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Hi,

I played a game recently where it seemed there was only one strategy that either player could use and it resulted in a draw. But I'm wondering if there are ways to go against the obvious and make for a more interesting game (and ultimately win I suppose).

To give context to what I'm getting at I'll give a brief run down of the game. But not really a battle report as I don't have nearly enough details:

So I was playing my space wolf army and opponent was playing Tau. He had a massive amount of models in his deployment zone all with awesome fire power. I had a selection on grey hunters in transports, some long fangs and a thunderwolf cavalry. We each had one objective each. It was spearhead deployment.

Basilcally the only plan i had was to get my army to his end of the table and contest or take his objective, leaving one troop behind to hold mine. From what i can gather his plan was to stay stationary and use his guns to wipe out my army then maybe capture my objective at the end.

So basically all i could do was hope that I had enough army intact by the time I got to his end to be able to get rid of his massive amount of infantry.

So this was a whole lot of hoping mainly on my part.

So the way it played out I marched up the table got shot to ribbons and lost most my army. all except for two grey hunters at the end who were on my objective. but being as my mate had been concentrating on the shooting he had not got close enough to my objective to contest it. The game ended in a draw but one more tern and i would have lost.

But im trying to think if the game could have played out any differently but am coming up with nothing. I could not stay still i would have been gunned down without doing anything else and he could not have moved to me i would have beaten him in close combat. So it just seems that neither side had allot of options from the get go.

So what I'm wondering is if there a better things you can do when armies are matched up this way. just seems that there was too much relying on hoping that the dice are kind to you and not enough actually taking control of the situation, but i cant think how else to have gained control.

Or I guess the thread should be how to survive when out ranged and out gunned?

Find some mobility. You have drop pods and land raiders. A well placed drop pod in his face would have changed the entire dynamic of the game.

Alternately, having some Wolf Scouts to come in behind him and threaten his rear could have worked.

A question though, did your Grey Hunters and Thunderwolf Cavalry run at every opportunity?

Nurglitch wrote:Alternately, having some Wolf Scouts to come in behind him and threaten his rear could have worked.

A question though, did your Grey Hunters and Thunderwolf Cavalry run at every opportunity?

This. You'd be surprised how many people forget to do this with footsloggers.

Right, the way to expand your possible strategies on the field is to take a more comprehensive tool-box to the field. By this, I mean your army list.

If you take a boring list that only plays one way, then you're going to be stuck playing only one way and being bored.

That's a question for the Army List forum though. The Tactics forum is about doing your best with the forces you have available.

That said you're going to need some way of putting troops on objectives, and if it comes to running, then you're going to need units to pick up the slack in shooting.

That's why I asked about running. Additionally, Spearhead gives you a good opportunity to get close quickly. He can either back up against his own board edge and risk attrition from units disappearing off the board, or be forward and risk exposing them to close combat earlier.

Similarly you faced an assymetrical situation where he was content to shoot you, while you had to sacrifice your shooting to pull out a win, which gave him an advantage. In that case you could always re-orient after the first turn and go for the tie, which beats losing when he remains in control of his objective and you lose yours.

I made a similar mistake in a tournament a couple of weeks back, against Chaos Daemons. I castled up in the hope of the Daemons materializing in front of my guns, but made the stupid mistake of sending my Librarian, Captain, and a Tactical Squad teleporting up the field on turn 2 rather than using their firepower and close combat power to secure my own objective before sending them up.

I had access to different resources, more similar to your opponent's situation, but my mistake was bad deployment compounded by dividing my resources into capturing and holding instead of holding and then capturing (mopping up).

Nurglitch wrote:Alternately, having some Wolf Scouts to come in behind him and threaten his rear could have worked.

A question though, did your Grey Hunters and Thunderwolf Cavalry run at every opportunity?

They did indeed run. But also my fault for the sloppey account of the game. The grey hunters were in two rhinos and a land raider redeemer. But all of these were destroyed in turn one (even using smoke). so the rest of the advance was foot.

Once again, this points to problems in your list building. Part-mech, part-foot really only works when that foot part is a horde. In the case of space wolves...

Perhaps you could post what army list you were using in the army list forum, and you could get help bringing better tools to your job.

Nurglitch wrote:That's a question for the Army List forum though. The Tactics forum is about doing your best with the forces you have available.

indeed this is more the info i am after. i want to learn how to better use what i have

Nurglitch wrote:


Similarly you faced an assymetrical situation where he was content to shoot you, while you had to sacrifice your shooting to pull out a win, which gave him an advantage. In that case you could always re-orient after the first turn and go for the tie, which beats losing when he remains in control of his objective and you lose yours.

indeed good points all round. but this was my whole problem from the start. this situation happened from the get go, it turned out a tie but i was commited after the first turn. loosing my transport and land raider, it was take him out or loose most likely or hope for the draw that i got.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ailaros wrote:Once again, this points to problems in your list building. Part-mech, part-foot really only works when that foot part is a horde. In the case of space wolves...

Perhaps you could post what army list you were using in the army list forum, and you could get help bringing better tools to your job.

true, good point i will be sure to put it there soon. But i am interested in how to better use my current army. For the most part my list has performed well, its only really in this game where it really stuggled.

The thing about spearhead capture & control missions is that units starting in your deployment zone have to cross the table diagonally to get to the opponent's objective. But units entering from reserve can enter anywhere along your table edge, including directly across from the opponent's deployment zone where the distance to the objective can sometimes be significantly shorter.

Also starting all in reserve deprives your opponent of a couple of turns of shooting at you.

I played a similar spearhead game against a Tau player a couple of months ago (I was playing guard). Since he got first turn, I started all in reserve. So his turn 1 and 2, he didn't get to shoot anything. At the bottom of turn 2, I got the first shot (even though my rolls were bad and I whiffed). Then in turn 3, even though my reserves rolls were really bad, his only targets were smoked transports that were nearly already in his face.

My army took a thumping, but because he only got 2 turns of shooting at me (it was a tournament and he was playing so slowly that we only got 4 turns total), the combination of entering the table closer and depriving him of shooting phases meant that I was able to get a couple of units close enough to his objective to contest and pull out a win (I parked a troop unit on my own objective, hiding behind their transport, which luckily was only wrecked and not destroyed).

I hardly put a dent in anything in his army, but it wasn't necessary to kill anything to win.

It seems like space wolves would have an even easier time of it because they're not less dangerous after being shot out of their rides. Thunderwolves especially, if they entered from the table edge opposite, would probably only need to eat one turn of fire before being in charge range of something, right?

Flavius Infernus wrote:The thing about spearhead capture & control missions is that units starting in your deployment zone have to cross the table diagonally to get to the opponent's objective. But units entering from reserve can enter anywhere along your table edge, including directly across from the opponent's deployment zone where the distance to the objective can sometimes be significantly shorter.

Also starting all in reserve deprives your opponent of a couple of turns of shooting at you.

I played a similar spearhead game against a Tau player a couple of months ago (I was playing guard). Since he got first turn, I started all in reserve. So his turn 1 and 2, he didn't get to shoot anything. At the bottom of turn 2, I got the first shot (even though my rolls were bad and I whiffed). Then in turn 3, even though my reserves rolls were really bad, his only targets were smoked transports that were nearly already in his face.

My army took a thumping, but because he only got 2 turns of shooting at me (it was a tournament and he was playing so slowly that we only got 4 turns total), the combination of entering the table closer and depriving him of shooting phases meant that I was able to get a couple of units close enough to his objective to contest and pull out a win (I parked a troop unit on my own objective, hiding behind their transport, which luckily was only wrecked and not destroyed).

I hardly put a dent in anything in his army, but it wasn't necessary to kill anything to win.

It seems like space wolves would have an even easier time of it because they're not less dangerous after being shot out of their rides. Thunderwolves especially, if they entered from the table edge opposite, would probably only need to eat one turn of fire before being in charge range of something, right?

good stuff, We didn't realise you can enter from the whole of that edge. We always assumed you enter from the edge of your deployment zone. So yes I agree that could have changed things.

Coyotebreaks wrote:Hi,

I played a game recently where it seemed there was only one strategy that either player could use and it resulted in a draw. But I'm wondering if there are ways to go against the obvious and make for a more interesting game (and ultimately win I suppose).

well there are alot of really smart people playing 40k so usually the best options and strategies in any given codex will have been figured out within a month or so of its release. after that changes and surprises are still possible, but for really competitive lists they're infrequent. almost always a series of tweaks in response to the release of subsequent codices. that being said you could always surprise us....

To give context to what I'm getting at I'll give a brief run down of the game. But not really a battle report as I don't have nearly enough details:

So I was playing my space wolf army and opponent was playing Tau. He had a massive amount of models in his deployment zone all with awesome fire power. I had a selection on grey hunters in transports, some long fangs and a thunderwolf cavalry. We each had one objective each. It was spearhead deployment.

Basilcally the only plan i had was to get my army to his end of the table and contest or take his objective, leaving one troop behind to hold mine. From what i can gather his plan was to stay stationary and use his guns to wipe out my army then maybe capture my objective at the end.

So basically all i could do was hope that I had enough army intact by the time I got to his end to be able to get rid of his massive amount of infantry.

So this was a whole lot of hoping mainly on my part.

So the way it played out I marched up the table got shot to ribbons and lost most my army. all except for two grey hunters at the end who were on my objective. but being as my mate had been concentrating on the shooting he had not got close enough to my objective to contest it. The game ended in a draw but one more tern and i would have lost.

yeah the two objective mission ends in draws an awful lot. I almost dont even want to play that mission if I can help it. short of changing your list to fight tau better I'm not sure there was much you could do here except minor stuff that might improve the survivability of your units. maybe you did all that though... I dont know.

But im trying to think if the game could have played out any differently but am coming up with nothing. I could not stay still i would have been gunned down without doing anything else and he could not have moved to me i would have beaten him in close combat. So it just seems that neither side had allot of options from the get go.

mobility creates options. so if you want more options inside the game itself (as opposed to designing armies) the more stuff with jump packs, bikes, drop pods, etc., you have the more options you'll have. thunderwolves are mobile but not in a way that creates a whole lot of new options, since they charge faster but dont reposition themselves much faster than other units. like I said though I think the 2 objective mission makes for particularly static and uninteresting games. 2 close combat armies usually end up slugging it out half way between the two objectives, or close combat armies end up charging the gunline of shooty armies.

So what I'm wondering is if there a better things you can do when armies are matched up this way. just seems that there was too much relying on hoping that the dice are kind to you and not enough actually taking control of the situation, but i cant think how else to have gained control.

Or I guess the thread should be how to survive when out ranged and out gunned?

at least for my play style, I always try to improve mobility because I play assault oriented armies, and the faster my guys are the less they get shot. mobility options also help you against other assault armies because even if man for man you're about equal, mobility lets you concentrate your forces in a way that means you can fight 2 or 3 to 1 in one part of the battlefield and then keep doing the same thing in others. if you can set up a 2000 vs 2000 point battle, for instance, so that its a 2000 vs 500, 2000 vs 1000, and another 2000 vs 500 point battle, then obviously you're alot more likely to win each of those individual battles and hence the game. however if you have equal mobility its just going to come down to a clash in the center. in that case the dice rolls and the special rules will be decisive, and the game, at least to me, would not be very fun.
AF