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Yesterday, or the day before, I was in some thread saying that some tanks shouldn't be squadroned. Specifically the executioner. It's just so expensive and deadly that it seems unnecessary to take two, especially with PC sponsons. You can run two naked and solve the overkill "problem" while cutting costs, gaining cover and damage allocation options, but damage allocation is pretty useless on two identical executioners until one loses its gun. Also, the one tank that's hogging cover is going to be less killy since it's frequently firing through it itself.

BUT, what if the tanks weren't identical? Perhaps like so:

Russ squadron
-Executioner: PCs
-LRBT

...Assuming that we weren't going to need another 5 plasma blasts anyway, for 150pts we have more than doubled the resilience of our executioner through damage allocation. That's before considering how much easier cover is to find in a squadron. The slave tank is still effective against most of the executioner's targets (or all of them if it's a demolisher) and it's 80pts cheaper than another executioner.

How about that?

It works with infantry and cheap skimmers etc, but here your ablative wounds cost 150 points. Too expensive for me and the LRBT is a good unit in it's own right.

Plus because its in a squadron it suffers more from immobilised results.

It doesn't really work out points-wise. Plus as mentioned you'd be sacrificing a pretty damn good tank to save your slightly better tank...

I've used this tactic to effect, but only when the thing you're trying to save is really worth it, namely pask in a vanquisher. (yes I know most guard players hate it, but I don't care, I like it) you squadron him with another vanquisher and it eliminates shaken results from annoying lascannons and stuff the usually only glance.

Any hit allocation benefit is massively offset by the squadron rules, which turn Immobilised, an irrelevant result for most LR tanks, into a wrecked result. There are also many units in the game, eg fire dragons or anything else with multiple anti-vehicle weapons, who will jump for joy at a squadroned target. Anything gets 2 results on the squadron, they've hit 2 tanks for the price of one as it were.

ruminator wrote:It works with infantry and cheap skimmers etc, but here your ablative wounds cost 150 points. Too expensive for me and the LRBT is a good unit in it's own right.

This isn't something I'm suggesting for games under 1750pts. I guess I should have made that clear. Some players like to field tanks in singles all the way up to 2000 and that's where I feel 150pts may not be all too much for the drastic increase in reliability.

Brother Bartius wrote:because its in a squadron it suffers more from immobilised results.

Okay yes it does, in a way, but because the guns that really matter are the ones on your #1 tank, it's not as important as you might think. One glance can put one tank down, but it's never going to be the lead tank unless you suffer more than one glance. Unless two or four glances are inflicted at once, it will take two immobilization rolls to take out Tank#1 (or does the last tank no longer count as squadroned here?), which is the same amount of immobilization rolls it would take to destroy its gun if it were not squadroned. It costs more points yes, but they buy you an easy cover save and near-immunity to single glances that pass it.

Miraclefish wrote:It doesn't really work out points-wise. Plus as mentioned you'd be sacrificing a pretty damn good tank to save your slightly better tank...

It's not like the slave is really "sacrificed" since it's still as much a part of the game as the lead tank. If the situation calls for it, there's no reason you can't reverse the relationship and put damage on your executioner instead. In fact, if one tank is likely to be kept suppressed for most of the game, it could even be beneficial to take two tanks with different target preferences. It would let you choose the tank that will be most useful in a given battle and the other one is the slave. Though at 230pts, an executioner with sponsons should probably always be the master tank.

EmilCrane wrote:I've used this tactic to effect, but only when the thing you're trying to save is really worth it, namely pask in a vanquisher. (yes I know most guard players hate it, but I don't care, I like it) you squadron him with another vanquisher and it eliminates shaken results from annoying lascannons and stuff the usually only glance.

See, here's where I would make the other vanquisher an executioner or demolisher, because if you find yourself facing all terminator armies or just ones without many vehicles, you can make use of a different gun. For the record, I don't believe in vanquishers even with pask and a lascannon.