the time or the space to get close enough to launch an effective attack. Either you mess around flying about up and down the board all game or you charge into what will simply be a meat grinder. Armies that can do this well are tau and guard. They Have the range to sit back. Guard imparticular can pull this off well in 5th ed. Either sit back and try outshoot them which is a big no no, or you can charge and try your luck with 50 man blobbed sqauds with power weapons. Not to mention what will happen if theres demolishers in the formation.

A stationary player will not grab objectives in my zone if he doesn't have proper mobility to reach it. Mobility is not an army theme. It is an important aspect of an army.

True, a KP game is only a third of gameplay. Most armies still have some sort of mobility. I remember a lad who sat back and barraged with Bassies all game against a marine player. He put his objectives to one side behind his lines and the marine player had them just in front of his own deployment line in some ruins on either side of the battle field. At turn four he got a valk with some vet's from reserves and proceeded to take an objective which was previously held by devastators and a tact squad. I did ask what he'd have done if the valk arrived too early. He just said it can't. If it did he'd concentrate all the barrage onto one objective. I'd thought about it myself but I don't like the artillery options =/

Anyway back to the point. Your right, an army does need some form of mobility in objective missions to contest and grab objectives but it's possible to win even without doing that. You can deny a player his objective with long ranged fire power like the artillery and get their units to 50% strength. Depending on how many objectives there are and who gets first placement can determine how this would work. If you place the first of three and make sure you can defend the ones you place its an auto win. If theres 2 objectives each, defend yours and deny one of theirs. Or if they have two and you have one then it's going to be a difficult game. It is possible but I can't imagine trying to play like that. I play a gunline but always keep chimeras on the line to grab the objectives once I either clear them or the games coming to a close and I need to contest them. I think cover blocking LOS would really determine the effectiveness of this kind of tactic...Sounds like a boring game though -.-

Last game I had a unit of sentinels with hks come on behind my enemy (spearhead deployment) and trash a falcon with bright lance that was carrying dire avengers, which were my opponents spare scoring unit for the last objective. Then they got charged by harlequins (which he had left behind as a guard precisely because of my outflankers, otherwise they would have been making Xena noises as they leapt up the field towards my infantry) and actually beat the harlequins off and made them flee the table. This 150 point mobile unit destroyed over 500pts worth of pansies and won me the game.

I like mobility.

Deceiver wrote:True, a KP game is only a third of gameplay. Most armies still have some sort of mobility. I remember a lad who sat back and barraged with Bassies all game against a marine player. He put his objectives to one side behind his lines and the marine player had them just in front of his own deployment line in some ruins on either side of the battle field. At turn four he got a valk with some vet's from reserves and proceeded to take an objective which was previously held by devastators and a tact squad. I did ask what he'd have done if the valk arrived too early. He just said it can't. If it did he'd concentrate all the barrage onto one objective. I'd thought about it myself but I don't like the artillery options =/

Anyway back to the point. Your right, an army does need some form of mobility in objective missions to contest and grab objectives but it's possible to win even without doing that. You can deny a player his objective with long ranged fire power like the artillery and get their units to 50% strength. Depending on how many objectives there are and who gets first placement can determine how this would work. If you place the first of three and make sure you can defend the ones you place its an auto win. If theres 2 objectives each, defend yours and deny one of theirs. Or if they have two and you have one then it's going to be a difficult game. It is possible but I can't imagine trying to play like that. I play a gunline but always keep chimeras on the line to grab the objectives once I either clear them or the games coming to a close and I need to contest them. I think cover blocking LOS would really determine the effectiveness of this kind of tactic...Sounds like a boring game though -.-

Uhh, he brought a valk? That's mobility right there.

Deceiver wrote:As Ailaros said, mobility relies on time and space. A stationary player in a solid formation can give you all the time and space you want. What they won't give you is the time or the space to get close enough to launch an effective attack. Either you mess around flying about up and down the board all game or you charge into what will simply be a meat grinder.

Right, this is the liability of mobility. You spend all these points to make it so that you can have local power superiority, and your opponent just cancels this by keeping their forces cohesive.

That said...

Yuber wrote:A stationary player will not grab objectives in my zone if he doesn't have proper mobility to reach it. Mobility is not an army theme. It is an important aspect of an army.

You simply can't keep your forces 100% cohesive and win seize ground missions, end of. Likewise, capture and control is much harder to win if keeping total cohesiveness is the goal. Forces will invariably split, and mobility allows a player to capitalize on this necessity.

What about KP, I hear you ask?

Deceiver wrote:True, a KP game is only a third of gameplay.

Which gets me back to my original point: close range killing power is much better than long range killing power. KP games are dominated by armies that offer few KP and are good close-in (so like blood angels, for example). The best killing power in the game comes with the caveat that you need to be mobile enough to get it in range.

If you bring purely close-range stuff, with no special forms of mobility, extra-fast armies like DE and BA can always stay out of harm's way on KP games. As such, you either need to have units to be extra mobile to bring he short range carnage, or you need worse guns that can hit their targets relatively poorly, but can hit them at all.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it is way easy for people to overestimate the power of mobility (and, in 5th ed, screw up relative mobility - mech lists are only barely more mobile than foot lists now, for example), but at the same time, the only games you're winning without mobility are KP games against opponents who only bring long-range shooting. Basing an army around only one type of mission against an opponent whose list-building skills are now a rules edition out of date sounds like a bad idea to me.

An example of mobility from my game today.

My Orks versus opponents Space Marines, Spearhead deployment, 1 objective in each deployment zone. I have second turn.

I lost most of my transports in the first 2 turns, but I had two units which won the game for me. First, a Trukk with 12 Boyz and a Nob in it. The second, a unit of 2 Deffkoptas held in true reserve.

While I created a large melee in the center of the table, my Trukk, which is a fast vehicle, spent 2 turns moving flat out along my table edge to get towards my opponents objective. My unit of Deffkoptas came on from true reserve and turbo-boosted ~15" from his objective, where he had Scouts holding it.

When my opponent saw this play, he pulled back a Tactical squad to reinforce his objective, but in the end, my Boyz were able to charge his tactical squad, and my Koptas charged his 5 Scouts. Both my units wiped out their respective targets, ensuring me the victory.

I used the mobility granted by having a Fast vehicle, and through being a jetbike, to create local superiority at his objective. My opponent thought a 5 man scout squad and a Tactical squad would be enough to hold the area, but my mobility proved otherwise.

On the flip side, he had nothing that could move more than 12" a turn, so by the time the melees in the center of the table were resolved, it was too late for my opponent to attack my objective.

Moral of the story: use your mobility to create local superiority, and thus achieve the win specific to the the game's conditions.

diesel7270 wrote:Deep Strike: The only reason you'd probably want this is to be able to shoot an enemy for one shooting phase, providing you don't appear in impassable terrain or enemies (or board edges)... which can happen, often. So you get your shots off with them and are immediately creamed by the 6 enemy units you just teleported next to.

Infiltrate: Same as Scout, except I've almost NEVER seen a squad be able to get within 12" and not bee seen. And even so, they have to move out of there to shoot, and will probably be immediately shot at and destroyed before any more infantry can advance to support.

Outflank: Unless you're playing a game mode like Dawn of War, this is almost pointless. Come out of reserves on a random table side. Early in the game it means that they will get a shot off, and then be attacked mercilessly immediately after. Late in the game, everyone's packed into the center of the board so an initiative isn't really gained here.

For deep striking, drop pods with locater beacons are excellent. Would you assault an Ironclad Dreadnought and his 10 Terminator friends right next to him?

Infiltrators are great against Daemon armies in objective based games. I just pop up a lot of sniper rifle Scouts with that hellfire shell firing heavy bolter next to my enemy's objective and it's mine.

Outflank isn't completely random. You've got a third of a chance that they will pop up out of the side you chose. If your opponent places his objective near a corner, you can contest it close to the game's end.

diesel7270 wrote:Well, as mobile of an army as Eldar surely are, what is the point of, say, trying to close the gap with Striking Scorpions or Howling banshees in a wave serpent, if they can't assault as soon as they dismount? They just stand there with their johnson in their hand for a shooting and assault phase. If someone knows that they're going to lose the valuable squad that the Eldar are standing next to if allowed to live through their next turn, they're probably going to do everything they can to kill most of them. Sure, it is distracting at the least, but it's like handing your opponet free KPs or VPs.

I have played the scorpion/banshee assault army in 5th edition, but only in fun games because it's a second-string build. If you have at least 3 and preferably 5 or more grav tanks filled with assault troops (banshees, scorps, harlies, warlocks) and if you use star engines to boost up to within 1" of the thing you want to assault in turn 1, he'll have a really hard time knocking down enough tanks to avoid the assault. You lose 1, maybe 2, maybe none. As long as you put the wave serpents against the melta and the falcons against everything else, you'll end up with a bunch of "shaken" results and a couple of destroyed weapons. You get so far across the table so quickly--and the move-fleet-assault range of banshees/harlies is so long--that the table edge prevents your victim from moving away. Enemy infantry can't move far enough to block off your hatches (a grav tank is 6.24" from nose to hatch, so with the 1" rule it's mathematically impossible for someone to start 1" in front of the tank and reach the back). If there are faster-moving guys who might block the hatch, bring some vypers, bikes, or extra grav tanks along to park behind your transports and keep the access points clear.

But it seems to me you're assuming in your original post that mobility is all about getting troops into assault. This isn't 3rd edition--you don't need rhino rush assaults to win games. Many of the strongest mobile army builds don't have any significant assault capability. Eldar mobility is about being able to concentrate offense on an isolated part of the opponent's army, and that offense can just as easily be shooting power.

another advantage of having mech is they can take heavy weapons and shoot them after moving. some codexs(blood angels) they can go 12" and shoot a vindicatior many times dosnt get closse enough to shoot its demolisher cannon. but with the fast profile then im getting a range of 36" insted of 24". dont forget about smoke ether that has saved my life so many times. refering to ther start of the thread how many times have you actuly faild all thoughs test. One last thing if you have armor then you oponet has to pop it and user there heavy strength weapons on it. I dont know about you but i would rather see an ap1/ap2 weapon used on my tank then on my infantry atlesast with my tank i can posably survive it unless its a melda gun then everything gets blasted.